In this article you’ll learn how to set up your screens so that their content changes based on who’s standing in front of them. You’ll populate your playlists with content for each demographic, tie to demographics data using the Rule Builder, set appropriate scheduling behavior and publish the playlists to your screens.
Prerequisites
1. A ScreenRay Pro device with a Raydiant Visitor InSight compatible camera attached.
2. An Enterprise account with Visitor InSight enabled.
Introduction to Workers
Demographics targeting relies on data from Raydiant’s Visitor InSight. Playlists pull this data locally from Visitor InSight enabled devices using Workers. Workers are light-weight tasks that run on devices in the background and let playlists know when data has changed so that they can in turn adapt their content.
Workers expose output properties that are visible in a playlist’s Rule Builder. These properties are used to create conditions that define when given content should play.
Aggregated Time Visitor InSight Worker output properties in Rule Builder
Workers also have input properties that can be used to determine various settings ie. how often to poll for new data, what the maximum distance from the screen is for real time targeted content to be triggered.
There are two types of Visitor InSight Workers available. Aggregated Time Visitor InSight Worker and Real Time Visitor InSight Worker. Click on each to learn more about them.
Step 1 - Define a content targeting strategy
Define the various demographics you’d like to target and how you’d like to target them. In this example we’ll target females and males in aggregate, but interrupt content the moment someone pays attention to the screen for more than 2 seconds.
We will therefore have content directed at:
- Females
- Males
And we will have content for people paying attention, irrespective of gender:
- Paying attention content
We will trigger Female content when the percentage of females in front of the screen is greater than or equal to 50% and Male content when the percentage of males in front of the screen is greater than 50%. This way, when male and female percentages are both at 50%, female content will play. We want each of these playlists to play to the end unless an individual pays attention to the screen for more than 2 seconds. Each will take about 1 minute to complete and so rather than showing male and female content based on who’s in front of the screen the moment a playlist finishes playback, we will show content based on aggregated demographics data from the past 30 seconds, assuming it will be a good demographics indicator for the next 30 seconds.
Content for people that are paying attention will interrupt all playlists as soon as someone pays attention to the screen for 2 seconds. When they stop paying attention to the screen and 2 seconds elapse the screen will revert to showing male or female content, depending on aggregated demographics.
Step 2 - create a playlist
In this step we’ll create a playlist that will house content for all of the varying demographics scenarios we want to support. We’ll create 1 playlist for each demographic and populate them with content.
1. Start by creating a playlist in your library. Navigate to your library, select “Create” from the top menu and choose “Create a Playlist”.
2. Add three nested playlists. In the Playlist Builder select “Add” -> “Create” -> “Create a Playlist”. Do this three times in total.
3. Name the playlists. Right click on each playlists context menu and select “Rename”. For the purposes of this example we will name the playlists:
- Female content
- Male content
- Attention content
Parent playlist with 3 nested playlists, one per demographic.
4. Drag the appropriate content into each playlist.
5. It’s always a good idea to save your playlist so you don’t lose any changes.
Step 3 - set up triggers
In this step we’ll use the Rule Builder to specify when each nested playlist should play.
1. Right click on the “Female content” playlist’s context menu and select “Rules”. This will open the Rule Builder for that playlist. The Rule Builder lets you define when a playlist should play using rules (conditions). Rules let you compare tags with tags and Worker output properties with custom values. They are evaluated at run time using data from the device.
Rule Builder
2. Select the “Source 1” dropdown and press “Aggregated Time Visitor InSight Worker” -> “Gender Percentage” -> “Female Percentage”.
3. From the “Compare” dropdown select “Greater or equal to”.
4. From the “Source 2” dropdown select “Custom Value” and type in 50. Check that your Rule Formula looks as follows:
Female Percentage >= 50% rule
5. Press “Done” to save your rule.
6. Press “Save” in the Playlist Builder to save your playlist.
7. Repeat steps 1 through 6 for the “Male content” playlist. This time set “Aggregated Time Visitor InSight Worker” -> “Gender Percentage” -> “Male Percentage” to be “Greater than” 50%. Your Rule Formula field should end up looking like the following:
Male Percentage > 50 rule
8. Open the Rule Builder for the “Attention content” playlist, but this time, rather than selecting “Aggregated Time Visitor InSight Worker” select “Real Time AI Worker”. We want this playlist to trigger as soon as someone is paying attention to the screen for 2 seconds so we’ll need to rely on the real time data the “Real Time AI Worker” provides.
9. From the “Source 1” dropdown select “Real Time Visitor InSight Worker” -> “Person Paying Most Attention” -> “Total Attention Time”.
10. From the “Compare” dropdown select “Greater than”.
11. And from the “Source 2” dropdown select “Custom Value” and type in 2. The Rule Formula should display the following:
Total Attention Time > 2 rule
12. Press “Done” to save your rule.
13. Press “Save” in the Playlist Builder to persist changes to your playlist.
If you’d like to differentiate “Attention content” further by gender (or age, but in this example we’ll use gender), you can replace it with “Male attention content” and “Female attention content”. When setting rules for these playlists you’d need to perform the following additional steps:
- After setting the rule for “Total Attention Time” > 2, press “+ And Or” and select “And”.
- Press “+” to add a new rule.
- From the “Source 1” dropdown select “Real Time Visitor InSight Worker” -> “Person Paying Most Attention” -> “Gender”.
- From the “Compare” dropdown select “Equals”.
- From the “Source 2” dropdown select “Custom Value” and select the target gender for the content. Your Rule Formula should look as follows:
Total Attention Time > 2 AND Gender = male rule
Step 4 - set schedule types
You’re nearly there! Now you’ll need to set up your playlists schedule type. A schedule type determines how your playlists interrupt content - immediately or after having played back all content.
1. Select “Schedule” from the “Attention content” playlist’s context menu.
Setting a playlist’s schedule type
2. At the very top you’ll see the Schedule Type. There are 2 types to choose from:
Schedule Type | Description |
Join | This playlist will play in the order specified when its schedule and/or rules are met. |
Override | This playlist will play whenever its schedule and/or rules are met. It will ignore all other content. |
3. The default is “Join”, which we’ll leave on for the female and male playlists. Select “Override” for the “Attention content” playlist so that it instantly takes over the screen when its rules are met.
4. Press “Done”.
5. Press “Save” in the Playlist Builder to persist changes to your playlist.
Step 5 - publish the playlist
Congratulations! Now go to the Screens page and assign your playlist to your Visitor InSight enabled devices. Press “Publish” and watch your screens adapt their content to the people standing in front of them!