It has been a while since someone was out with a press release that whipped air into a big frothy pile of not very much.

But the Inbox this morning had this from TriOc Vision Studios of Montreal.

It takes a lot to stop them dead in their tracks in Las Vegas.

Finally, somebody has. TriOc Vision Studios - Canada’s premier total service studio in the domain of end-to-end 2D & 3D digital signage solutions - has blown them away. TriOc’s team of proven professionals and innovators has aced the consumer captivation market. So, if you don’t gamble when it comes to powerful marketing techniques, read on. “

We’re taking our queue (NOTE: he MUST mean cue) from marketing and trade show professionals, training coordinators - anyone who basically needs to capture the attention of their audience and keep it. The enigma of getting the consumer’s undivided attention has always plagued these professionals and now they are looking to think outside the box. TriOc’s goal is to ensure that they stop consumers dead in their tracks. Our concept is simple - We sell consumer captivation using proprietary hi-impact digital display and complete signage platforms,” said Joey Vaccaro, President and Founder, TriOc Vision Studios.

Sounds… AMAZING!!!!!

I wasn’t sure what it was, but I was ready to buy 10!!!!

Turns out, what’s up is the company is doing those goofy (my opinion only) 3D LCD things and one of the retailer at the Forum Shops in Caesars has one of the screens in there promoting a high-end timepiece. So as opposed to a revolutionary advance that has all of Las Vegas talking, we have an integrator who’s got a nice little reference installation in a high profile location.

In my old newspaper editor days, we called that “torquing” a story.

I missed the last (and first) Canadian Out-of-home Digital Association breakfast seminar session last week - partly because e-mail mistakes meant I didn’t know about it until the last minute, and partly because of my limited enthusiasm for inching along many miles of Toronto’s infamous 401 highway (16 lanes at some points) during morning rush hour.

Olivier Duizabo, CEO of Quividi, doing a video conference thing from France about his firm’s measurement capabilities and Haroon Mirza, the Director of Business Development for Cognovision, showing off his shiny pots and pans.

The next one is set for Thursday, June 5th, 8-10 am .. somewhere. Hopefully NOT just off the 401 at rush hour, hint hint. Think downtown - trains, subways!!!

Topic is: “The Future of Content: Content and Programming.”

You should contact CODA for more details. Members are allowed to bring one guest with them.

Adtek Media says it now has some 6,000 LCD screens mounted on top fuel pumps at gas stations across the US, making its PumpTop TV network the biggest of its kind in that country.

“We are installing PumpTop TV at an average of four new stations daily,” according to Dick Paulsen, President of AdtekMedia, in a press release. “Our commitment to grow this network is firm — we will bring PumpTop TV to more than 1,100 gas stations in the largest U.S. markets before the end of the year.”

Rival Gas Station TV says it has about 5,000 screens in its network.

How many companies do you know in this industry that eat, breathe, think this stuff but don’t even have screens in their own lobbies?

Yup … lots.

Out of home monster Titan Worldwide announced yesterday it has flicked the On switch on a staff facing network of its screens in the main and branch offices to keep employees informed and “walk the talk” about going digital.

Titan is putting its money where its digital mouth is, says a press release. The world’s largest privately held Out-of-Home advertising sales company has launched an internal video network of 23, 40-inch, broadband-connected LCD screens for its 800+ employees in 20 offices around the world.

Titan kicked off the network launch with a ceremonial “digital” ribbon cutting today by its Chairman Bill Apfelbaum that was seen simultaneously by all offices and time zones. T-TV, as it will be called, will be a central communications hub for the company and display a variety of content from employee announcements to industry news to video announcements by Titan’s President and CEO, Don Allman.

“As we work to finalize our digital strategy, we realized that T-TV was the ideal way to keep people up to date on Titan activities as well as put to use some of the exciting technology that our team is using,” said President and CEO of Titan Worldwide, Don Allman. “Titan takes a fresh, innovative approach to the Out-of-Home advertising industry, so it is only appropriate that our means of internal communication reflects that. We want our employees to be up-to-speed on company news and events whether they sit in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, Dublin or London.”

