The morning press - digital signage news for January 21

Here are some of the more interesting industry new items from the past few days:

• Health Club Media Network Picks Met|Hodder As Digital Advertising and Content Producer of Record: You don't hear about too many digital signage AORs, but Met|Hodder has been working hard to make sure that their agency is top-of-mind when talking about digital out-of-home projects.

• Tough times mean bad ad recall rates: "According to a Gallup & Robinson study of 12 years' worth of surveys about recall and likeability of advertising that appears in the annual pigskin classic, there is a direct relationship between the confidence people have in the economy and the attention they pay to Super Bowl commercials." I would love to have seen if this carries over to other TV advertising slots as well. And of course there's no correlation here with what happens inside the store.

• Clear Channel Lays Off 9% of Work Force: "Clear Channel Communications eliminated about 1,850 positions across its corporate, outdoor and radio divisions, representing a 9% of the company's work force." The company notes that they had to cut less than Citigroup, but that hardly seems comforting to me (and probably even less so to the newly laid-off employees).

• Proving that not everything that Google touches turns to gold, they've halted their print ads program, noting that, "we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we -- or our partners -- wanted." I know a lot of folks are waiting on the side lines hoping that Google will soon release an AdWords for Out-of-Home Media, but so they might want to reconsider that standpoint a bit.

• Futuristic Security Checkpoints Know What You Do Before You Do It: Since this industry is enamored with all things Minority Report for some reason, I thought this article fitting. "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is developing a system called Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST for short. Homeland Security ran a test in September of 140 volunteers using a FAST prototype. The system was very accurately able to pick out people with hostile intent. 'We're still very early on in this research, but it is looking very promising,' says DHS science spokesman John Verrico. 'We are running at about 78% accuracy on mal-intent detection, and 80% on deception.'" That hit rate is pretty terrible (though perhaps on-par with some of today's demographic ID systems in use in retail stores), but expect this kind of government tech to trickle down into the private sector for marketing purposes.

Tags: digital signage, digital signage news

Looking for more digital signage info? Check out WireSpring's Kiosk and Digital Signage blog for in-depth industry analysis and even more news about the digital signage industry. While you're there, feel free to read up on our digital signage software and services