By Guilherme De Magalhaes, Java Backend Developer at BairesDev.
A few years ago, I was surprised when, after looking for a product on the internet, I kept getting offers and ads about the same subject for a while. I later learned this was called behavior retargeting, a form of online advertising targeted to consumers based on their internet behavior.
To be honest, the first time I paid attention to this, I thought, Is someone trying to spy on me? or, Has my phone been cloned or hacked in some way? Weird. I soon got used to retargeting ads like everyone else. After all, the digital revolution progresses in a way that is hard to keep track of.
Since then, an increasing number of devices connected to the World Wide Web and to each other appeared on the market, and according to IoT Analytics, were expected to be around 14 billion by the end of year 2022. This multiplied the capabilities to produce detailed behavioral user data gathered around the world, feeding an ecosystem called Internet of Behaviors (IoB).
What is Internet of Behaviors (IoB)?
According to technological research and consulting firm Gartner, “The internet of behaviors (IoB) is emerging as many technologies capture and use the digital dust of peoples’ daily lives. The IoB combines existing technologies that focus on the individual directly: facial recognition, location tracking, and big data, for example, and connects the resulting data to associated behavioral events, such as cash purchases or device usage.”
This is a way of learning people’s behavior through data and makes it possible to understand and personalize relationships. Therefore, the IoB leverages three major fields:
- Technology (for data collection from this footprint or “digital dust” left by people).
- Data analytics (the analysis of collected data).
- Behavioral science (the science of human behavior).
Now let me clarify the relationship between the following two concepts.
Internet of Behaviors (IoB) & Internet of Things (IoT)
One essential point about the IoB is that its strategy entirely depends on the IoT. Thanks to the rise of IoT devices, the collection of data from people or “digital dust,” as mentioned earlier, has become much thicker, which has paved the way for the emergence of the Internet of Behaviors. After all, if there is so much access to data, why not analyze how people behave with that trail of dust they leave behind?
Let us see more of it.
Diving deeper into the Internet of Behaviors (IoB)
In my opinion, one of the most interesting characteristics is that this data could come from different IoT sources, not only smartphones, tablets, or personal computers but also sensors, wearables, and embedded systems. This way, companies are increasing the amount of captured data and combining data from different types to be translated into meaningful data for businesses.
Everything converges to an amazing outcome with devices ready to react to human emotion by analyzing how they use their digital tools. Also, it could be used in business settings as a way to monitor and understand the customer experience. And it has been considered one of the latest trends in software development. Reports from consulting organization Precedence Research suggest that IoB will be worth $2 trillion by 2030.
IoB: communication and marketing impacts
Behavior data is abundantly available through IoT devices, and analyzing these behaviors can bring many different advantages. Here are some examples of how IoB impacts the communication and marketing sectors:
- New opportunities like real-time point-of-sale notifications and target ads. For example, Did you walk by a flower shop around Valentine’s day? Perhaps a coupon magically appeared on your phone to encourage a courteous gesture. Just left a restaurant? Your phone may request a review, which will feed your personal IoB model.
- New insights with information coming from multiple points of contact. This makes it possible to explore the customer journey from start to finish—from where the customer’s product awareness begins, their purchase journey, and right up to the transaction. More touchpoints could be created during this process for a better interaction with customers.
- Access to consumer lifestyle data. Devices that are part of our life, like home automation systems, wearable devices, thermostats, or coffee makers, could be used to obtain data on lifestyle trends and, therefore, provide insights on how and when certain products or services are required.
- Enhanced brand values and better experiences. Companies will be able to analyze past performance and predict the future. The data gathered through the IoTs will provide the basis for companies to plan their development, marketing, and sales efforts. On the customer side, it could improve the experience in response to behavior feedback, increase satisfaction by effectively reacting to behavioral clues, and create settings in which everything adjusts to user behavior and preferences in real time.
Other practical examples and uses of IoB
Apart from the behavior retargeting example, other forms of IoB implementations are emerging in many fields with innovative applications:
- Hygiene and safety—Hospitals and companies in the manufacturing sector are already using sensors and RFID (Radio-frequency identification) tags to determine if on-site employees are washing their hands regularly.
- The fight against COVID-19—During the pandemic, organizations used IoB to recognize if someone was wearing a mask or not. Also, thermal image generators were used to identify people with increased body temperature.
- Route safety—Vehicle telematics can help to improve truck drivers’ performance and shipping safety, monitoring for behaviors like hard breaks, route deviations, or aggressive turns.
- Government/Policymaking—Using data generated by IoB devices, the government can track behavioral patterns of large groups to maintain law and order, tracking the activities of persons of interest and preventing mishaps from occurring. China uses this tool to track citizen loyalty to the regime. A tracking credit score system can change a citizen’s credit score based on their behavior. Someone that doesn’t pay an electric bill might get a low score. AI can identify videos of anti-government protests and block users from viewing them.
- Car insurance—U.S. company Root Insurance, monitors the activities of drivers using IoB to dynamically adjust the pricing of car insurance premiums. This can also be used to evaluate roles in accidents, so insurers can correctly identify who is at fault or even identify medical emergencies.
- Health insurance companies could use wearables to track physical activities to reduce premiums and monitor grocery purchases, where too many unhealthy items could increase premiums.
IoB & AI Face Insights
I have had the opportunity to work in AI, particularly on projects related to face insights. AI neural networks gather and analyze demographics, ethnicities, genders, ages, and capture customers’ facial emotions. This is a vast field to use IoB in unique ways:
- Gender, age, and ethnicity detectors provide audience demographics.
- Face re-identification recognizes repeat customers, colleagues in video collaboration, or students in online lectures.
- Anonymous data is turned into insights with big data analytics.
- Engagement and attention can be measured on teams and students over video calls.
- Insights on patients’ experience and mental health contribute to preventing depression, stress, and anxiety.
- With smart digital signage, we can learn about audiences’ preferences and adapt content to each demographic segment.
- Regarding apps and video games, we can create products adaptive to users’ emotions with richer user testing.
- Emotional journey analytics for retail stores.
- Project deployment with instant web or mobile apps results for customer insight focus groups.
- Measure engagement and demographics of visitors in events and conferences.
IoB seems to be a vast field with endless uses. I believe it will only keep growing, becoming complex and richer, given the ever-increasing number of web interconnected devices. This responds to commerce in general, as every business strives to learn what consumers love and need. IoB is a powerful tool to help find that out, providing new ways to increase sales and delivering superior goods and services. Considering that IoB provides instant feedback, this should make a big difference in necessary improvements, warnings, or to somehow induce a new behavior in a particular situation. This is only the beginning. Let us developers wait, participate, and see!
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