Successful digital signage communication demands content that meets an audience’s expectations.

Whether it's suspended from the ceiling of a retail store, positioned near a gate in an airport terminal, or stationed in a hotel lobby, a digital sign has one basic function: to communicate.

Clearly, the types of communication -informational, promotional or advertising-related- are unique and different. What's the same is the expectation of the person responsible for the digital sign that it will convey a bit of information to its intended audience. All other expectations for the sign -like connecting emotionally with a viewer, branding a store or a product, or promoting a specific product or offer- are built on this single foundation. 

However, identifying the core function of a digital sign is quite a bit easier than actually executing that function. Why? Simply stated it is because digital signs exist in a media milieu that inundates, saturates and dominates the comings and goings of the public as it attends to its daily affairs. In other words, a digital sign has to compete with hundreds of other messages bombarding its audience throughout the day, cut through the noise and connect -even for one brief moment- with its audience just to deliver a few bits of information.

Granted, if that information is something a member of the intended audience is seeking out -such as directions or information to confirm what's going on in a specific conference room- making that connection will be much easier. But if the goal is to promote or advertise a service or product that passersby are only mildly interested in -or even worse- unaware of, making that connection to communicate becomes a more difficult challenge.

Fortunately, the tools and expertise to communicate with text, graphics, animation and video are widely available, relatively affordable and well understood. With 60-plus years of television under the nation's belt, both those imparting information with video and those receiving that communication have a long track record of communicating via TV.

Without question, digital signs aren't television, but they're about as close as one can get to TV without mounting an antenna to a tower and firing up a transmitter. As a result, digital signage communicators can use the common elements digital signs share with television to present their messages in a visual shorthand that anyone who watches TV understands.

It is worth mentioning, however, that the visual shorthand of television is in flux. The old nearly square picture tube that dominated the living rooms of America for the past six decades is giving way to the wider, clearer flat panel display that's capturing a growing share of the home TV market. In fact, that latest survey from Frank N. Magid Associates finds that 25 percent of U.S. television households now own HDTVs. That's 28 million dwellings in the United States where television viewing is done on a sharp, wide television screen.

The same survey found that the pace at which younger adults -ages 21 to 34- are buying HDTVs has quickened. It also found 28 percent of those buyers purchased an HDTV to connect the high definition set to a game console, such as a Sony PlayStation 3 or Microsoft Xbox 360.

The growth of U.S. HDTV households in general and the significant number of younger adults connecting them to a game console speaks to other side of the digital signage expectation equation: specifically what the digital signage audience expects.

Those responsible for digital signage content must take into account that their audience is developing an increasingly sophisticated visual appetite. Where standard definition video was once the cost of admission into the video game, high definition video will soon become the base line. Where organization of content on a relatively square, relatively low-resolution screen dominated TV, digital signage content increasingly will be organized into zones on a high-resolution, rectangular screen.

And finally, where rather artificial representations of reality once dominated TV  animation, true-to-life-looking animated elements are quickly becoming the norm. Given the Magid finding related to how many young adults are buying HDTVs to connect to a game console coupled with the stunning, life-like animation that's common in video games like Madden NFL 08 from EA Sports, it's clear the bar is being raised dramatically.

None of this is to say that digital signage content producers must hirer teams of digital cinematographers and 3-D artists. Rather, it's only a reminder of where the visual tastes of digital signage audiences in this country are headed. Keeping the viewer's expectations foremost in mind while creating digital signage content is the first step to realizing the only reasonable expectation a digital signage user can have: namely, to communicate.

About the author
David Little is a digital signage enthusiast with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. He is the director of marketing for Keywest Technology in Lenexa, KS, a software development company specializing in systems for digital signage creation, scheduling, management and playback. For further digital signage insight from Keywest Technology download our Six Basic Digital Signage Applications white paper; subscribe to our digital signage RSS feed that gives a diverse perspective on digital signage from experts around the world; join our weekly digital signage software Webinar; and sign up for our Keywest Update news brief.

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New flexible active matrix displays promise to change the shape of digital signage.

Research firm iSuppli boldly proclaimed last month that 2008 will be known as the year flexible active matrix displays coalesced into a global market.

According to the El Segundo, CA, -based market research group, market for flexible displays worldwide will climb from $80 million last year to $2.8 billion by 2013 -a whopping 35-times increase.

Applications for the flexible displays will range from the way-out-there clothes made out of wearable displays to more conventional display applications like digital signs, electronic display cards and digital shelf labels and end caps.

