Renew, a London based marketing firm has brought about a new innovation to bring targeted advertisements to people using smartphones on the go. The company has placed several trashcans with built in hardware that can track and record information about any smartphone which has its Wi-Fi on. The project which is still in the testing phase has some interesting details to share, as the company recently released information about the data it captured.

The company calls it the "Renew ORB Technology" also known as "Presence ORB" which is placed in a network of "information pods" which double up as recycle bins. The pods capture information like - movement, type, direction and speed of the smartphones which have their Wi-Fi on. The pods captured information from over 4 million devices, with over 530,000 unique devices. The data relates to a five day testing period.

The analytics from the data can be useful for both advertisers as well as retail store owners. The advertisers can track which advertisements have had an impact leading to a sale, as the pods can measure if and when a certain device, which was shown the advertisement, has gone to the relevant shop. The retail outlets can capture data about the customers as to how many have been repeat customers, time since last visit, usual time of the visit, amount of time they spend in the store and cross site customer percentage et al.

This technological innovation comes at a time of global outrage over privacy and security issues dominating the headlines with advocates for privacy raising concerns for the urgent need for laws to restrict the collection of such data. There have been increasing concerns about smartphone hacking to collect personal data which can be used to harm the user and also large companies such as Google and Face Book collecting and storing personal data.

The data collected by the Renew Company assumes greater significance as it not only collects information about a person but also his/her location and visiting habits. The data collection is said to further expand to "Fenchurch and Cannon St" and the testing is said to continue in key locations including - "Liverpool Street Station, Gresham, Bank and Cheapside."