As seen on Screens.TV, and here and there, Premier Retail Networks has struck an alliance with a company called Cabco, which has figured out a way to put screens onto a shopping cart that might actually survive getting banged and beaten day after day in a big box retailer.

PRN, which already has 250,000 screens in big box stores like WalMart USA, gets more inventory to sell out of the deal. Cabco gets an ad sales team already peddling screens in these environments, as well as access to creative services and already produced content.

PRN plans to develop a seamless connection between Cabco’s display screen technology and PRN’s platform in order to facilitate better coordination of content, advertising and measurement. In addition, PRN will provide advertising sales for Cabco’s TV Kart(TM) and the two companies will work together to develop a range of interactive services that will appeal to advertisers and retailers while enhancing the consumer shopping experience.

“Advertisers are looking for exciting in-store media that delivers results, but they are also looking to consolidate their media spend and work with experts in the area of content optimization,” said Cabco chief operating officer Brad Johnson. “PRN brings our advertisers an industry-experienced contact for purchasing our network, as well as the ability to produce or re-purpose content specifically for the in-store environment.”

“We are excited to be able to provide an integrated in-store media experience for shoppers and advertisers in this alliance with Cabco,” said PRN president Richard Fisher. “This alliance demonstrates the flexibility of our services, the ease in which our technology integrates with other products such as Cabco’s TV Kart(TM), and shows how our range of services, such as Ad Sales, can provide value to our partners.”

The TV Kart shopping carts look like something that came out of the Little Tykes design lab, and are basically novelty shopping carts little kids will insist they ride in when moms haul them into stores on shopping trips.

New Zealand-based Cabco Group’s business model is based on the notion that they provide the carts free to retailers, and maintain, in return for running ads and informational content on a 7 injch screen embedded in the shopping cart handle.

New technology in TV KartTM, says Cabco on its website, will allow powerful mobile advertising and touch point messaging to be presented directly to shoppers as they make their product decisions. These messages will be played from a new 7 inch shopper facing monitor while their children are still happily entertained by their own 7 inch movie monitor, on the inside of TV KartTM.

Kids are entertained with kid friendly shows such as: Wonder Pets, Dora The Explorer, Blues Clues, The BackYardigans, Thomas & Friends, Barney, and Bob the Builder

The Shopper: In addition to product advertising messages, shoppers will receive an exciting range of alternative services and information such as:

* Recipes
* Store Specials
* Price checking
* Coupons
* Helpful Shopping Tips

TV KartTM has similar basket space as conventional shopping carts and free to shoppers.

The screens are ruggedized and the carts are designed in such a way that you can see where a battery sufficiently powered to run screens all day, can be hidden inside all that plastic.

There are aspects to this that I like, such as the price checking capability. That’s the sort of thing that really can improve the shopping experience. Not to mention screens inside the cart that may limit meltdowns by the little buggers when Mom or Dad is hopping.

But the business model would make me jumpy as hell if I was an investor. The carts have to cost way more than regular ones and the investment is entirely in Cabco’s hands. They require charging stations and take up much more space than regular stainless steel or plastic carts. And there’s maybe a four or five year window in which kids will even sit in those things. They outgrow the space or the content on the movie screens. It also looks like these things are strictly for indoors, and I could just imagine the laugh-riot of trying to get this through a parking lot of slushy snow.

The net result is only a few of these carts are going into each store, so these have to get into a hell of a lot of locations before there’s even a chance at having the sort of market penetration that will steadily interest the big packaged goods brands. Cabco is in about 1,000 retail sites right now, which likely equates to 4-5,000 carts out there.

Now, if they made much bigger carts, put ESPN on the screens, and maybe a little beer fridge, you’d get a whole new audience of happy users. But the hissy-fits if all the carts were already in use would be ugly, and a little sad.

