MINI trialing interactive digital billboard campaign

This is pretty neat:

Earlier today (1/10/07) MINI USA sent emails to some group of existing MINI owners asking them to join a pilot of a new program called Motorby. These select owners can volunteer to give MINI USA a bit of personal information, after which MINI USA will mail them a special keyfob containing a digital marker (probably RFID, but there's nothing that explicitly says that). As you drive down roads featuring MINI's electronic billboards (so far only in NYC, Chicago and San Francisco, but coming to more places soon, apparently), the signs will detect your keyfob and deliver a personal message based on the information you originally supplied.

Silly? Yeah, a little, but cool nonetheless, and cool is exactly what MINI is trying to deliver to its core audience. More information at MotoringFile, here and here.

Tags: MINI, motorboard, electronic billboard, digital billboard, out-of-home advertising

iSuppli says: Digital billboards set to take 15% share by 2010

It looks as if the digital billboard market is finally starting to come together. Just a few days ago Clear Channel Outdoor announced that they had deployed their sixth market of electronic road-side billboards, and now market research firm iSuppli suggests that it's only the beginning:

By 2010, 75,000 billboards, or 15% of total billboards in the U.S., will be digital displays, up from a mere 500 digital billboards in 2006, according to iSuppli. Digital signage is another vehicle for advertisers to reach out to their customers in the $500 billion global advertising market.

iSuppli provides a quick back-of-the-envelope model on how big this market is going to be. Based on its 2010 estimate, the 75,000 potential digital billboards will be using an average of 325,000 LEDs; that would require 40,625 LED drivers for each of the 75,000 digital billboards. That would mean a cost of $16,250 per digital billboard or $1.22 billion for the 75,000 digital billboards in 2010, a big growth opportunity for both semiconductor suppliers and manufacturers of display technology.

iSuppli estimates that on average it only takes 6 to 10 months for the owner of a large digital sign to see an ROI.

Only 6-10 months? That kind of ROI is amazing, though given the current capital costs involved with setting up a network, electronic billboards still aren't for the faint of heart.

Tags: electronic billboards, out-of-home advertising, digital billboards

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

Mediox to introduce multimedia food trays

Just when I thought I'd seen every place where you could possibly put an advertising screen, Mediox came out of stealth mode to prove me wrong :) Here's what their press release blurb has to say:

“The market for multimedia advertising in fast food outlets is expected to reach $10 billion by 2012 and our goal is to provide restaurant chains with hardware and flexible content management system to generate additional revenue,” said Roman Kyrychinskiy, co-founder of Mediox. “Initially we are planning to launch this concept by offering fast food restaurant chains several rate plans including providing trays free of charge in exchange for a share in advertising and retail revenues,” he added.

The current version of the interactive multimedia fast food tray prototype featured at Wikipedia.org in “Restaurant Media” article, will be used for software development purposes and is currently being redesigned to facilitate for harsh usage conditions, intuitive interface and easy to use and durable control mechanism. The multimedia tray will allow visitors at fast food restaurants to watch live music broadcasts, movie previews, play games, check out nutritional information and much more. Soon fast food customers will be able to experience enjoy interactive entertainment right on their fast food trays.

If they can get around breakage and loss issues, this could be an interesting idea, though it looks as though it's only in the very early prototype phase right now. And, as opposed to digital menuboards, if a consumer doesn't want to look at the tray, he could simply return it to the counter, or cover over the screen area with a placemat or napkin :)

Tags: digital signage, restaurant media, out-of-home advertising

When does TV become digital signage?

On Friday, Advertising Age ran an article about the Taxi Entertainment Network, the latest new-media experiment from Clear Channel Outdoor. This network debuts in New York City under the name NY10, and will appear on screens inside more than 5,000 taxi cabs. NY10 will feature local and international news, weather, sports and entertainment content from WNBC, NBC News and NBC Entertainment, and has a projected reach of over 14,000,000 consumers a year. With all of this network-supplied content comes advertisements, which can be day-parted and geographically targeted. While Clear Channel is billing the NY10 as a new advertising medium (and selling the spots accordingly), the content will be decidedly more TV-like than what you'd typically see in an out-of-home advertising project. This raises an interesting question: at what point does a content network really become an advertising (or digital signage) network?

