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.

Blinkx claims to be the world’s largest video search engine and has now teamed up with Utarget, the leading UK online video advertising network. UK viewers of Blinkx content will get Utarget advertising around content like Blinkx’s ITN News and ITN Celebrity feeds. According to eMarketer, US online video advertising will grow from US$775 million this year to US$4.3 billion by 2011. The UK’s pattern of growth is sure to be similar.

Utarget covers around 125 sites and delivered 9.6 million video ads in August 2007 for major brands like Coke, Halifax, Shell and Smirnoff. Phil Cooper, Utarget CEO, talked up the deal:

“Blinkx is easily the most advanced search engine for users to access video. Partnering with Blinkx will offer our advertisers quality video inventory and a large, well-informed audience.”

Swedish company Medison are offering Linux laptops for just $150. Many have been hugely sceptical about the companies abilities to deliver a laptop at such a low cost. It now turns out that the hardware, named Medison Celebrity is simply a device designed to attract traffic to the company’s website where they intend making most of their money selling advertising space to peripherals manufacturers.

Medison’s owner Valdi Ivancic insists that the first laptops will be delivered in the middle of August and the whole exercise is not a ruse to scam money from an unwary public.

Whatever the truth, it’s the first time we’ve heard of a high ticket consumer item being subsidised by advertising revenue. Medison are aggregating an audience around it’s cheap laptop offering. Media is all about aggregating audiences.