2016 1st International Conference on Innovation and Challenges in Cyber Security (ICICCS 2016)
IoT based Intelligent Billboard using Data Mining
Saral Nigam Shikha Asthana
Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science
Engineering Engineering
Jaypee University of Information Jaypee University of Information
Technology Technology
Himachal Pradesh, India Himachal Pradesh, India
saralnigam@hotmail.com shikhaasthana18@yahoo.com
Abstract The paper presents the design and implementation
of an intelligent advertising system using Raspberry Pi B+ v1.2
development board, RFID and display panels integrated over a
network. This system can be used in multi retail stores, malls and
shopping complexes. The proposed system works on performing
data mining and trend analysis over sales, inventory data which
is collected in real time by using POS system implemented using
RFID tags attached to products. The display panels(billboards)
will be placed at strategic locations. The proposed outcome of the
project aims to provide better offers and deals to customers
without targeting them individually, rather using a segmented
approach.
KeywordsInternet of Things(IoT), Smart Advertising,
Intelligent Advertising, Radio Frequency Identification(RFID),
Intelligent Billboards
I. INTRODUCTION
Network of physical objects or things embedded with
sensors, network connection, electronics, software, mechanical
components, which provides these object the ability to collect,
exchange and process data is known as Internet of Things. The
Internet of Things permits sensing of the objects and remotely
controlled access across various network infrastructures,
establishing opportunities for a better integration between the
real world and computerized world. Thus resulting in
enhanced efficiency, accuracy and better economic results.
Every object can be identified uniquely by the use of its
embedded computing system but these objects can
interoperate within the existing infrastructure of the Internet.
Estimates suggest that IoT will be a collection comprising of
approximately 50 billion object by the end of 2020.
Advertising carries with it the ability to persuade, power to
influence one's mind and mould the future. Advertising can be
described as a way of communicating to the market in order to
promote or sell something. It can be a firm product, business
service. I order to advertise, the messages are paid for by
various agencies and sponsors which then appear in various
forms of media like newspaper, television advertisement,
direct mails, radio advertisement, magazines, emails, text
messages, blogs and websites. Advertising is not only used to
promote and sell but it has the power to persuade the mind and
shape density of the market. The companys profit margins
978-1-5090-2084-3/16/$/31.002016 IEEE
107
Punit Gupta
Department of Computer Science
Engineering
Jaypee University of Information
Technology
Himachal Pradesh, India
punitg07@gmail.com
and economy can be taken to new heights with the power of
advertising. Advertising meets the short term goals of a
product like its information, generating awareness, improving
credibility and productivity and also long terms goals which
include maintaining a brand image of the product, adding
emotional value to the brand and reaching a positive
reputation in the market.
Once the mainstay of mass marketing was a 30-second
television advertisement, is now emerging as a new
technology via Internet, cable television and TiVo, which is
gaining the minds of viewing audience. Therefore, the
advertisers are finding more alternate and better ways for
promotion of their products to reach customers. Their alternate
ways including direct advertising on the internet through in-
mails and websites, placement of their advertisement in
entertainment programs, opting merchandise programs in
stores and sponsoring various cultural and sports events.
The process of finding and analyzing useful patterns in a
large amount of data is what is called Data Mining. Due to
growing generation and increased work in development of
Information Technology, vast amount of data is collected in
various areas. This data is analyzed and maintained in a
database in each sector. Hence, data mining can also be
defined as an analytic operation design to analyze the data,
mainly the so called big data, and find consistent patterns
and relationship that are systematic between the set of data
variables, and then validating those findings by applying them
on new subsets of databases. The patterns and the relationship
so obtained is used to store and manipulate this data and use
them in further decision making.
Data mining can also be defined as a logical process that is
used to explore and search through large amount of big data so
as to find more useful data in it. Previously, the pattern finding
technique was not used and the data collected was just a
collection of databases but with the technique of finding
patterns in the data, more utilization of the data is being
obtained which helps to make better decisions for the
development of the business. Usually data mining is processed
in three steps, mainly Data Exploration, Pattern identification
and Deployment. During the first step of data exploration, the
 2016 1st International Conference on Innovation and Challenges in Cyber Security (ICICCS 2016)
big data is processed and transformed into another form with
only important variables left. This helps to find the nature of
data and finally the problem is determined. After going
through the first step of data exploration, the data gets refined
and only specific variables are left which makes it go through
the second step of pattern identification. This step involves
the identification and choosing of patterns to apply them on
new databases. After the second step, a specific pattern is
obtained which can be now deployed on the new data sets,
completing the process of data mining.
