Friday, January 12, 2007

AccuWeather and WireSpring Make Digital Signage Content More Compelling

From the "what's the point of having a blog if you can't occasionally flog your own wares" department comes this news, courtesy of ClickPress:

AccuWeather, Inc. announced its partnership with WireSpring Technologies, Inc. to deliver dynamic weather content to digital signage networks using the FireCast® digital signage platform. The companies aim to create more effective digital signage content by offering an affordable, customizable, and fully licensed way to display localized weather content on digital signs.
Why is this noteworthy? Well, we've been a fan of content that engages people with retail media for a while, and from our own resesarch, weather seems to do it the best. Even when one can look out of a giant storefront window to see what it's like outside, it seems that showing weather on a digital sign -- everything from Dopplar radar to the 5-day forecast -- grabs eyeballs. The trick to using weather content effectively, however, has been less than forthcoming, and we've been working with AccuWeather for quite a while before making any kind of announcement.

For WireSpring, working with AccuWeather means access to the largest and most accurate repository of weather data that you can get, with more granularity than government-supplied services. For AccuWeather, they've already spent all that money making that content. The more places they can distribute it, the better. So I suspect we'll see any number of digital signage companies signing up in the relatively near future.

The trick, though, is using that content right, so it's also a safe bet that of the myriad companies that will catch the weather bug, three quarters of them will never use it to its fullest potential.

Tags: digital signage, WireSpring, FireCast, AccuWeather

No comments: