Digital signage next wave of technology-enabled marketing, delegates hear

Digital signage – networked advertising screens that catch consumers’ eyes indoors and out – is set to become mainstream as prices for the technology plummet, participants at a recent conference heard. At the Digital Signage Inaugural Summit in Toronto on February 9 and 10, speakers from national manufacturers and small advertising shops outlined their successful case studies. The past year and a half has seen an explosion in the number of digital signage marketing campaigns, fuelled in part by a growing awareness of the cost savings possible by networking in-store advertising and eliminating the need to manually change paper signs or replace DVD/VCR in-store promos. Those cost savings were until recently offset by the high cost of bright digital displays, especially of LED screens, but manufacturing prices are falling fast, and companies such as Canadian Tire and Shoppers Drug Mart have begun to join the fray of those testing the technology. Digital signage can also be used in networked outdoor advertising, such as digital billboards. The systems have been given an added kick, say proponents, by the increasingly difficult challenge of overcoming audience fragmentation and new technological gadgets such as personal video recorders that allow viewers to skip commercials, in the traditional television advertising world. The ability to offer value-added information, such as weather, news and other information in areas such as subway platforms, elevators, in store aisles and elsewhere can help advertisers gain audience traction, they say. While advocates tout digital signage as the next wave of advertising, the field is clearly nascent and no large player yet dominates the space. In this country, Bell Canada is offering a Managed Digital Signage service in partnership with Sony and Convergent Media Systems, and Corus Entertainment offers an in-store network service, but otherwise the market is characterized by a motley collection of network operators (companies offering screens in high traffic areas), leading edge creative agencies, integrators and hardware manufacturers. One company making waves at the summit was OneSTOP, the Fourth Wall Media spin-off currently building digital signage into subway cars – where the screens will be wirelessly kept uptodate using Wi-Fi radios (CNM, October 6/04). During a final panel session at the conference, OneSTOP president Mike Girgis agreed with fellow panelists that the industry faces challenges, including raising sufficient capital to build screen networks in public places, and coming to grips with standards, but he noted afterwards to Canadian NEW MEDIA that the industry can only grow in the near future, and that the area seems ripe for consolidation. "I definitely see this (summit) as sort of the trigger point to get everyone in the same room…I think (at) next year’s show, you’re going to see a lot of announcements…What we’re going to see is a consolidation of a number of efforts into larger entities or larger projects. I think that the message today here was, ‘Holy smokes, there’s a lot of us doing this. I didn’t know you were right beside me on that,’ and what we’re going to see next year is not only more people, but more of a consolidated vision. This year was all about, oh my God, where are we going with all this?" The head of one Toronto creative firm that specializes in retail communications, Perennial Inc.’s Joe Jackman, tells CNM that he also sees an industry on the cusp of blowing wide open. "There’s no question that people are looking at this and seeing there is a broadcast opportunity. There’s an infrastructure and technology opportunity. There’s a content creation opportunity and then that content relates to other marketing disciplines like advertising, promotion, direct marketing. Everybody is converging. I read the overview in the (conference) brochure, and it’s just written from the (perspective that this) is the new age and it’s here and it’s so exciting and full of potential…But if you peel that back you’re finding that a lot of people don’t know where it’s going, (or) what’s actually going to be worthwhile doing. This may be just a costly experiment. It’s fascinating to see it emerge and that people believe that there’s a future in it, but a lot of work has to be done." Jackman agrees that the industry has yet to see major buy-in from the most important communications conglomerates such as Bell Canada or Rogers Communications Inc., but says those and others will likely recognize the opportunities in digital signage. There was little evidence of the big players in attendance at the summit, though one representative of Rogers Wireless was exchanging business cards and seeking further information from the panelists. "There’s a huge role (for them)…Like a cable network, imagine if you have a 1,500 store network. That’s a lot of real estate over geography that needs to be built, maintained, upgraded as technologies improve. I don’t think that retailers, themselves, necessarily see themselves as experts in that kind of technological piece. So, people who have core competencies around distributing wireless or satellite, or whatever, have a big role to play. The only major player that’s jumped in is Bell," Jackman says. Though small players, in partnership with large manufacturers of display equipment, are only now seeing the results of a first generation of digital signage case studies, companies are already looking forward to further marriages between digital networks and display advertising. A representative of Broadsign Inc., a Montreal company offering back-end management systems for digital signage content, noted several areas where the technology will likely improve. Solutions specialist Daniel Parisien foresees greater integration between current systems and measurement systems, inventory management, point of sale, audience profiling – possibly with visual recognition – and more interactivity between viewer and screen.

Digital signage next wave of technology-enabled marketing, delegates hear

Broadcast | February 17, 2005

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