Remember the old days when you read an ad on the Internet, listened as it was broadcast on the car radio, or watched it play on TV? That’s history. It was too easy to flip the page or change the channel.

A Redwood City, Calif. firm called Reactrix has a product called WAVEscape that lets consumers actually interact with advertising. It is popping up at public venues – mainly shopping malls – all over the country.

The technology is also being rolled out by elite Hilton Hotels to allow guests to interact with guest services and meeting services. It uses a stereo near-infrared solution with a 16-foot range, although the interactive sweet spot is in the four-to-eight foot area.

“This creates a new paradigm for social interaction with advertising,” says Mike Ribero, CEO. WAVEscape enables gesture-based group experiences that the company promises will lead to more effective brand messaging and higher unaided recall than conventional out-of-home advertising.

Ribero says the system combines a few firsts: a truly robust 3-D user interface, an illumination field that is not distracted by sunlight or halogen, and a delivery system.

“We use 3-D camera technology to create an environment where the system can determine depth,” he continues. Its stereoscopic capability provides a reading of depth plus height and width.

“But the single biggest issue is how to create a robust vision system that can be exported from the lab to the street,” Ribero says. Sunlight or local lighting can throw off infra-red that confuses a machine (but not the human eye). “We have an elegant solution that lets you get a certain amount of illumination out of a low power source and illuminate it in such a way as to create levels of detail for the camera,” he continues. This allows the system to discriminate between objects and the shadows that are cast.

As a person approaches a WAVEscape digitally formatted advertisement, their position and gestures are instantly recognized, enabling different levels of interaction. The system was featured in Samsung’s booth during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

“The Samsung LCD panels allow us to create natural effects without worrying about the lighting,” Ribero says.

The idea is to marry the feel of a game with serious selling. To that end, they combine Samsung’s LCD digital signage display technology with Reactrix’s immersive interactive technology. This creates a new form of advertising that lures consumers to total emersion in a “hands-on” experience.

The technology will engage consumers, technology buffs and advertisers alike, allowing them to literally immerse themselves in an ad, says Ribero. Reactrix’s strategic alliance with Samsung further strengthens its brand-to-consumer offerings and solidifies its position as the leading innovator in interactive, digital out-of-home advertising.

Companies like Coke, Sprint, Visa and Wells Fargo are using the technology. It is perfect for a car dealership…allowing customers to have a rich, interactive experience with autos even when the dealership is shut.

The system is set up on Samsung’s large-format-display 570DX products. The 570DX features a 3,000:1 Dynamic Contrast ratio and 600 cd/m² brightness to communicate clearly in the brightest environments. It offers configurable interactivity that gets more intimate and active as a person moves closer to the display. The system will sense someone as far away as 15 feet.

Systems are in places like Fashion Mall and Brea Mall in California, Sawgrass Mall and Altamonte in Florida; Neshaminy, Oxford Valley and Plymouth Meeting Malls in Pennsylvania; Eden Prairie in Minnesota; Chicago Ridge, Ford Mill and Golf City in Illinois; and several Mega Comercial Mexicana locations throughout Mexico.

“We are joining with Reactrix to jumpstart a critical segment of the digital signage business, one that could have the most profound impact on advertising for decades” says Christopher Franey, senior vice president of Commercial Sales and Marketing, Display Products, Samsung Electronics America, ITD.

“By integrating our leading-edge LCD technology for the digital signage market with Reactrix’s unique, consumer-controlled interactive media, we are elevating out-of-home advertising to a completely new level of effectiveness,” adds Scott Birnbaum, vice president, Samsung LCD Business.

“With the launch of our proprietary WAVEscape technology, we are creating an entirely new way of engaging consumers with targeted messaging,” Ribero says. “Bottom line, WAVEscape will help innovative companies command a greater affinity for their brands by leaving a vivid lasting impression in the mind of anyone who experiences the WAVEscape technology.”

Reactrix says it plans expansion to include the in-store and in-venue markets through its “unplug and play” network, powered by cellular broadband, in malls and movie theaters throughout the top 25 DMA’s.