If you're not familiar with flexible active matrix technology, here's what they are in a nutshell. After much research and development, electronics giant Philips developed a technique for producing super-thin, rollable active matrix (i.e. pixel addressable) display that can be wrapped around objects --for example, a pillar in an airport concourse or a human body in a shirt.

Just this month, a paper in a nanotechnology journal laid out work of researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, Northwestern University in Chicago and the University of Southern California who had successfully developed the first nanowire transistor-based active matrix display. The organic light emitting diode (OLED) display reportedly is every bit as bright as a flat LCD screen or CRT but has the added benefit of flexibility.

Think for a moment of the countless new applications there will be for digital signage based on this sort of flexible display. Architectural structures, such as pillars, supports and hand rails and even entire buildings; vehicles, such as tractor trailers and automobiles; personal items, such as apparel and umbrellas, all become potential homes for new flexible digital signage. While some surely will fail as appropriate homes form digital signage along the way, these sorts of applications are sure to contribute to the 35-fold growth iSuppli envisions.

As this technology matures so to will its performance characteristics. Tighter curves and smaller bends surely will follow with successive generations of these flexible displays. That in turn will lead to a whole new class of objects upon which the displays can be mounted. Eventually, it might even be possible to wrap a flexible active matrix display around a sphere to transform a ball into a globe displaying a computer graphic representation of the Earth -complete with landmasses and oceans. Or, 21st century equivalents of sandwich-board men, could don head-to-toe body wear to display unique promotions and ads. Imagine how that approach could be used to advertise the popular, traveling museum exhibit of plasticized human bodies.

As these applications unfold, there will be a need to address the problem of mapping a two-dimensional image onto a 3-D surface. Here too technology can conquer the challenge. Software applications, such as X-WARP, exist today to correct for such geometric distortions. In fact, such software is being used today to correct geometric distortions created by projecting an image with a video projector onto oddly shaped objects.

However, for the time being it's enough to know that 2008 will be the year flexible active-matrix displays make it out of the lab and into the mainstream. If iSuppli is right, it's entirely possible that before the end of this year we all will have wrapped our heads around the notion that video, graphics and text no longer must be confined to a flat display technology. Where that leads will only be limited by our imaginations.

About the author
David Little is a digital signage enthusiast with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. He is the director of marketing for Keywest Technology in Lenexa, KS, a software development company specializing in systems for digital signage creation, scheduling, management and playback. For further digital signage insight from Keywest Technology download our Six Basic Digital Signage Applications white paper; subscribe to our digital signage RSS feed that gives a diverse perspective on digital signage from experts around the world; join our weekly digital signage software Webinar; and sign up for our Keywest Update news brief.

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A new report from research organization iSuppli identifies two significant hurdles it says must be cleared before digital signage ad networks get respect among advertisers and agencies. But maybe it's time to rethink the issue.

A new iSuppli report finds two significant obstacles remain before digital signage advertising can takes its place among other bona fide media buys by advertisers and ad agencies: a lack of variable audience measurement techniques, and a quandary on the part of ad agencies about how to get paid for placing digital signage ads.

The report, "Digital Signage Ecosystem Report," by Sanju Khatri, principal analyst for signage and professional displays for iSuppli, outlines the opportunities for digital signage networks as well as the challenges that must be transcended before they realize their potential.

In a press release promoting the study, iSuppli identifies the problems and how they are related. According to the research company, "advertising agencies are very comfortable in the traditional arena of mass media and print advertising, and are not compelled enough to insert digital signage into the plans of their clients. More importantly, these agencies don't necessarily know what their commission will be with digital signage."

iSuppli goes on to explain that without an effective way to determine the number of consumers being reached by digital signage networks there is "no effective means" to show advertisers that the dollars they are spending on the medium are reaping a quantifiable reward. In other words, determining the return an advertiser can expect from an investment in advertising via digital signage networks is currently impossible. This lack of a way to measure ROI impedes the growth of the medium.

According to iSuppli, those participating in the market have begun partnering with organizations like Nielson, Arbitron and POPAI to develop metrics to make determining ROI doable. However, there seems to be little agreement about what exactly must be measured.

While the lack of audience metrics and the difficulty ad agencies have in determining how to get paid shouldn't be underestimated, there seems to be an overarching issue at play here -one that if addressed could reshape the conversation. Specifically, the entire notion of jamming the digital signage ad network medium into the box used to define and sell other media -in particular television- seems a bit misguided and stifling.

Granted, there is an incredible temptation to lump TV and digital signage together. After all, on the face of it -literally- they look identical. But the differences quickly become apparent when you get past their physicality and begin to consider much less superficial issues, such as how an audience consumes messages each conveys, the types of information, entertainment and commercials each display, where each physically resides and how much time viewers spend with each.

