Wal-Mart TV lets advertisers surprise, delight and experiment

By now anybody who frequents the digital signage industry is probably sick of hearing about Wal-Mart TV. After all, this decade-old in-store TV channel has probably made the news more than all other digital signage networks combined, but with an average weekly audience of over 120 million viewers, it's just too tantalizing and too noteworthy to leave alone.

Thus, I was unsurprised to see yet another article about Wal-Mart TV and its management company, PRN, in the news today, this time in USA Today. While the timing seems a bit odd (PRN hasn't announced anything new since the major upgrade to the network it started last year), the focus of the article wasn't on the screens or the technology or anything else nuts-and-bolts. Instead, it was a look at some of the more innovative ways that marketers are using to try and reach consumers as the media viewing marketplace becomes increasingly more fragmented and difficult to reach. Look at some of the cool marketing experiments that the article profiles:

• Frito-Lay. A 13-minute, high-definition clip of [a special Tim] McGraw concert will run continuously on Saturday [3/31/07] in Wal-Mart electronics departments, near displays that showcase both Lay's chips and McGraw's new CD, Let It Go.

The video and display also highlight charity work by McGraw and Lay?s for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Lay's before has run mainly traditional commercials on Wal-Mart TV. "This is certainly a very different approach" for Lay's marketing, says Justin Lambeth, director of marketing for the brand.

• Pfizer's Listerine. The company used the new end-of-aisle TVs devoted to a specific product display to show video that illustrates how Listerine Agent CoolBlue pre-brushing rinse turns plaque blue. Listerine saw it as an opportunity to educate the shopper. "When you see that bottle on the shelf, you're not really aware of what it does," Daly says. "This product really needs an explanation."

• Viacom's Nickelodeon. The kids network created video to promote Saturday's Kids' Choice Awards. Wal-Mart, a show sponsor, provided the TV time, set up related in-store displays and is selling exclusive Kids' Choice Awards products, such as CDs, says Leigh Anne Brodsky, Nickelodeon consumer products president.

• Unilever's Dove. The beauty care maker also has created custom advertising tailored for Wal-Mart TV. One ad, a part of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, has Wal-Mart workers proudly talking about their body curves. Unilever has dramatically increased its use of Wal-Mart TV in the past few years, says Joe Cavaliere, Unilever's head of customer development.

While there was time when many in the industry speculated that Wal-Mart was using strong-arm tactics to coerce packaged goods manufacturers to advertise on their network, the general wisdom today is that with a more compelling network and more generally complacent viewing audiences, the digital signage network is a much better value, and a great opportunity to reach some otherwise unreachable consumers.

Of course, not everyone things the network is a good thing, as evidenced by this comment left at the USA Today site:

Does anyone else find this whole "Walmart TV" thing kind of creepy ? Of all of the annoying things that Walmart does,this is one of the worst. I am tired of being pitched to. I want to shop and not have this "Big Brother" screen up there telling me what I need.

As Wal-Mart, Target and others expand their use of in-store digital media systems, this concern will come up again. Likewise when they start getting serious about mobile marketing and try to beam content to shoppers' cell phones and PDAs. But for now, I'm encouraged by the risks and experiments that some marketers have been willing to run by taking advantage of the strengths of in-store digital signage. My hope is that as more marketers see what Wal-Mart and friends are doing, they might be willing to open up a little.

Other articles about Wal-Mart TV include:
Wal-Mart and Saatchi X to rethink the store experience
Wal-Mart: In-Store Media is the Most Important Channel
Is Wal-Mart's in-store TV network really more effective than TV?

Tags: Wal-Mart TV, PRN, digital signage, in-store TV

Calvin Klein launches new brand with interactive electronic billboards

Calvin Klein recently launched its new IN2U fragrance line in Toronto by buying time on a huge electronic billboard in Yonge-Dundas Square, right next to Canada's busiest mall, the EatonCentre (with its wacky Canadian spelling). According to this article at PR-Inside, The question "What are you in 2?" was displayed in 20-second ads during a two week teaser period before the fragrance was launched, and viewers were encouraged to text in a response that would be displayed live (or nearly-live) on the billboard.