Clear Channel Airports has worked a partnership deal with Reactrix Systems to start sticking those digital projection systems into major airports aroun dthe US.

According to Media Post, Clear Channel Airports, a division of Clear Channel Outdoor, will have full responsibility for the operation, sales and licensing of Reactrix’s StepScape displays for its airport partners. Clear Channel has partnered with most major airports in the country outside New York City, including Chicago O’Hare, Boston Logan, Dallas-Fort Worth Intl., Philadelphia Intl., Phoenix Sky Harbor and San Francisco Intl.

Like its other StepScape displays in malls and other public areas, the Reactrix system will project digital images onto the floors of airport terminals, which attract passersby by responding to their motion. Once engaged, the user is invited to explore the interactive display, controlling it with different gestures that are tracked by motion sensors.

It’s a nice deal for Reactrix, which has itself a big-time partner with the locations and wherewithal to take these installations all over the place.

I like the technology, but much more when it is one walls than on the floor. Wherever I have seen it installed to project onto floors, I see little kids dancing around having fun and adults, other than the parents, zipping right by. With people in airports tending to be preoccupied with getting out or just trying to get to where they need to go, I’m not convinced these things will have the stopping power.

But I have see some clever things done, as in Monster Media’s stuff in the Vegas airport, and if the content is right, maybe that will do the trick.

My colleague Daniel Parisien is a BroadSign lifer who runs the solutions group within the company, and because of that has pretty much seen and heard everything when it comes to this space.

He’s posted a primer on the industry that be pretty much essential reading for anyone coming into the industry.

Though he is absolutely a technologist, working for a software company, he’s very blunt: The sea of decisions that must be made before spending the capital to deploy a network can easily lead an operator towards focusing on technology instead of focusing on building an effective communication medium.

While there are passing references to BroadSign in the post, this is very much a generalized primer that has none of the “why our stuff is swell”  style that many company’s blog posts are all about.

It’s long — as in 5,400 word, Tolstoy novel long — but well worth the investment of time to read.

The thing about being on the market is you have to let your shareholders, and nosy competitors, know how you’re doing.

A press release that moved Thursday talks about Houston-based ZipCast’s deal to start installing screens into a Hispanic drug chain in LA and the Bay area.

Farmacia Remedios only has 10 stores, so this is hardly a blockbuster. But it represents what you are going to see more and more of in this space - specialization and carving out well-defined verticals. I have clients at various stages of their plans that very precisely go after a certain piece of the market, be that ethnicity or type of retailer.

In this case, the press release says: ZipCast will launch these commercial grade 42” plasma screens in strategic store locations such as in-store medical offices, Hispanic OTC and homeopathic areas. To maximize viewer retention and increase revenues, screens will broadcast medical educational videos, instructional guides and product advertising.

Getting focused makes sense in many respects, because it should be much easier to build up critical mass and also much easier to identify and tap local and regional ad dollars. Somebody who wants to establish a network in chain drug across the US needs to be in 20-25 markets to start getting any real attention from national media planners. Carving out Hispanic-focused drug stores in a few key markets is still hard work, but probably a much easier road to head down.

Miami-based Retail Systems Research release a new report today about what it calls The Customer-centric Store, which takes a deep look into what’s bugging retailers and what they want or need to do better.

The research, done in the past quarter, suggests that the sluggish economy isn’t even a top 3 business challenge for stores. Instead, retailers are focused on improving customer service without increasing payroll costs (56% of respondents ranked this as a top-3 challenge), and creating more consistent in-store execution (50%). Survey respondents are turning to tools to help employees provide a better in-store experience, with 90% indicating this as a priority vs. 67% in a similar study conducted a year ago.

“With online competing against the store experience - and winning, according to the American Consumer Satisfaction Index - retailers have to find ways to improve the in-store experience if they want to stay competitive,” says Paula Rosenblum, Managing Partner at RSR Research and the report’s author. “The challenge is to do that in ways that don’t increase costs.”

