Out with mobile advertising, staid LED billboards, and may be even audio-visual ads in railway stations, bus bays, and malls. It may soon be the age of personalized advertising.

Of course it could open up a debate about privacy. But will be reality soon. Beginning this winter, Yahoo Japan will embark on innovative billboard signages. How? Billboards fixed at public places will be equipped with cameras and will take pictures of people walking past by them, detecting a person’s age and sex.

Once these characteristics are determined, the billboards will display tailor-made content for the concerned people. Rather intrusive even if technologically advanced. But some tout it as much better than staid billboards. Yahoo has tied up with a Tokyo based firm Comel for the venture, for its hardware part of the project. Facial analysis will be provided by NEC Soft.

About 500 billboards are expected to be up at train stations, shopping malls, to display content such as news, weather and what goes without saying – advertisements. These billboards will be up in Fukuoka (Southern Japan) In Japan, Yahoo has a larger market base than Google, according to Comscore.

Via: Nikkei, Crunchgear