The New York Times has a good report on new OOH technologies that use video cameras at the billboard location to identify target groups and deliver ads that are relevant to them. The technology can pick up gender, approximate age and even race. The video data is sent to a central database for identification before the relevant ad is fired back to the viewer.

Companies developing the systems include Paris based Quividi and US based TruMedia Technologies.

Naturally there have been privacy concerns but all involved are insisting that the targeting is remaining completely anonymous and is only trying to target and measure OOH better.

The UK’s radio industry has spent a long time preparing for electronic measurement, but at the last hurdle they’ve abandoned their plans and a re sticking to diaries. After spending about £3.5 million on feasibility studies with Arbitron’s Personal People Meter, it’s all been called off.

The joint industry organisation that looks after radio measurement, RAJAR, might be looking at a new online diary system, with testing taking place in July.

Apparently the main problem was getting the panel to put accurate data into the machines at breakfast time.

The electronic meter trials started in London in early 2007 but one of the key sponsors, the television measurement body BARB, left after a year. This made the project costly for the remaining partner, RAJAR.

Forecasters Juniper Research think that mobile tv will take the largest share of mobile ad expenditure by 2010. Total mobile adspend will pass the $1 billion mark this year and climb to almost $7.6bn by 2013.

There’s no reason to disagree. Increases in bandwidth makes the rise in revenues for mobile tv inevitable. Couple it with the unique targeting opportunities mobile has and you have a goldmine.

Before this happens, Juniper thinks idle-screen advertising will hold court, with revenues moving from $7m in 2008 to over $500m in 2013.

Report author Dr Windsor Holden tells us:

“While adspend in the mobile environment is still extremely limited when compared to the budgets allocated to media such as magazines, television, cinema and the Internet, the opportunities it offers -personalized advertising with very high response rates, delivered to a device which is always in close proximity to the individual - will make it an increasingly attractive proposition for leading brands.”

Juniper also thinks that advertisers will hold back until issues like poor inventory, reach and common metrics are addressed by operators and content providers. That may be so, but the time to experiment with this stuff is now.