No word on results, or even the total number of people who participated during the 2-week run, or whether CK plans to do this sort of thing again in the future.

I've seen or heard about at least a dozen buzz marketing campaigns that had people text a response to see it appear on a huge digital billboard (most often in Times Square), and while they make a cool demo and certainly attract the attention of the kinds of people that would like to see their name up in lights, I've always wondered about their efficacy (mostly because I have no idea how much it costs to rent screen times on those behemoths, but I imagine it can't be cheap).

Tags: electronic billboards, buzz marketing, interactive billboards, Calvin Klein

India's in-store TV market heats up

While Europe and North America have hogged much of the at-retail media spotlight the past few years, we've still seen Australia, China and Japan make some noteworthy announcements from time to time. However, with it's billion-plus population and strong economic growth, India has been notably absent from the scene. Maybe it's the lack of infrastructure, government focus on only a few key cities, or the fact that less than 20% of retail activities are what you'd call "organized." But whatever the cause, India has been a sleeping giant in the retail media space, with some projects and trials going on, but no real, big news.

That makes this announcement by TAG Media more interesting, since an expansion to 200 sites or more puts them squarely in the big leagues. Granted TAG is a US-based operation, the rapid pace of retail expansion in India makes them a natural choice for all sorts of digital media. The press release notes:

TAG Media Network Inc. the first and largest national “In-Store Television Network” has extended TAG Media Network to Fabmall, Trinethra & Foodworld. This strategic partnership with the retail chains has developed Tag Media’s network to over 200 plus grocery stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets nationwide with a footfall of over 6 million per month. Consumers visiting, Spencer's, Fabmall & Foodworld can now experience the pleasure of shopping before they buy plus the opportunity to fulfill desires instantly.

Marketing-speak aside, a footfall of 6 million viewers/month is compelling, though it's unclear how much economic influence those 6 million have. While there's no mention of goals or ROI planning in the press release, it does suggest that TAG hopes to deploy another 500 screens in the coming months, bringing the total to 1,000 by year's end (which works out to an average of 5 per location, but no word on whether some places have one and others 20).

Tags: digital signage, retail media, TAG Media

aka.tv needs to renew their domain name

Either aka.tv has up and gone out of business without so much as a goodbye, or else somebody over at the industry's favorite news site (aside from us, of course), has forgotten to renew their domain name. Since they use the exotic .tv TLD, as opposed to a regular .com, .net or .co.uk, you can't use a good tool like Better Whois to query the owner. Instead, you have to rely on a much less informative Verisign tool that notes only the following:

Domain Name: AKA.TV
Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Whois Server: whois.enom.com
Name Server: DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Status: CLIENT-XFER-PROHIBITED
Updated Date: 19-mar-2007
Creation Date: 18-mar-2004
Expiration Date: 18-mar-2008
Last update of whois database: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 08:01:19 EDT

They more than likely just forgot to renew their domain name (or had their registrar go out of business, which happens from time to time), so hopefully this should get resolved shortly.

Has anybody heard differently?

[2007-03-23 UPDATE]: Looks like the site's back up. Per Barnaby's comment below, it appears it was just a technical glitch.

IconNicholson debuts virtual mirrors at Bloomingdales

I just posted an article to the In-Store & Retail Media News blog about IconNicholson's interactive mirrors, which were debuted at the NRF and were being demonstrated at Bloomingdales in New York (according to this article from the New York Times). The NYT says:

[The] interactive mirror prototype was set up for three days in the Lepore department at Bloomingdale’s (the department store said it was interested to see customer response). Clients who were trying on Lepore items were invited to use their cellphones to call or text friends and ask them to log onto a Web site where they could see a live video feed of the outfits being tried on.