To be fair, that's something of a loaded question, since television has been a commercial affair for quite some time. While early attempts to use broadcast technology for educational purposes largely failed, commercially-sponsored news and entertainment was quick to become TV's killer app. So in some ways, TV has been both content network and advertising network since the very beginning. For out-of-home advertising networks like digital signage systems in retail chains, the primary intent has typically been more obvious: advertise products sold in the store. But even in the digital signage world, networks use different types of content and different ratios of ads to news and entertainment depending on the environment and the target audience.

Read the rest of the article at: When does TV become digital signage?

Tags: digital signage, out-of-home advertising, retail media, in-store media, advertising, retail marketing

Clear Channel Outdoor to deploy Taxi Entertainment Network to 5,000 NY cabs

Numerous sources are covering this story, but the best link I've found is from the San Antonio Business Journal:

Through a content-sharing agreement between Clear Channel Taxi Media and NBC Universal, some 5,000 taxis will air NY10, New York's Taxi Entertainment Network. The channel will air exclusive content from WNBC, NBC News and NBC Entertainment.

It will roll out during the first half of 2007 as part of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission's recent announcement to install passenger information monitors in New York cabs.

Clear Channel Taxi Media, which is owned by Clear Channel Outdoor, will sell advertisements on the network. NY10 should provide a new avenue to reach more than 14 million New York consumers each month, according to Charlie DiToro, chief operating officer for Clear Channel Taxi Media.

NY10 will air news, weather, sports and entertainment on LCD screens installed in the back seats of cabs. The screens also will give passengers the ability to track the route of their trip and pay their fare by credit or debit card.

So aside from possibly watching some interesting news and weather info, it seems that Clear Channel is hoping to make the network more useful by letting passengers also use the terminals to pay their fare via credit or debit card, which is pretty clever. While taxi networks are nothing new (they've had one in Las Vegas for years now), New York has been hesitant to get involved, with a number of companies piloting and then abandoning taxi-based kiosk and digital signage networks over the past few years.

Tags: digital signage, Clear Channel Outdoor, out-of-home advertising, Taxi Entertainment Network, NY10

Clear Channel brings electronic billboards to Minneapolis/St. Paul

According to MediaPost, newly-privatized Clear Channel has expanded their outdoor electronic billboard project into Minneapolis, which marks the 6th market that they now provide the devices in (previously we noted that they were expanding the network into Tampa, Florida, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin). In total, the Minneapolis/St. Paul screens join those in Cleveland, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Milwaukee, Tampa, and London, England, meeting Clear Channel's previously-stated goal of launching 4-6 digital billboard networks by the end of 2006.

At this point, it will be interesting to watch whether they will continue to expand their network continuously, or if we'll see a dropoff in new installations while they test out their business models for ad sales. On the one hand, Clear Channel probably already has a good idea of whether the screens will be profitable (and how quickly they'll get there), so it might be best to continue with the expansion. On the other, though, they already own much of the best billboard real estate (currently populated by static billboards, of course), so they might not feel much pressure to continue with costly installations while they're still tinkering with the model.

Tags: Clear Channel, electronic billboards, digital billboards, outdoor advertising

Get your free digital signage software!

Back in 2006 when I first wrote this article, it was just a snarky response to an equally snarky blog post from a fellow industry blogger:

Dave Haynes at Digital View is apparently competing against me for this year's Digital Signage Sarcasm Award (DSSA), and has put up a good fight with this post about free digital signage software from the latest entrant into our already-crowded industry. His take on the newcomer summarized in one line:

I never really thought our business was on the precipice of revolt, waiting for somebody to rise up and stick it to the man. But there you go.

Ouch.