RSR’s new publication, The Customer-centric Store: Benchmark 2008, sponsored by Reflexis, Teradata, and SAP, finds that retailers are turning to technology tools to help improve the store experience, with particular focus on ways to provide more information to employees and customers as part of the in-store shopping experience. Unfortunately, past investments in store technology infrastructure prevent retailers from moving quickly on employee-facing and customer-facing technology investments, the number one internal barrier sited by respondents.

The report makes some key recommendations on what retailers need to be thinking about:

Make investments in modern POS hardware and software, use creative financing to reduce the pain of capital expenditures and go wireless to get management back on the selling floor. Continue looking ahead to new technologies to improve the customer experience in the store, and finally, work to improve the over‐all caliber of the in‐store workforce. Adding self‐service technologies will also help the customer feel empowered, and reduce the stress on already taxed in‐store employees.

There are specific references to our little industry in the report, and depending on how you look at things you will be pleased or asking colleagues to remove any sharp objects from your desk.

Customer-facing touchpoints are valued more than digital signage, and are near the top of the list in terms of planned usage by retailers, while digital signage is down near the bottom of the list.

That said, digital signage is a very broad term, and I would argue there have been far more bad executions in retail than good ones, so I am not surprised it gets a big shrug in the context of this report. If most of what you’ve had done or seen done in retail has left you disappointed or seriously underwhelmed, why would you get excited about the general notion of digital signage?

The stuff that makes the most sense in a lot of retail IS the customer-facing, engaging stuff at eye-level, not screens suspended above normal sightlines. Digital signage, as a whole, definitely has a strong role in retail, but not as a continuation of the way it’s mostly been done to date.

The really nice thing about this report is it is, unlike a lot of the stuff released lately that costs a few house payments, free to download here.

Research house NSR released new numbers yesterday about the size and state of this industry, with estimates on where we are and where this is all going.

According to NSR the industry, which has the majority of deployments and revenues globally from retail, hospitality, healthcare and transportation verticals, is poised to grow from an estimated installed base of about 210,000 sites in 2007 to more than 850,000 sites during the period from 2008 to 2013. Though North America and Europe remain leaders in deployments, countries such as China, Australia and India in the Asia Pacific are witnessing tremendous growth and are estimated to reach the scale of their early-adoptive counterparts over a five-year period.

Revenues from advertising, though hard to come by initially, have picked up considerably with advertisers recognizing the impact of the medium on consumers, especially in retail locations such as malls and supermarkets. Here, once again, the global industry is expected to grow at a healthy rate of about 18% from its current estimated figure of nearly $1 billion annually in advertising revenue.

The numbers are based on interviews with some 200 companies and for a measly $3,000 a copy is yours. I just plugged this for NSR for nothing so I am sure my complimentary copy is being slid into a FedEx envelope and heading my way even as we speak. Right guys?

In looking around I see various people such as Adrian are begging to differ with some of the estimates. Every time I see revenue estimates they look very different, owing a lot I expect to included geographies and whether digital screens are broken out or lumped in as alternative media. As for the count, that’s really hard to nail down globally, as the screen count is huge, but the numbers of screens at each site varies.

China’s Focus Media, has for instance, more than 110,000 screens, but at how many sites? PRN has 250,000 screens, but that’s at 6,500 stores and the count includes all those crappy old TVs hanging from Wal-Mart ceilings, and, I suspect, TV walls in the electronics departments.

Numbers of screens is an impressive thing, I suppose, but I suspect advertisers are much more interested in sites when they look at market penetration.

In the interests on the industry’s integrity, this needs to get set straight. I’m willing to go personally count all of the screens in the Caribbean and South Pacific and will be available to start in mid-November, or whenever winter decides to return to the Great White North.

