Intel's entry-level audience measurement service is now free

Intel's AIM Suite (Silver Edition) is now available for free.  This software-as-a-service (SaaS) audience measurement platform can provide basic information such as:

• Face detection and number of people who saw a message.
• How long each detected viewer looked at a message
• HTTP API: The data collected by the AIM Suite can be retrieved and stored in your own database for further analysis
• 3 Months of data storage on Intel's servers
• 24 AIM Analytics Reports

This is a great way to become familiar with this great audience analysis tool at no cost or you can order a free trial of the full featured AIM Suite Gold Edition for 90 days.

So what will you need to get started?

Your digital signage player PC should run on a Intel Core i3, 2.4 GHz or faster processor (3.2 GHz is preferred), any version of Microsoft Windows up to Windows 7, Ubuntu 11 or Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, 4 Gb of RAM for Windows Vista or Windows 7 (2 Gb for all other operating systems), 20 Gb of free hard drive space.

You will also need a USB webcam to capture the data.  Recommended models are Logitech C910, C920 or QuickCam Pro 9000.  Other cameras from Axis and Panasonic are also supported.

A camera set to a resolution of 640x480 can detect faces at a distance of 25 feet.  The distance can be increased via the camera's resolution settings.  Obviously, proper lighting is a must to ensure adequate audience detection.  The AIM Suite works best under a brightly lit and evenly illuminated indoor environment such as what you would find in a typical supermarket.

It's important to note the AIM Suite does not record any personal information.  It uses anonymous sensors to record broad parameters such as gender and age range, viewing times and duration.  No faces are recorded or archived.

The AIM Suite is supported by many digital signage software vendors, including the Flypaper content development platform.  For example, Flypaper users can integrate their content with AIM Suite and trigger content based on the audience's gender.

Audience measurement tools like Intel's AIM Suite are becoming increasingly important for advertising firms and brand owners as media playback data is not the most accurate measure of campaign effectiveness.