I'm with you, Dave. Our list now has over 300 competitors somehow, and I shudder at the thought of how high that number would be if we were to add in the bulk of our European and Asian competition. While it would seem that the barrier to entry into the digital signage industry is quite low (as evidenced by the number of players in the market), to win any significant business takes not only a great product, but also years of history, expertise in your target market, and of course an absolutely killer staff that your customers will all love (so really, it's like every other B2B market).

However, traffic to this page, compellingly-titled "get your free digital signage software," continues to be pretty steady, and I'm guessing it's not just because you like my style of curmudgeonly humor. No, you're probably here because you're actually looking for digital signage software that is free. Well, there's some good news, and some bad news. First of all, folks, nothing in life is free. I know, I know, the curmudgeon rears its ugly head again, but it's true.

See, there are some open source digital signage packages out there (at least one built for the task, and a few that are bolt-on modifications to popular content management packages like Joomla), and those are generally free as in "free speech" and free as in "no money for this software." Of course, unless you value your time at ZERO, there's still the time it takes to assemble the components, get them running, and then maintain them, and a cost associated with that. Maybe you're an IT pro with Linux kernel hacking skills, and that's no problem. Maybe this is a fun hobby for you, which is great. Or maybe you just have to meet some business objective, and after that you have better things to do with your life.

If you're looking for low cost digital signage software or systems though, there are a fair number of options. Lots of vendors now sell low-cost turnkey packages designed for small networks. And of course, there are plenty more options for digital signage software as a service (SaaS), which you can think of as paying for help with the software (and ancillary stuff like bandwidth, storage, etc.), which might ease your sleep at night. It should certainly improve your operations.


Tags: digital signage, software, retail media

Cisco enters the digital signage market, acquired Tivella

Cisco, the latest entrant into the rapidly-approaching-Malthusian-style-catastrophe-overcrowded digital signage market, has acquired tiny digital signage software firm Tivella, and will be incorporating their technology into the Cisco product lineup. I predict that this will have much marketing (but little practical) impact on the market, which is more closely resembling a tiny version of the Internet market in 1998.

Tags: Cisco, Tivella, digital signage, bubble

Tesco testing electronic shelf-edge labels in two stores

Having already installed about 400 of ZBD's electronic label devices at their South Wigston store in Leicestershire earlier this year, Tesco is expanding the trial to a second store near High Wycombe. As the Retail Bulletin notes:

Tesco began experimenting with ESEL for deli items over a year ago and has been testing the ZBD system at its South Wigston store in Leicestershire, for several months. “Staff and customers in the South Wigston store have already embraced the technology - especially the rich content on each display unit,” says Mark Green, head of counters at Tesco. “The ability of instant price updates as well as the amount of additional product information that can be displayed have had a major impact on staff productivity and the amount of food being thrown away.”

While much attention is given to revenue-generating opportunities for digital signage that involve advertising and marketing, this cost-saving and waste-reducing measure is a unique spin on an old trick.

Tags: retail media, electronic shelf labels, shelf-edge advertising

Automatic keyword tagging for video coming soon

MediaSoon notes that, "the European Union funded aceMedia venture has developed a system to automatically tag or keyword video and image content. They do this by using computer algorithms to analyse the composition of individual frames. Partners in the aceMedia consortium include Motorola, Philips, the University of London and France Telecom."

While the current focus of the project is to help consumers tag their own content (home movies, photos, etc.), there are certainly implications for digital signage and other forms of retail media. For example, a few weeks ago I wrote about the possibility of Google-YouTube automatically providing ads or content to disparate digital signage networks based on some kind of tagging mechanism. While I suggested that Google may want to maually screen the videos, a tool like this could help reduce the work needed to categorize and apply massive amounts of content.

Likewise, digital signage software makers could add this type of technology to their products to allow customers to share spots, content, etc. based on a common tag vocabulary, suggested by the computer, with the opportunity for some hand-tweaking, if necessary. As Paola Hobson, the Project Coordinator at aceMedia says:

“You can’t make money out of content if people can’t find it, and the cost of annotating content manually is enormous. Automatic annotation will help people find what they want, and they would consume more of it.”