For those who did not want to contact friends, a few Lepore employees and friends were logged on to send instant messages on the styles (“Did you know that green is the new black?”) and suggest other items that might work (“Try this jacket with your dress”).

Since it's also kiosk and digital signage related, I felt the cross-post appropriate. Note to anybody thinking of getting into corporate/business blogging: don't use Blogger. It's a fine tool for personal blogs, but lacks important features like categories that forces you to maintain multiple blogs, which can get a bit inconvenient at times like this :)

More digital signs are using sound, says Pro AV Magazine

Pro AV Magazine, as its name implies, tends to focus on the nuts-and-bolts aspects of all sorts of high-tech projects, and digital signage has been no exception. In a recent article, John McKeon took a look at the use of audio in digital signage projects, primarily from the angle of the common problems that arise from many audio installations, and the solutions that people have come up with to solve them. For example, audio fatigue, one of the most commonly cited problems with in-store audio, can obviously be remedied with very long audio loops that don't repeat. But for the technically minded, one could also install highly directional sound via hypersonic speakers or sound bells, which can allow audio to be delivered to specific locations without constantly annoying the staff.

As one might expect, much of the article features insights on speaker types and placements, and comments from various industry experts about different ways to solve the audio conundrum. Mixed into it, though, was this quote from Kari Mettala, CEO of the Finnish loudspeaker company Panphonics:

"Right now we are on the verge of a boom concerning audio in digital signage networks.

"The driving force is content. Content is king. It’s expensive to produce, and advertisers would like to use the same content as they use in other electronic media.”

One result, says Mettala, is a call for "all aspects of the content to be on the same level, meaning you need to have a TV-like experience in the grocery store, including the sound."

While I agree that content is the most important element of a digital signage network, that's very different from saying that merely reproducing an existing medium like TV in the retail environment is going to produce good results. In fact, if there's anything that we know at this point, it's that using TV-oriented content at retail for the purpose of advertising is not going to work very well. Re-use branding elements. Re-purpose existing messages and premises. But don't pull a spot from your TV lineup, run it in a store, and expect it to do anything. A shopper's modus operandi at retail is very, very different than at home, so expecting her awareness state and media consumption habits to be the same in both places is a major mistake.

I'm sure that Mettala was simply trying to drive home the point that a multi-media experience utilizing both sight and sound can have a pronounced effect on the impact of a digital signage system, the "re-use old assets" mantra is still common in our industry, and needs to be approached with an understanding of the differences between in-home and out-of-home advertising media.

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

Focus Media to buy Allyes AdNetwork

Focus Media Holding Ltd., China's largest out-of-home advertising company, said it will buy Internet advertising company Allyes AdNetwork for up to $300 million, to expand its presence in China's blisteringly hot online advertising market, according to this article in the Hollywood Reporter (of all places).

I'm one of those people who watches Focus Media very closely, and when they do anything interesting something compels me to examine it very closely. While they still move a huge amount of content via a sneakerNet of low-wage workers swapping out DVDs and solid state flash drives, it's no secret that they're starting to deploy remotely-managed systems to new locations, so there's that to keep an eye on. We've also seen them acquire numerous smaller competitors and try their hand at non-digital outdoor advertising. But this most recent acquisition is one of the most interesting to me.

While the obvious benefit is an immediate entrance into Internet advertising and a sudden increase in revenues, Focus may have (knowingly or not) put themselves in a position to increase the performance and penetration of their out-of-home ad service in a few years. I've been wondering for some months now whether Google's acquisition of YouTube is the beginning of a killer app for digital signage displays, especially since it looks like they've been trying to patent certain elements common to many digital signage networks. With its acquisition, Focus Media has essentially purchased the Google-like bits and pieces that could allow it to run its own massive real-world auction-based advertising system. While the synergies aren't quite as great as they could be for a hypothetical Google-like service (since Google could work with many networks without necessarily having to pay for their deployment or maintenance), Allyes gives Focus the ability to gain immediate revenues and marketshare in Internet -- where they haven't really been spending much time to date -- with an eye on improving their existing out-of-home network in the future.

