Opportunities from Analytics Synthesis

Building on top of the data sharing matrix (Figure3.3) and data collection overview (Table3.1), we identified a set of example opportunities that arise from combining datasets across multiple distinct stakeholders. We additionally provide an overview of the feasibility of data sharing between individual organisations by presenting use cases from other domains in which data sharing is successfully practised.

3.2.4.1 Creation of Novel Insights

The creation of novel insights in the form of datasets and analytics reports can be seen as the main advantage of data synthesis across stakeholders. Examples from related domains such as supply chain management have shown that stakeholders are likely to share their analytical insights—under the condition that there is a clear benefit to all parties involved [LW00]. In the context of public display deployments, we have developed an initial set of examples of data synthesis across stakeholders based on the identified dataset individual stakeholders are capable of collecting (Section3.2.2–Stakeholder Data Collection Analysis). In the following

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subsections, we preset a set of opportunities for the creation and computation of reports by combining data initially collected and owned by two distinct stakeholder groups.

Display Owners and Space Owners Both stakeholders can complement each other’s insights in the areas of gesture based user interactions and behaviour analysis of passers- by—yielding a comprehensive set of insights about the audience. This includes in particular questions on how displays affect the mobility patterns of viewers and their activity, and the proportion of people present in a space interacts with the display and its content. By additionally combining space-specific data including such as can be collected in a retail context (e.g. sales statistics), the stakeholders involved can start computing correlations of viewer activity and interactions with purchasing activities to, for example, compute a conversion rate.

Display Owners and Content Providers Content providers can contribute detailed in- sights about the content that is supplied to a display, and potential follow-up interactions of users with the distributed content, e.g. by subsequently visiting a Web site. Display owners have detailed anonymous counts and behavioural insights about the audience that potentially views a piece of content in the vicinity of a display. Combining datasets from both stakeholders enables content providers to retrieve insights about the audience and their demographics that has viewed a particular piece of content, while display owners gain details about the type of content shown and potential proportions of view- ers following-up beyond the direct interaction with the display. In particular, display owners will be able to understand which kinds of content have lead to higher dwell times, and which demographics have responded to and engaged with a piece of content. These insights can contribute to the development of automated display schedules that dynamically adjust the content based on the audience—leading to an improvement both for the content providers by allowing them to improve their reach and for the display owners by increasing the value of their displays based on the currently present audience. Display Owners and Viewers Combining datasets from both display owners and view- ers enables us to answer questions regarding the number of returning viewers for individual display deployments (i.e. viewers provide us with the ability to identify returning visitors). In addition, insights directly collected from the viewer’s perspective (e.g. through wearable cameras) can be combined with data from the infrastructure to capture objects and places viewers have seen immediately before and after walking by or interacting with a display.

Space Owners and Content Providers Content providers benefit from the space own- ers data in particular regarding the space owner’s capabilities to count and track users beyond the vicinity of the display—allowing the content provider to understand, for ex- ample, how their content has influenced the viewer’s behavioural patterns. In particular in the retail environment, the combination of content insights and sales statistics could lead to a new understanding of the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

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Space Owners and Viewers Space owners are limited in their ability to recognise and identify individual visitors and viewers present in their space whilst viewers complement the insights about their activities and behavioural patterns from their perspective – in particular beyond the boundaries of the space in which the space owner is able to capture relevant data. Insights through the combination of both datasets allow us to answer questions on the viewer’s activities before entering the space, e.g. from which spatial and geographical location viewers originated.

Viewers and Content Providers In the collection of relevant analytics data, viewers and content providers complement each other in their capabilities to identify the viewer activities in the vicinity of the display and beyond displays. This provides insights for the content provider into the viewer activity patterns after interacting with their content, whilst viewers can benefit from more appropriate and targeted content shown on displays as they walk by based on their mobility and activity patterns.

The examples described above are based on the synthesis of datasets from two distinct stakeholder groups only. By increasing the numbers of stakeholders who contribute their datasets, the number of insights that can be gained grow substantially. For example, bringing together space owners, display owners and content providers would enable comprehensive insights into the influence of both displays and content to an audience across the entire space in which the display is deployed.

3.2.4.2 Additional Benefits

In addition to the creation of novel insights, further benefits can be gained from combining and synthesising analytics data across multiple distinct stakeholder groups. Phan, Kalasapur, and Kunjithapatham have shown the opportunities in a different domain: readings from multiple sensors can be fused with the goal of ensuring the accuracy of individual sensor readings and this can lead to more valuable results [PKK14]. Tian et al. show that by combining previously collected data on viewer behaviour (in this case, the content that the viewers have seen on a display) with additional contextual data (such as the display location and weather), the authors have shown an increased accuracy of their target advertisement system [Tia+12].

Additional benefits also include the inclusion of viewers as equal stakeholders of the overall analytics ecosystem – viewers can supply information instead being a subject observed by other stakeholder infrastructure. This approach also allows viewers to opt-out of data collection whilst data collection by other stakeholders through infrastructure sensors such as CCTV do not allow viewers to trivially opt out. The sharing of analytical insights, in particular if similar datasets are recorded, can also lead to cost savings—instead of two stakeholders capturing identical insights (such as audience insights through video analytics), the datasets can be captured once and shared across interested stakeholder groups. Alternatively, similar datasets collected multiple times can potentially increase the veracity of the insight by allowing stakeholders to cross validate the collected information.