They may be thinking about the consumer market, but when it comes to monetizing content search and indexing, the company is sure to find plenty of opportunities in the B2B space.

Tags: tagging, digital video, advertising, digital signage

Laura Davis-Taylor on the measurement of in-store media

Laura Davis-Taylor recently published a nice piece over at aka.tv looking at the current state of affairs in retail media measurement, and the need for an appeal to shoppers/customers, and not just the retailers and advertisers pushing retail media systems. My favorite quote:

From the customer lens, just as TiVo users are no longer captive to broadcast advertising, people in-store are also fully in control. They are TiVos on feet – what they don’t care about, they ignore or walk away from. We have to earn their attention and it’s only done via relevant messages or by adding some kind of value to the shopping experience.

Advertising that actually appeals to shoppers? This shouldn't be a new idea, but sadly so many advertisers still don't seem to "get it." There are so many opportunities to stand out and actually add value to the shopping experience, and that seems to be something that many marketers miss. Instead of improving the signal-to-noise ratio, many seem happy to simply have the loudest noise out there.

Tags: retail media, advertising

WonderVision gives Reactrix some competition

Just ran across this cool blog post about WonderVision, a digital signage offering that (presumably among other things) can project an interactive image onto the floor for customers and random passers-by to interact with. Here's a video clip of the system in action:

As you can see, it's not necessarily destined for retail locations, though the firm claims some benefit (mostly based on the novelty factor, since I'd think it would be hard to shop by dancing around on a 10x10' section of showfloor to get product information or check out).

Wallflower says: ready for world domination

From the "I couldn't make this stuff up" department:

Synergetix, the maker of digital signage software called Wallflower, announced that they were "poised for world domination" in this press relesase. I didn't realize that any of the companies in our industry had yet formed an international alliance of evil, hijacked a sub full of atomic bombs, built a secret headquarters in a volcano, or done any of the other things I associate with such phrases. All sillyness aside, the press release is relatively devoid of news, though it does suggest that (for some, at least), the market is heating up in China, a'la this quote:

"We have been in India for some years now, but China is the most exciting market. We have a number of deals we have been negotiating there for some months."

He declined to give details, but confirmed the company was looking at a deal to drive 65,000 screens, while another could potentially see it involved with a 250,000-screen rollout in the US and UK, but mostly in China. Both deals should be confirmed in the New Year, he said.

I think I'll have to remain skeptical of pre-announced deals for very large networks by companies poised for world domination. Still, there's no doubt that while many companies have focused entirely on the US and Europe, there are established and emerging markets in Asia that deserve some attention.

Tags: Wallflower, digital signage, out-of-home advertising,

VNU To Develop In-Store Measurement Service

After creating quite the commotion about it's P.R.I.S.M store media measurement technique, VNU has decided to take the service live, doing what it calls the "lead-market phase" of the new service in early 2007, with full availability later in the year. From the press release:

The new service, which will be developed through a new unit of VNU known as Nielsen In-Store, will measure consumer exposure to a fast-growing and powerful array of in-store marketing vehicles, including television and radio, shelf talkers, digital signage, and other point-of-purchase displays. Collectively, these in-store marketing approaches stand as the sixth largest advertising vehicle in the U.S., at $18.6 billion in spending in 2005.

The new service will also help retailers improve results through better store layouts, category adjacencies and product selection. “The new information we provide for retailers and manufacturers will help them work more effectively to improve the shopping experience for consumers,” said George Wishart, who has been named global managing director of Nielsen In-Store. “We also will provide the advertising, media and retail industries with a new currency standard that can increase the efficiency of the media buying and selling process.”

The same big names featured in the pilot project are endorsing the full-scale system, suggesting that early results were good. Members of the consortium include 3M, Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, Miller Brewing, Procter & Gamble and The Walt Disney Company, as well as major retailers like Albertsons, Kroger, Walgreens and Wal-Mart.

(Cross-posted at the retail media news blog)

Tags: VNU, P.R.I.S.M, retail media, media measurement, in-store advertising