Since the early days of paper, advertising and technology
have worked side by side which is illustrated by commercial
messaging discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, as just one
historical example. But with the rising generation of radio,
television and Internet connected computers in the 21st
century, the wind towards an ever-increasing number of media
options for products and services.
In many number of ways, consumers are steps ahead of
products, services and retailers with the help of use of digital
technologies in the retail space. They are accessible to the
wide variety of abundant information which they can access
from anywhere at any time. This includes downloading
product information, brochures, catalogues, review, get
opinions, live demos, compare prices and many more.
The interconnected IoT devices produce large amounts of
information and data that should be dealt efficiently by the
providers and so is a big challenge. To overcome this
challenge of storing and analyzing large data, the technique of
Internet of Things Analytics (IoTA) is implemented. The raw
data is converted into a useful and relevant data using the
techniques like data extraction and data analytics. In fact, it
has been predicted that by 2020, more than 50-55 percent of
techniques used to analyze raw data will make a better use of
this influx of data which is generated from instrumented
machines and applications. As more and more devices are
getting connected, advertisers are finding ways to target there
users with the right message at the right time to make a perfect
impact of their brand.
For brand advertisers, IOT could change the way
advertising is done. It streamlines the way we come to think of
as media by enabling entirely new and better opportunities
for connecting with the market, to the brand and with the
customers. IoT along with data mining has paved a way for
more better and alternative ways to advertise at the perfect
target.
Our future will be filled with smart and intelligent products
which will ease the advertisers to not to rely on old ways of
popping up or using banner adds. The ads will be personalized
and targeted which will make the advertising easy and
efficient. Commercials will not be seen anymore because the
IoT will usher in a whole new style of advertising where
everything is completely relevant to the end user.
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With the growing connectivity, there is of course the
concern for maintaining the privacy associated with the
connected devices. As a one is connected to a network he is
obviously concerned about his personal information being
shared on the network. There arent any government
regulations surrounding the IoT yet, although the Federal
Commission is looking into it.
II. RELATED WORK
A. Tokyos Digital Billboards
A conglomerate of 11 Japanese railway companies
collaborated up with marketing researchers to identify who
looked at electronic advertisements. This project i.e. 'Digital
Signage Promotion Project' used cameras mounted near the
computerized billboards to gather the data regarding the
approximate age and sex of those who turned their faces
towards any of the 27 signs spread throughout the railway
system. The project aimed to give researchers a thorough
understanding of the demographics of the people who paid
attention to railway advertisements. The Digital Signage
Promotion Project aimed to do broad data analysis only.
But all this also results into a mild invasion of privacy. The
very thought that now advertisements will get to have
knowledge about people is quite disturbing. It is remarkable to
see how computer vision and image processing can aid in
approximating age and sex and for that sake how well
advertisements can be altered to customer behavior. Similar to
the ads in the web browser which use our search trends to
suggest products we are looking for previously, or when
Gmail analyzes our email contents and using those words it
suggests services and products. Despite this multiple ways
exist to make digital signage less aggressive and still attract in
the targeted audience. Rather than targeting individuals we
ought to focus our attention on the crowds; Big size digital
projectors could be used on the sides of building to use them
as enormous canvas for electronic display. Examine the crowd
for average age and sex, and we could play out different ads to
suit the audience as a single entity. In our project also we have
tried to not to invade privacy and thus have setup billboards
inside the supermarket where people can get help in choices of
the stuff they need to buy. The thought of digital ads
recognizing and addressing us by name and having an
electronic billboard calling out our name and trying to sell us
something will be a pretty invasive and perplexing idea.
B. Smart Billboard by M&C Saatchi
Seeing science fiction turning reality will be a very fast
event if the current trends in automotive industry are to be
observed. Popular car maker Lexus unveiled a chain of smart,
large-sized ads on billboards at key locations in Australia.
The billboards carry the ability to tell which type of car a
person is driving, and on the basis of that it will tailor a
customized message just for driver.
These billboards are endowed with cameras which are used
to capture a snapshot of our vehicle as it approaches the
 2016 1st International Conference on Innovation and Challenges in Cyber Security (ICICCS 2016)
billboard. This snapshot is then used to measure the features of
the approaching car which are then used to match them with a
database to deduce the vehicles make, model and colour. This
system encompasses above 80 non-identical configurations of
dynamic messaging at each of the 5 locations.
