Camera network to quantify the movement of modern cities

Retailers in New York can now use a company called ‘Placemeter’ to measure foot traffic and conversion rates at its stores. Placemeter is an urban intelligence platform who quantify the movement of modern cities, at scale. Placemeter ingests any kind of video to analyse pedestrian and vechile movement, revealing hidden patterns and strategic opportunities. Placemeter pay people up to $50 a month for the video feed they supply to the company. The video is transmitted to a sensor that turns the feed into aggregated and anonymised data for local businesses, urban planners and advertisers to purchase so that they can get a more accurate measurement of activity within the city. By analysing trends by day of week and time of day, retilers able to conclude if walkby traffic was more likely to be strolling tourists (their target market) or commuters. They found that a pedestrian at 2:00 PM is more valuable than a pedestrian at 9:00 AM, because they are more likely to come in and buy something.

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