Revealed this week, the patent filing mentions a "gaze tracking system" and details a method of translating certain images seen by the wearer of a head-mounted device into data logged on a server. And while you might think that the patent is simply for identifying things that might help the user, the detailed description of the patent offers more insight into the commerce-driven aspects of the filing.
Specifically, the patent abstract states that the system would assist in:
"determining which, if any, of the identified items within the external scenes viewed by the user are advertisements; and charging advertisers for analytical information generated based upon the gazing direction information."
But that’s not all. The patent goes on to describe a method for aggregating the data from many users to provide analytics data to advertisers. The passage states that the system would also allow for:
"combining the gazing direction information acquired from the user wearing the head mounted device with other gazing direction information acquired from other users wearing other head mounted devices to generate batched information; and charging advertisers for the analytical information generated based upon the batched information."