MoviePass rewards advertising viewers with movie tickets, checks with eye tracking

The American service MoviePass is going to give its users free tickets to cinema films of their choice if they watch commercials on their phones. The phone’s front camera is used to verify that you are paying attention. The commercials will be paused if not.

In addition to eye tracking, facial recognition will also be used, Motherboard writes, among others. When MoviePass users watch the ad, they will get credits that go into their virtual wallet. With this, the cinema tickets can be bought again. The ads will also be specific to the user. The service gives users who actually purchase an advertised product or service in the app even more cinema credit.

Stacy Spikes, MoviePass co-founder and video host, argues that “70 percent of video ads go unwatched.” This would be a solution for that. He wants to start his service this summer, presumably only in the US.

The company behind the service calls it MoviePass 2.0. The first iteration of the service ran from 2011 to 2019. At that time, the service took a different form: members paid a fixed amount per month and received three cinema vouchers in return, which were valid at many cinemas in the country. The service had 225,000 subscribers at its peak, but eventually went bankrupt.

Video starts the moment the control is demonstrated