A method for estimating roadway billboard salience

Roadside billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising play a crucial role in marketing initiatives; however, they can also distract drivers, potentially contributing to accidents. This study delves into the significance of roadside advertising in images captured from a driver’s perspective. Firstly, it evaluates the effectiveness of neural networks in detecting advertising along roads, focusing on the YOLOv5 and Faster R-CNN models. Secondly, the study addresses the determination of billboard significance using methods for saliency extraction. The UniSal and SpectralResidual methods were employed to create saliency maps for each image. The study establishes a database of eye tracking sessions captured during city highway driving to assess the saliency models.