Simply attempting to count noses in an effort to support an ROI model built on the 60-plus year history of commercial television, seems to miss the point. Digital signage advertising networks are a new, different medium. They deserve their own unique formulas for determining ROI.

One component of that equation has to be propensity of a digital signage ad network "viewer" to actually buy something. Isn't a smaller audience with dollars in its hands and a desire to buy something in the very near term more valuable to advertisers than home after home of passive TV viewers who increasingly are skipping through their commercials with a remote control and a DVR?

In terms of the comfort level of ad agencies when it comes digital signage ad networks, who cares? Look at what Google has done in a matter of a few short years to ad buys. Single-handedly Google may have done more to call into question advertising business as usual than anything that's happened in recent memory.

Perhaps decisions about ads on digital signage networks would be better left to corporate marketing folks with expertise in point-of-purchase promotional displays. Certainly, that business resource has vast experience in determining the ROI of promotional messaging at the point of purchase when compared to an agency concerned about television.

To a certain degree, digital signage ad networks may have themselves to blame for these hurdles. Selling something new is often difficult, so it's understandable that there's a powerful temptation to draw analogies with the familiar when making their pitch to agencies. When it comes to digital signage and advertising agencies, the familiar is naturally television. To extract itself from that limiting, stifling box will require digital signage advertising networks to do much more than address metrics and commissions. It will require taking control of defining the medium as it's own, distinct entity and value.

About the author
David Little is a digital signage enthusiast with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. He is the director of marketing for Keywest Technology in Lenexa, KS, a software development company specializing in systems for digital signage creation, scheduling, management and playback. For further digital signage insight from Keywest Technology download our Six Basic Digital Signage Applications white paper; subscribe to our digital signage RSS feed that gives a diverse perspective on digital signage from experts around the world; join our weekly digital signage software Webinar; and sign up for our Keywest Update news brief.

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New high-gain screens make projection a practical solution for outdoor digital signs.

In cities all across America, digital billboards are springing up, bringing the benefits of instantly changeable digital graphics, images and text, to a medium where advertising contracts were traditionally sold for months or longer at a time.

As of January 2007, about 400 digital billboards populated the U.S. landscape, according to an article in The New York Times. Quoting a forecast from the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, OAAA, the article reported that about 4,000 digital billboards will be in use in 10 years.

A recent example of the use of a digital billboard probably encapsulates the reason why they're so appealing better than a 10,000-word treatise on them ever could. Digital billboard operators in Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Dubuque and Waterloo, Iowa, teamed up Jan. 3 to deliver news from the Iowa presidential caucuses that was updated every seven to 10 minutes till the process was complete and Senator Barak Obama and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee were declared the winners.

Having access to that sort of immediacy on such a scale in the outdoor advertising arena was unthinkable a few short years ago. What that translates to on a commercial basis is the same digital sign can be used to advertise hundreds and hundreds of products in the same day -not the same product for months on end.

To date, the dominant display technology responsible for these digital billboards is a particularly bright, particularly responsive light emitting diode -LED. Just as TVs -whether their LCD or plasma flat panels or old-fashioned cathode ray tube televisions- make pictures based on tiny discrete picture elements called pixels, light-emitting-diode-based billboards rely on an array of LEDs to display text, graphics and video. (Video is a major application in stadiums; it's more doubtful how useful or safe it would be if the intention was to communicate with drivers zipping down the interstate at 70 miles per hour.)

While highly effective, large LED signs are quite expensive and power-hungry. A Washington Post article last spring quoted an executive with CBS Outdoor, one of the three largest outdoor advertising companies in the world, as saying a 14-by-48-foot LED digital billboard costs about $450,000. With that sort of price tag, it's easy to understand why the OAAA forecasts their number to grow to only 4,000 in 10 years while there are about 450,000 billboards across America. It's also not too hard to imagine that full-on, high-quality video-, text- and graphic-based LED signage may be out of reach for literally hundreds of thousands of other outdoor signage applications.

However, there is an alternative. New high-gain projection screens, such as the XL-A-Vision screen from AccelerOptics in Carthage, Missouri, have the ability to reject enough ambient light -even the intense noonday sun- to make the use of video projectors a practical, affordable alternative. Depending on the type of configuration specified, this approach to outdoor digital signage can cost in the tens of thousands or dollars, not several hundred thousand dollars as with the LED-based approach.