The Ad Lab blog has a piece flagging articles in MediaPost and the New York Times about something called neuromarketing — using the measurement of brain waves, skin response, eye movements and pulse rates to get a fix on how people are responding to advertising messages.

The articles look at companies like NeuroFocus and EmSense and how they apply biometric science to stdying the efficacy of ads.

Winners of Effies “tend to be a little less emotional and use rational claims a bit more” than winners at
Cannes, Ms. Moses (EmSense) said, and ads that won Lions tended to be much better liked than their Effie counterparts, reports the NY Times.

But surprisingly, “there are very important similarities” between the two types of winners, she added, whichcan help guide future campaigns.

Fifteen of the 19 Cannes and Effie winners engaged consumers faster than average spots, Ms. Moses said.
“Typically, a spot engages with viewers in 5 to 7 seconds. The Cannes and Effie ads engaged, whether emotionally or cognitively, in 1.5 seconds.”

Whichever award the commercials won, they had an equal effect on purchase consideration and on brand
favorability, Ms. Moses said.

This is relevant because of the very limited time spots running on screen networks have to make an impact with viewers.

Meanwhile, the MediaPost piece looks all the way into how ad layouts and screen designs are done. The thinking involves Web site, but most or all of the thinking translates into our space.

Switching a brand logo on a Web site from the right-hand side of the page to the left can have a profound impact on the way that image is processed by consumers and could ultimately give one advertiser an advantage over another, according to new research from NeuroFocus.

The Berkeley, Calif.-based neuromarketing research firm has compiled a list of more than 65 best practices aimed at helping marketers develop visual ads that are more effective and engaging. The insights arose from a series of studies conducted from the summer of 2006 through the fall of 2007 at NeuroFocus’ labs in Berkeley, New York and Chicago.

Using eye-tracking studies, galvanic skin response (GSR) data, as well as the info from sensors placed on the test subjects’ scalps (called electroencephalography, or EEG), NeuroFocus gauged the impact of variables such as the placement of images versus the placement of text, the use of motion and animation, and even ad models like pop-ups and puzzles. The company also tested consumers’ reactions to the stimuli on screens of varying sizes, including 40-inch plasma monitors, 17-inch computer screens, portable gaming devices like Sony’s PSP, and the iPhone, as well as within a YouTube window.

NeuroFocus segmented test subjects based on age and gender, due to biological differences in the brains of women and men, young children, adolescents and adults over 60. Although the research crossed language and racial demographics, NeuroFocus maintains that because the studies involved reactions to visual stimuli on a neurological level, cultural differences actually did not influence the results.

“Neurological principals that hold true for English speakers are 100% valid for a Hispanic audience and vice versa,” said Dr. A. K. Pradeep, NeuroFocus’ co-founder and CEO. And because the firm has based the best practices on these neurological findings, Pradeep said that they work despite any demographic differences. “What’s interesting is that there are some laws we’re bound to obey, and this research has done an amazing job of teasing out what those biological invariants or constants are.”

For example, consumers interpret info on different parts of a screen with different sections of their brain. Generally, elements in the left visual field are interpreted by the right frontal lobe, while elements on the right are picked up by the left frontal lobe. “The right frontal lobe is particularly good at interpreting imagery and iconography,” Pradeep said. “And the left frontal is better for semantic and quantitative info.” So an advertiser or TV show producer has reduced the engagement potential and effectiveness of their content from the onset if the bulk of the textual and numerical info is placed on the left side–with the imagery or brand logos on the right.

“Take that simple principle and go see how many brands have gotten it wrong,” Pradeep said. “How many billboards have gotten it wrong? When you see a TV ad, look at how it ends and see how many have the logo placement wrong. Then look at something like Target’s in-store displays and see how many of them have gotten it right.”

“We’ve found that about 75% of all content–not just advertisements–is not neurologically optimal,” Pradeep added. “The opportunity to improve is tremendous.”

