A pair of Eye Contact glasses developed by ID Magasin tracks eye movements and records what ads people look at for how long. The company used their EyeMark technology to analyse retail environments, but Eye Contact could be also applied be applied for TV audience analysis, potentially with a much greater degree of accuracy than diaries and people-meters. (ID Magasin also creates virtual reality mock-ups of retail spaces that they then analyse for effectiveness).
From Guardian:
"It is called the Eye Contact, and it's capable of capturing on film everything that you see during a typical day. The Guardian wore the goggles for four hours, recording a bus and tube journey to Oxford Circus and a shopping trip up Bond Street. The experiment, analysed with the help of ID Magasin, the company which developed the device, highlighted both the extent to which individuals are bombarded by commercial images and how adept most have become at screening out advertising messages. The results of our experiment showed that 99% of adverts make little or no impact."
Last year, Canadian researchers developed a pair of sunglasses that can detect when someone is making eye contact with the wearer.
-- via AdJab
