How Best to Use Digital Signage

The use of “digital signage”  i.e. the presentation of digital screen content in public places, is increasing due to various factors including: reduced cost and high availability of large LCD and plasma screens, high return on investment when compared to non digital advertising, availability of purpose designed software and hardware devices and network ubiquity.

This market sector is likely to keep growing, embracing delivery over mobile networks using interactive media, new advanced ultra thin flexible displays, emerging standards for interoperability across diverse applications.

Nevertheless this is a complex area, often involving many different suppliers and stakeholders with the accompanying difficulties technical compatibilities and desirable marketing goals, without expensive expert assistance.

There are many companies who will supply part elements but rely on the end client to “fill-in” the missing links in providing the final solution. This can make the client appear as project manager and not enjoy the benefits of a full service provider.

A full service provider will deliver many of digital signage solutions as well as specialist disciplines as web marketing, ecommerce, kiosk systems all of which are very applicable to the digital signage market, and in many cases indistinguishable.

Typical digital signage scenarios

Scenario 1: Provision of a single or multiple touch screen technology displays (kiosks) within an exhibition stand environment or public domain i.e shopping centre information points.

Scenario 2: Installation of a touch screen within a clients own product i.e mechanical excavator/agricultural vehicle providing a complete interactive facility to potential customers. This typical installation would be powered via the vehicle battery from either 12v or 24v portable supply. Each screen could be networked with others via a central server either on-line or using local wireless facilities.

Scenario 3: Management of multiple screen installations nationwide with sales campaigns being presented simultaneously, and changed overnight or as required. Monitoring required at each display to ensure correct operation.

Solution components

The above scenarios epitomise the specific challenges in devising solutions to meet customer requirements that typically involve many variables.

Kiosk type applications (Scenario 1) will require an intelligent client device (computer) at each display. These client computers would be equipped with fast graphics and network interfaces. However no additional software would be necessary on these except a standard web browser, if the main application and content was delivered from a simple server, either locally (e.g a laptop with a wireless network interface) or from the internet. Additional innovative features may include static detectors that would alert each system when a user approached and triggered an appropriate greeting. In the future it may be possible to use holographic or 3D displays with the same system.

The custom application described in Scenario 2 above would represent a special case of the kiosk system. The physical hardware would be adjusted for the different environment, but the operation could be identical but using different content, served by the server and designed to deal with different inputs. If desirable the server and client computers could be one.

The general use of digital signature over a network of displays (Scenario 3) would also be addressed by the framework discussed above. Security would be important,  and possibly maximised using “push” technology. Each client computer could be accessed from a central point if special attention was necessary. Simple scripts could be written to either report back to the central server from each client or poll each client from the server to determined proper operation. Campaign scheduling could be achieved by pushing content from the server or adding the campaign content to the server location from which the client is programmed to refresh content.

Dynamic Digital Signage Industry Keeps Growing and Innovating

Dynamic digital signage is a phrase often used as a synonym for digital signage, electronic billboards and narrowcasting. It is an appropriate term as well, when you consider how dynamic digital signage really is.

In North America, growth in digital out-of-home advertising has been in the high double digits over the past few years. Businesses in Western Europe have also jumped on the bandwagon. A recent report by Research and Markets showed trends similar to those in North America – revenues from dynamic digital signage are expected to quadruple over the next 5 years, making it the only advertising sector that can expect any real revenue growth in that period.

Digital signage is effective, it’s increasingly affordable and it has an undeniable “cool” factor, largely due to continued innovation by digital signage providers. Retailers have clearly decided that dynamic digital signage is the way of the future. A glimpse at some new trends and technologies will show us what that future might look like, while demonstrating the pioneering spirit of the digital signage industry.

What’s on the Horizon

Expansion is, of course, one of the buzzwords of the future for the dynamic digital signage industry. And it isn’t just in in-store marketing. Consider two unique examples:

• The city of Venice will suspend 5 huge (2,250 ft2) signs in 900-year-old St. Mark’s Square. The signs will serve a very distinct purpose – help generate revenue to offset the costs of restoring the Square. They are not intended to be in place permanently, but will hang from scaffolding during the 6-year restoration project.

• Ernst & Young is using dynamic digital signage in its UK offices to communicate with its employees. Finding that email was inefficient – messages could be passed over too easily in crowded in-boxes – the company decided to try digital signage. They tested it and found that employees were more engaged by video messaging. Their messaging combines text, video and Flash and is used in everything from company news to training videos.

Merchandising has gone digital in a big way. Not only can digital signage be used to convey interesting messages in a unique way, it has unsurpassed abilities to target messages to specific shoppers. Consider:

• One of the latest products in audience measurement is called iCapture. It uses a high-resolution camera to capture faces. Its software processes them and can segment them by demographics. Age is one of the demographics they have recently mastered, which will allow dynamic digital signage content to be targeted to seniors (as opposed to previous efforts which could only distinguish between adults and children). This software joins projects like Nielsen Media’s P.R.I.S.M. and Arbitron’s Portable People Meter to help retailers gather valuable (and anonymous) demographic data about their shoppers.

You might want to file this next innovation under “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. We all know digital signage affects the visual and auditory senses, but what about the olfactory senses?

• A Japanese company has developed an aroma-emitting device that can be attached to digital signs to emit “mood-heightening” aromas. Using a proprietary “fragrance communication” online service, the signs are programmed to emit certain scents that may draw attention to the signs. In testing, a cosmetics company used the technology to emit the fragrance of roses and reported that awareness of the fragrant signs was double that of standard digital signs.

There has been some debate about the need and efficacy of fragrance emitting signs, but that they were developed at all shows that the name “dynamic digital signage” is certainly justified.