Consumer-oriented networking gear firm has announced it is getting into the digital signage business, and is showing its somewhat vague market entry at the Interop trade show this week in Lost Wages.

In a press release, D-Link says it will be demonstrating both large and small digital signs and a back-end content and advertising delivery system ideal for businesses and system integrators who serve that market.

The news release continues with the explanation that: D-Link will offer solutions for wired and wireless in-store media networks. Special hardware and chipsets in the digital displays will allow configuration of a system of networked display stations managed by a back-end content server. Same or different groups of photos, videos, text, and audio can be scheduled for delivery to control content at each station. Touch screens and keypads allow interactive applications. Engaging consumers with rich content while shopping can provide both consumer information and targeted advertising while enhancing the consumer experience.

Not exactly deep on detail, but if I had to guess D-Link is stuffing a variation of its little HD set-top box thingdoodle inside a panel, or on the back, and driving content from a PC or even a USB key.

Fledgling Indian DS software player Infosignz has cleverly attracted attention in a crowded field by offering a limited version of its product as free, with the caveat that a  fully functional version was coming and it was NOT free.

Infosignz has now released that pricing, which shows the price for something with the functionality serious companies will need is pretty much the same as what many companies out there are charging, on the low side, for Software as a Service. About $28 a month, though there’s an intro offer of  $10/month right now to get some business in the door.

This sort of effort is interesting, and definitely not good news for the many service providers out there who are charging considerably more than this, and able to do so because few companies are open about their rate card.

The Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau has told the American Association of Advertising Agencies media research committee there are three key factors in measuring digital screen networks:

• A network’s “gross venue traffic” - which is another way of saying foot traffic, footfall, or how many people darken the doors day to day
• The ability of ads on a network to be noticed - that one’s a little squishy, and has to do with dwell time
• The network’s “presence in the zone.” - which seems really squishy and subjective

Suzanne Alecia, the new president of OVAB, introduced these guidelines during that MediaPost Digital Out-of-Home Forum earlier this week. Scouring around on the OVAB website, and reading through news stories, I couldn’t find anything to elaborate on the squishy stuff.

Alecia did tell the forum the guidelines have not yet been published, and conceded they were not perfect but a “reasonable compromise” for a nascent industry.

Anyone know anything more?

Given the short notice and the great weather, a smaller but decent crowd for the latest Toronto mixer tonight.

We had maybe 20 people, with many of the usual suspects and some new faces, like Jamie Cuthbert from SaiTECH (interactive stations in the auto sector), Greg Cook from TAB Technical Environments (IT) and Russ Morgan from Brand Infiltration (marketing).

Worth the effort, as even with this bunch there were meetings getting set up. We’ll lock down the next one sooner so there’s more time to plan attendance.

OnSite Network has announced a deal to acquire Nevada New Media, the owner of Boondoggle Sports Network, a screen network playing in the same restaurant and bar space.

No deal terms were released.

The buy almost doubles OnSite’s footprint, to 200 locations in the US, which in relative terms is still teeny. But the plans are much bigger.

“This acquisition accelerates our growth plans and keeps us on track to be in 1,000 locations by the end of this year,” said Allen Marrinson, President & CEO of OSN. “We are also in the process of deploying to already committed venue locations in Houston, Cincinnati, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and cities in Southern California and other metro areas.”

What is it, by the way, about the number 1,000 in this industry??? I’m still waiting for the guy who tells me, ‘We’re planning to do 675 locations by the end of Q1 2009.”

OnSite plays in that somewhat murky part of the business in which broadcast video signals from networks are squeezed so that there is room on the screen for a banner strip along the bottom and one side. There are varied opinions about whether or not that infringes on the broadcaster’s rights.

A big development out of that one-day industry conference in New York yesterday - word that measurement giant Nielsen is going to start distributing ratings reports on some of the larger place-based video networks in the US.

