Get ready for a more “Minority Report” world as new public ads could actually be watching you and changing the ad based on who is looking at the ad:

“Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity — and can change the ads accordingly. That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens.”

Search engines have already numbed people to a heavy amount of data analysis and tracking that goes on around the web in order to provide more and more relevant ads (assuming that advertising agencies and the like are doing the job properly), so it was only a matter of time before offline ads become very in-depth as well.

As a thought process it sounds scary, but these things get rolled out over time in a way that people just get used to seeing them as a part of everyday life. For example, when you sign up to GMail, you give Google (that is, its algorithm) the right to “read” your email in order to serve you relevant ads. I personally find that quite horrific as I consider all my emails to be private and non-negotiable for any kind of reading, but millions of people use the service as they realize that there is no real harm in allowing an algorithm to serve you ads and nothing else.

In the end, public ads that watch you will become an everyday thing–just as long as the ads are not using your name as you walk by.