The morning press - digital signage news for July 1

Happy July, everyone. There's plenty of interesting stuff going on in the digital signage world. Here's some of it:

The DailyDOOH recently posted two articles that you need to read or re-read if you haven't. The first is on V.Pharma, who claims they're reaching their ROI objective in 12-16 months. In my experience, anything less than 18 months is pretty quick for our industry, so if V.Pharma proves correct, their model deserves some scrutiny.

The second was the announcement of the Imperative Group's rules for designing digital signage content for the audience. While only an introduction doc (pdf), it makes an excellent companion to our own best practices for creating digital signage content (wow, I really need to update that reference guide article, since it doesn't cover any of our posts on sound, screen placement, or the infamous ticker).

Next, I'd like to direct your attention to this NewTeeVee article on how advertisers are paying more for placement in The Simpsons episodes on Hulu than they do on actual broadcast TV. Even though we recommend against it, I know a lot of ad-funded digital signage networks continue to sell on a CPM basis, and are consequently faced with difficulty explaining why their $100 CPM is a great deal compared to the $20 CPM an advertiser might get for some other medium like local cable or print. Chris Albrecht does a great job of explaining that the thousands of Hulu viewers are likely to be more valuable to advertisers, who are thus willing to pay the premium. It's a good argument that's easily transposed to our industry.

Peter Breen, the Managing Director of Content for the In-Store Marketing Institute laid down some smack (do the kids still say that nowadays?) on people who continue to equate the newly-formalized discipline of shopper marketing with age-old POP advertising. While POP displays surely play a role in the overall shopper marketing program, as Breen notes such devices are only part of a much more complex system of advertising, marketing and promotional techniques to optimize the marketing message for the store -- the best possible place to connect with shoppers.

Tags: digital signage, digital signage news

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