Startup Blimp, born in 2017 within Enteprises Factory e-Novia, uses artificial intelligence and big data to interpret citizens’ behaviors and needs through a network of sensors installed in major Italian cities. Co-Founder and General Manager Alex Buzzetti talks about it.
Cities are changing and the way we move in cities is changing. Technologies, especially digital ones, are the key ingredient of Smart Cities and create new opportunities for different market segments: one of them is Out of Home, that is, advertising communication "outside the home," billboards that are increasingly rich and powerful. We talked about this with Alex Buzzetti, co-Founder and General Manager of Blimp, the "blimp" born in 2017 within the Enteprises Factory e-Novia under the motto Good Data, Better Decision. The startup, in fact, uses artificial intelligence and big data to interpret citizens’ behaviors and needs. Data collected through a network of sensors installed in major Italian cities.
Blimp’s mission is to build technologies to bring web methods and metrics to the physical world, with sensors that can analyze flows of people in public spaces. How does your product work and how does it fit with privacy requirements?
Blimp is a service that relies on patented sensor technology that monitors pedestrians and vehicles, deriving useful data analytics. Privacy is therefore a central issue for us when we consider video monitoring and the related protection of the image that is captured. The first aspect to highlight is precisely that the image is transformed directly into a number for us. This is then associated with a set of data, which we are going to process exclusively in aggregate. With this mode, we do not incur any risks related to the violation of citizens’ privacy.
In addition, together with the DPO (Data Protection Officer, ed.) we have addressed this issue with working tables involving other players interested in this type of detection. And thanks to this work we have also prepared a whitepaper dedicated precisely to the privacy issue.
What are the markets in which you operate most?
The markets affected by our technology can be grouped into three macro-categories: Out of Home Advertising, which allows digital billboards to be used as if they were web pages with sponsored content chosen based on the audience; Retail, which deals with taking surveys for specific stores or brands, analyzing data such as reactions to the storefront, the conversion rate of pedestrian turnout in the area in actual sales. Or even the products that most interest store visitors; Smart City, which analyzes the data produced by citizens in order to make the city more efficient in various ways.
Certainly one of the main focuses for Blimp is the conversion of digital billboards into actual web spaces. By analyzing the different types of people who frequent a certain area at certain times of the day, certain creative content can be conveyed. Or even analyze sentiment and attention with respect to a certain type of advertising.
You have recently partnered with advertising concessionaire Media One, which manages, among other things, advertising space in more than two thousand Italian stations, Autostrade Group service areas, and Fiumicino airport. What metrics are you going to monitor?
Media One is precisely one of our main clients, present in different areas of the national territory. For them we are going to analyze audience and clientele out of home, profiling the level of attention and efficiency of creative content. This information will then allow us to make certain reasoning to make campaigns more effective.
What has been your experience in 2020, the year of the pandemic? How have you used your technology?
2020 was a special year for everyone. We at Blimp used our technology to carry out detections to address the spread of COVID-19. Not only in the city of Milan, thanks to the three hundred sensors distributed around the city, but also inside certain manufacturing plants. In particular, the flow of urban information has allowed us to publish several reports aimed at monitoring the reaction of citizens to the different contagious containment measures (curfew and red zone). Based on the findings, we can say that the red zone was the most effective restriction but, at the same time, as it extended beyond two continuous weeks, the fear of contagion tended to decrease. As citizens got used to the “new normal,” they became less strict about following the rules, and all this led to a relative increase in pedestrian and vehicular traffic rates. Another interesting fact, today traffic in downtown areas has increased by 11 percent compared to the pre-pandemic period, while pedestrian traffic has decreased by 60 percent. Certainly the Area C freeze, free parking and fear of crowding in public transportation has increased the use of private cars.
What are your plans for development? And what are the hottest areas?
Out of Home is definitely the hottest sector because it is booming and leading to a revolution in the advertising world. Demands are increasing and Blimp, after consolidation in Italy, will open up to the French and Spanish markets.
Another focal point is Smart Cities: today we are present in the Milan area and in the City of Rimini. Phenomena such as smart lighting (electric lighting based on the influx of people) or smart parking are increasingly interesting. They will facilitate the life of the citizen and data will increasingly be at the center of every activity.
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