Tags: Focus Media, Allyes, digital signage, out-of-home advertising

Pre-film ads more acceptable than TV ads?

It seems counterintuitive to me, but according to a recent study conducted by Arbitron, frequent moviegoers indicated that they preferred pre-film ads at the theater to regular television commercials. This paragraph from a Mediaweek writeup sums it up nicely:

Frequent moviegoers find commercials that air prior to movies more acceptable than ads on television, according to a new study from Arbitron. More than half of frequent moviegoers (those who attended more than five movies in the past three months), or 53 percent, find advertising before the movie acceptable compared to 46 percent who found TV ads more acceptable.

One wonders if infrequent moviegoers feel differently. I could see an argument for either case (or maybe Arbitron knows but isn't telling; I haven't read the report). On the one hand, infrequent moviegoers might look at it more like a special treat, and could therefore be less tolerant of commercial interruptions during their indulgent period. On the other hand, I would think that frequent moviegoers would be more annoyed, since they're the ones who would be exposed to the most commercials.

News like this bodes well for companies like the newly-public National Cinemedia, and the in-theater advertising market is growing at an extremely fast clip right now. In 2005, the Cinema Advertising Council noted that on-screen advertising in movie theaters grew 21.1%, to $452.6 million. While still chump change compared to the budget for TV ads (which, by comparison, was $74 billion last year), it's one of the fastest growing advertising segments right now, and may have implications for other forms of out-of-home marketing.

Tags: out-of-home adverising, movie commercials, theater advertising

AdSpace says in-mall digital signage works

AdSpace has issued a release featuring the conclusions from several months of research revolving around their digital signage installations in 45 malls across the US. While the link on their site doesn't appear to work yet, Brandweek has a good summary featuring some of the findings. The study surveyed 400 people 13 and above, only at the Westfield Trumbull Shopping Center in Trumbull, Conn. Key findings include:

• 17% of women and 10% of the general mall population made a purchase based on sales items they saw promoted on the digital signage network during their trip to the mall.
• 75% of women noticed the screen while 52% of women ages 18-54 look at it.
• 36% of respondents recalled seeing an ad for Nintendo, while 23% recalled seeing an ad for Gold Toe socks.
• An average of 56% of respondents said they were more likely to go to malls with the Adscreen Mall Network because of the screen content.

It would appear that the type of product doesn't seem to have a large impact on recall. Low-cost, impulse buy products like socks have a good recall rate, even though we very infrequently see outside advertisements for Gold Toe. Nintendo, on the other hand, had an appreciably higher recall rate, but they're a darling brand right now, with significant cross-media advertising campaigns and frequent mention in everything from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.

Also, we don't have a lot of information about the methodology used to actually determine whether somebody made a purchase solely as the result of seeing an ad, versus somebody who may have already been primed to purchase and was encouraged by the ad. Since the results came from only one mall, it's safe to say that cross-mall promotion split tests were out of the question, and the Brandweek article seems to indicate that intra-mall split tests weren't used either, with the researchers instead trusting shopper interviews for their information.

While I'm always happy to see companies publishing numbers, AdSpace's modus operandi is obviously to sell ads, so self-supplied metrics about the power of their network are always suspect. That's not to say that I think AdSpace is lying -- in fact, I think mall-based advertising can be quite powerful when used properly -- but without some additional context, and more importantly without properly executed controlled experiments to build real credibility into the metrics, I don't think outside companies can safely draw conclusions of any sort based on the supplied information.

