Initial Thoughts, Current Events: Google Glass

          In my indrotuctory post for this blog, I wanted to address a current event in the world of digital marketing.  It is my believe that Google's new product, Google Glass (if properly applied) can change the landscape of the marketing world.  This new product could potentially have effects so profound, that marketers will have to restructure their strategies entirely in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

            When word of Google’s “Project Glass” began to spread in 2012, initial reactions were simple amazement regarding the technological brilliance and futuristic essence of the invention.  Google Glass is, in essence, a personal computer that is worn on the user’s face, and has capabilities such as picture, video, sharing and information.  After the initial shock wore off, however, more practical analyses surfaced, including how the innovation could potentially impact marketing and advertising.    A few months ago, Google was granted a patent, which applied for back in 2011, for eye tracking advertising technology, often referred to as “gaze” tracking technique.  In this technique, the eyes would be tracked any time they looked at an advertisement.  This information would then be sent back to a server, and payments would be made on any of a number of diverse dimensions.  For instance, payments could be determined by whether or not the person looked directly at an ad, the length of time they looked, or even the emotional state elicited by the ad, which could me measured by the person’s pupil response.  Additional information about Google Glass can be viewed here.

            However, the utilization of eye tracking systems by marketers is not a new concept.  It has been frequently used by marketers in closed experiments and studies, but has been generally considered to be too expensive and intrusive to become a full-fledged, mainstream technique.  For instance, one company used eye-tracking techniques to measure the interest level of various children throughout an episode of “Sesame Street” (Blink- Malcolm Gladwell).  The possibility of the existence of Google Glass, however, tackles these obstacles and makes eye tracking advertising an appealing prospective. To prevent feelings of users being unwilling victims of an experiment, Google is ensuring that all users will be completely anonymous.  This new and exciting innovation can be viewed properly on the Google website here, and an interesting video can also be viewed for your educational curiosity.

           Should products such as Google Glass take off, eye tracking advertising technology will yield several important managerial and marketing implications.  Since these glasses would be able to track eye movements responding to ads on a screen and in real life, perhaps a shift would occur that would refocus advertising into the actual, not virtual, world.  Ads such as billboards and posters could be monitored for effectiveness as never before, and would undoubtedly lead to more inventive techniques beyond what we have currently seen.  Perhaps our cities and suburbs would become overloaded with advertisements competing for our attention, similar to how the Internet has already followed this trend.

          User input will be a reoccurring theme of this blog, and all opinions are encouraged.  What sort of impact, both general and marketing specific do you believe that the Google Glass will have? Do you think this invention will catch on at all?