Recently, the first major outdoor application of an XL-A-Vision screen went online in Grants Pass, Oregon, where the developer of a modern office complex installed a double-sided outdoor projection-based sign based on the high-gain screen. The 10.5-by-15-foot sign, which the building's owner has dubbed "The Paragon," offers all of the advantages one would expect of a digital sign, including the opportunity for ad sales to offset the cost of the display.

However, what really drives home the point of why this approach to outdoor digital signage is significant is the fact that the building's owner, Consolidated Financial, did not have the budget to pay for an LED-based digital sign. If projection-based signage made possible by a high-gain projection screen technology had not been available, the company would have abandoned the idea of installing an outdoor digital signage.

While the number of digital billboards using LED-technology will climb over the next 10 years, think of how many more applications for outdoor digital signage will be enabled by this revolutionary, affordable approach to projection screen technology. High-gain projection screens, like those used for The Paragon, may have as big of an impact on the outdoor advertising landscape -if not bigger- than LED-based approaches.

About the author
David Little is a digital signage enthusiast with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. He is the director of marketing for Keywest Technology in Lenexa, KS, a software development company specializing in systems for digital signage creation, scheduling, management and playback. For further digital signage insight from Keywest Technology download our Six Basic Digital Signage Applications white paper; subscribe to our digital signage RSS feed that gives a diverse perspective on digital signage from experts around the world; join our weekly digital signage software Webinar; and sign up for our Keywest Update news brief.

 

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By finding the right digital signage partner, investing in content development and providing your people with the best training available, you can rest assured that your digital signage network will continue achieving the goals you set out for it far into the future.

It seems every day brings a new announcement in the digital signage arena -the release of a whiz-bang technology, a new vendor entering the market, some huge sale or formation of a new strategic business alliance.

While news of this sort is interesting and relevant, it can be a bit overwhelming. In fact, it can lead to a bit of paralysis in implementing a digital signage plan. Fear of premature obsolescence, or missing out on the next important development to come along, can retard progress and direct energy and attention away from the true mission, specifically, communicating effectively with clients, constituents or employees to advance the marketing or informational goal of the enterprise.

But rather than sitting on the sidelines waiting for some never-to-be-attained zenith of technological development to be realized before making the decision to proceed, wouldn't it be better to find a framework within which a digital signage deployment can be made that lets you respond and if necessary assimilate the changes that inevitably will come along?

Here are three handy rules to help you succeed with your digital signage deployment regardless of the changes that come along:

One: Don't just choose a digital signage vendor, select a digital signage partner. This is the crux of the matter. Technology continues to change at an ever-increasing rate. What must remain constant is an unwavering commitment on the part of your digital signage vendor to adapt existing solutions to meet your needs as they change. If that means writing new software, so be it. If it requires developing new drivers, new interfaces or taking any other steps needed to integrate "must-have" third-party components into the digital signage network, a true digital signage partner must be willing and capable of doing just that.

Two: Invest in your content. It's funny how many of the latest "earth-shattering" digital signage developments turn out to be small blips on the continuum of progress. What helps to inject a bit of reality into the latest whiz-bang announcement is the sense of security that your digital signage messaging is on target and accomplishing your desired goals. What does it matter if there's a new digital signage technology that will polish the shoes of people who approach a sign if no one ever stands there long enough to get it done because the content is so irrelevant?

Three: Invest in training your people. Whether they are in-house content creators, sales people securing advertising contracts or IT or AV managers tasked with monitoring the performance of the digital signage network, your people are your real assets. The better trained they are, the more productive your digital signage network will be.

There's nothing wrong with wanting the latest or greatest technology to be a part of your digital signage network. But you have to ask yourself just how important that is to accomplishing your real goal. If there's no other way to achieve your goal without adding that technology, by all means do so. However, nine times out of 10, if you take a moment to consider all of your options, you'll find that you can rely on creativity -whether it's in the realm of content creation, IT management or sales- to achieve the goal you desire.

By developing a partnership with a digital signage vendor, investing in training your personnel and devoting the resources necessary for content development, you'll position your digital signage deployment to best achieve the goals you've set for your network. You'll also have removed that element of paralysis that can set in when the fear that the digital signage network you're contemplating will become obsolete.

About the author
David Little is a digital signage enthusiast with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to more effectively communicate their unique marketing messages. He is the director of marketing for Keywest Technology in Lenexa, KS, a software development company specializing in systems for digital signage creation, scheduling, management and playback. For further digital signage insight from Keywest Technology download our Six Basic Digital Signage Applications white paper; subscribe to our digital signage RSS feed that gives a diverse perspective on digital signage from experts around the world; join our weekly digital signage software Webinar; and sign up for our Keywest Update news brief.
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