Reports MediaPost (which organized the event):

In a move that could bring the kind of structure to the burgeoning out-of-home video advertising marketplace that is associated with traditional television, Nielsen plans to introduce TV ratings “pocketpieces” for a variety of place-based television networks. The plan, which was revealed by Senior Vice President-Nielsen Strategic Media Research Paul Lindstrom, came out as part of a panel discussion on Wednesday during MediaPost’s Digital Out-of-Home Forum in New York.

Lindstrom said the first of the pocketpieces–one for health club video network IdeaCast–would be released in the next “two to three weeks,” and that another for Gas Station TV would follow shortly after. By September, he said Nielsen would be publishing pocketpieces for as many as 10 place-based television networks.

Pocketpieces is a term used to describe printed TV ratings reports issued by Nielsen that are designed to fit in someone’s vest pocket. Traditional TV networks and stations usually have them published weekly, but Lindstrom told MediaDailyNews that the place-based TV network reports would likely be published monthly due to the fact that their audience dynamics generally change less frequently than for traditional broadcast and cable TV outlets.

Most media planners, buyers and researchers now get their TV ratings data from Nielsen electronically, but the publication of pocketpieces is a symbolic development for the out-of-home video marketplace, implying that it now has comparable market currency data to television.

Unlike television and online–where Nielsen manages big consumer panels to measure those media’s audience estimates–Lindstrom said the place-based media network reports would reply primarily on compiling and modeling third-party data, such as membership data from health clubs, or transaction data at retail outlets of gas station pumps. He said this would be coupled with primary Nielsen research conducted by telephone that would ascribe demographics and other important information to the gross audience estimates. The method is similar to what Nielsen has been utilizing for the cinema advertising industry for several years, and the advent of Nielsen pocketpieces has helped that medium grow its share of advertising budgets.

Market analysts estimate that cinema currently accounts for about half of all out-of-home video advertising–an industry that is projected to take in an estimated $1.7 billion in advertising this year, according to Magna Global Director of Industry Analysis Brian Wieser.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the new pocketpieces will be Nielsen’s imprimatur, a stamp of approval that would provide legitimacy and authenticity for place-based networks calling on advertisers and agencies.

The article includes a concession that this system will hardly be perfect, though that can easily be said about measurement for most if not all conventional media. The methodology still involves gross audience estimates that, at best, come up with an opportunity to view number.

My guess is most network operators would welcome the Nielsen legitimacy stamp for their networks, and really don’t want to get any deeper (using stuff like face-tracking cameras and software) to reveal how much of that gross audience is actually looking at the screens for a measurable period.

Giovanni Collazo, the lead designer behind a free digital signage platform out of Puerto Rico, sent me a link overnight to a Quicktime presentation that runs through the attributes of what is challengingly called s3mer.

It has been decades since I took a marketing class, but I suspect somewhere in there was a suggestion that making your brand hard to pronounce was a questionable move. It has a way of killing the word of mouth thing.

Giovanni sent me a follow-up note to  explain that it is indeed meant to be “Streamer”, as in s-three-mer. Sort of.

Anyway, the video provides some detail on the May 1st launch and the benefits and features, which includes some interesting things like Mac and Windows support right away, with Linux coming.

I definitely like that the UI is in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

The piece provides some detail, as well, about the free thing, which comes with a but …

It is free, but only with ads, no scheduling capabilities, no multi-screen support and limited storage.

The pro version, which has those things and much more storage, is $60 a month, which is on the high side of average for Software as a Service-style offers in this space.

There is a constituency out there that will be all over the free platform, but were I involved with these guys I would be pushing hard the multi-lingual capabilities, as I am not sure there is much out there, at all, that services Central and South America in the dominant languages.

A quick reminder that the next mixer for the Toronto industry (and anyone else who’s strayed through town) is tonight at Alice Fazooli’s. Things should start around 6:30, and carry on from there.

The place is about halfway between Spadina and University on Adelaide. There is an NBA playoff game on at the ACC tonight, so traffic might be a little interesting as you head in.