Every billboard features with it a range of cameras which
have high rotational capabilities in order to facilitate the
capturing of all passing traffic. These images are then made
available to the APN Outdoor Classifier. The APN Outdoor
Classifier is a hi-tech device which is used to match the
images to an enormous database of multiple vehicle, models,
makes and colors in addition to various multiple parameters.
Each billboard has a series of cameras on high rotation that
capture all passing traffic. The images are sent to the APN
Outdoor Classifier, a bespoke, hi-tech device that matches
them to its large database of vehicles makes, models and
colours in addition to the other variables.All this contextual
information such as weather conditions, time of the day and
traffic conditions are passed as argument to the algorithm to
generate a configuration out of one the 80 possible
configurations. This generates message such as "Hey black
Audi driver, the door to heaven has opened. This is the new
Lexus."
All this happens in a split second in order to grab your
attention as you zoom past on the freeway.
III. PROPOSED MODEL
The diagram below represents the system architecture which is
used to implement the proposed model. The system
architecture consist of sales details, database, inventory,
network between the devices, IoT board and billboards.
Figure 1 : System Architecture
Working of our model is as follows:
First we collect the purchase information through RFID read
module and store it into database as the billing information.
All the purchases of products belonging to different categories
are read by the RFID and stored in database. List of products
along with their id, price associated with a particular client id
is stored in the database.
Information from the inventory is also stored in the database
in a separate table. This table lists all the products which are
not yet sold out and are present in inventory for long time.
Database will contain information like product id and it's
price. This information is needed so that we can attach
appropriate offers to these products to increase their chances
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of sales. Recommendation of such products will be made to
the customer according to their purchasing behavior/trends.
Database will also contain information regarding the client,
i.e., the billboards to address them and send command to
display appropriate information.
The database and the circuitry involved ,i.e. IoT board and
RFID are all connected together via a network. IoT board is
used implement the RFID read/write module and also act as a
server in this client-server architecture. Through RFID read
module all the purchases of the customers will be read and
stored in the database. Then applying data mining in the sales
data we will be able to find patterns in the purchase of certain
products together, products which are in trend, i.e. mostly
purchased belonging to different categories. We are using
association technique of data mining and implementing
Apriori algorithm for that. The result obtained from data
mining will be read by the server and it will then select
appropriate products from the database as indicated from the
result in the data mining and display it on the billboards spread
throughout the supermarket. Server can also decide upon the
offers to associate with the products with the help of inventory
and data mining details. Server will also be able to display
videos on billboards. Billboards are associated with their
respective client id that the server uses to decide what
information to send to which billboard installed at different
location to display relative information. Different billboards
will display advertisements according to their placement in the
supermarket. The billboards will display advertisements of
specific categories depending upon their placement in the
supermarket. Thus we will be able to target specific customers
according to their purchasing behavior and to attract them by
showing them the products they need or products which are in
trend and can be useful to them or suggestions regarding some
complementary products associated with their current
purchase.
Finally the client architecture will be running on the billboards
which will receive images and videos to be displayed. The
GUI implemented at the client side will consist of the images
of trending products displayed on one side of the screen and
videos of associated products will be displayed on the other
side to grab customer's attention and entice them to shop
more.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Figure 2
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Figure 3
Figure 4
V. CONCLUSION
The proposed model addresses the issues presented by
current system such as the current targeted advertising which
is pretty poorly targeted. Advertisements posted by M&C
Saatchi on highways/freeways might pose as a distraction to
vehicle drivers. Since our system is not targeting individual
user the feeling of privacy invasion among people will not be
present.
This system provides competitive deals and offers to
customers, thus giving them better options to choose from. It
also provides the sellers better insights into customer needs.
Using these results they can formulate their promotion
strategy leading to increased sales. Also it will help them to
manage their inventory efficiently based on the needs and
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requirements of the customer. All this combined will result in
them being at a better position to compete with e-commerce
sites, who are eating a major chunk of their market.
We can further improvise the system by providing real
time options to customer when he/she scans the product at
POS based on his basket. We can directly interact with the
user by providing personalized offers. This system can be
scaled up and expand the network from a single store to
multiple malls and shopping outlets. Also the ads can be
further refined on the basis of user demographics.
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