Pay-per-gaze ? How Google takes advertising to a whole new level !

Google has just been granted a patent that may potentially pave a new path for advertising in the future. This patent specifically outlines how advertisers could be charged according to the number or views an ad receives while wearing the Glass, both offline and online, hence labeling it “pay-per-gaze” advertising. 

Known as the Gaze Tracking System, this technology works is by measuring one’s pupillary response to the ad and infer an ‘emotional state of user while viewing the external scenes based at least in part upon the pupil dilation information”. In theory, this allows advertisers to gauge the level of how ‘engage’ the viewer is in advertising.

While Google had previously banned developers from displaying ads on the Google Glass (as pictured above), 

the patent states that the system requires a “head mounted gaze tracking device” which comprises of 

“eye glasses”, "side-arms that engage ears of the user”, “lenses through which the user views the external scenes” and “at least one forward facing scene camera”.

Phase 1: Pay-per-Gaze

Simply put, this intelligent invention allows ads to literally flash in front of your eyes. And how exactly does Google get paid for these advertisements? Precisely, Google gets paid when your pupils pointed in that direction and for how long. While traditional marketers have struggled to find ways to track advert performances by metrics such as click-through-rates and pay per view, this technology takes it to a step higher by tracing the human gaze, which is the closest and most accurate representation of the viewer’s interest on an advertisement.

The patent further offers the application of a "pay-per-gaze" system, where:

Pay-per-gaze advertising need not be limited to online advertisements, but rather can be extended to conventional advertisement media, including billboards, magazines, newspapers and other forms of conventional print media. Thus, the gaze-tracking system described herein offers a mechanism to track and bill offline advertisements in the manner similar to popular online advertisement schemes.

 

Phase 2: Pay-Per-Emotion

In the later stage, which is dubbed as Phase Two (Pay-Per-Emotion), the Glass will be able to track the interest of the wearer by measuring on how much your eyes dilate. The reasoning for this is simple; pupil dilation oftentimes correlate with emotional stats (eg; surprise, interest, shock and etc). Case in point is you are more likely to respond (gaze longer at a pizza advert, hence dilating your pupils) when you are hungry.

                                     

Charles Darwin speculated that the brain is affected by

 powerful emotions such as fear, that causes the pupil to dilate.

What about the billing fee$ ? 

Apparently, the advertisers will be billed depending on whether the user looked directly at a given advertisement item, viewed the given advertisement item for one or more specified duration and/or the inferred emotional state of the user while viewing a particular advertisement.

Given the grant of this patent, the world now anxiously anticipates to see how the future advertising landscape will evolve in the coming years.