Maybe next time :)

Tags: digital signage, mall advertising, out-of-home advertising, AdSpace

SeeSaw to launch online ad buy platform for digital signage

ADWEEK notes that SeeSaw Networks, a company that allows media buyers to purchase ad time on multiple disparate digital signage networks at once, is stepping up its efforts by launching seesawads.com, a web-based marketplace for digital sign media buys. By joining together any number of smaller networks into one quasi-cohesive ad "platform," SeeSaw is attempting to address one of the critical shortcomings of many digital signage networks today: unless they're big (and I mean really big), many advertisers are either unaware of these networks' benefits or uninterested in them because it can be hard to deal with the myriad of different business and technical rules to place an ad. Plus, with a merging of networks, SeeSaw gains access to a broad array of demographics and a large slice of the population. According to the ADWEEK article:

SeeSaw's six affiliates allow advertisers to aggregate digital sign inventory from more than 10,000 lifestyle venues across 205 markets. The company's current affiliate roster skews toward younger demos in health clubs, sports bars and universities, but SeeSaw also has substantial avails in grocery stores, retailers and travel centers. Plans call for expanding to target Hispanic and business demographics.

Tags: SeeSaw Networks, digital signage, out-of-home advertising, retail media

Nielsen GPS-enabled media tracking system measures eyeballs outdoors

I know I've read articles about this type of service before, but Branding Unbound has a nice writeup of Nielsen's latest attempt to measure outdoor media consumption using GPS-enabled tracking devices. Here's the summary of how it works:

[The company] recruited 750 volunteers who agreed to carry the device, called the Npod, or Nielsen Personal Outdoor Device, everywhere they went for 10 days.

Participants, prescreened to establish demographic profiles, allowed their every movement to be tracked and recorded – like an automated digital version of those Nielsen diaries of old. Every 20 seconds, the Npod captured each user’s latitude and longitude, while a computer system compared the data with the coordinates of 12,000 “geo-coded” outdoor signs in Chicago, including bus shelters, standard posters, billboards and overhead signs.

To establish the user’s likely exposure to an outdoor advertisement, the system applies a mind-boggling number of variables – including driver speed, the angle of the display on the road, its distance from the curb, the distance from which the display is first visible, the height of the display, whether it’s illuminated or obstructed, and so on – as users enter “impact zones,” or the point of impression.

Nielsen knows that ¾ of the people who travel under a 200-square-foot sign above a highway overpass actually look at it, while only 30% of those who drive past a bus shelter actually see it.

Using that and other similar insights, Nielsen can then use the collected data to calculate more traditional reach and frequency numbers, which can be used for planning purposes. Given how quickly the out-of-home advertising market is growing, it's not surprising to see these kinds of advanced methodologies being deployed to determine the true impact of outdoor media. To me, the holy grail (and a frightening prospect at the same time) would be combining the impression data for specific users with geolocation data for the specific items being advertised (if they're physical goods, of course). So, for example, how many people drive past the billboard for the local IHOP, and then wind up turning off of the exit to frequent the place for a short stack and cup o' joe?

Another interesting question is how this system will ever be made to work with electronic billboards, which are starting to become more common (though they still account for only a very tiny fraction of all billboard and out-of-home media sites). With a static billboard, you know exactly what's being displayed at all times. With an electronic billboard, you'd have to cross-reference the device's playback log to determine which ad was being shown at the time the individual was looking at it.

You know, because the basic system wasn't complex enough.

Tags: billboards, out-of-home advertising, media measurement

TAP brings social media, user-created content to in-bar digital signage

In a move that could result in any number of hilariously disastrous outcomes, bar and restaurant signage network operator TAP.tv has created a website where users can upload their own content, and then have it be displayed on in-bar digital signage by sending an SMS message. As this article at Digital Signage Today notes,

As with other video-sharing sites, users visit a Web site to upload their video and review and share clips. Via a simple text message command in any TAP.tv bar, they now can also play their video on TV.

"Every sports bar has weekly college and pro games," said Michael Gonzalez, manager of the John Barleycorn’s chain in Chicago. "But this new service allows my customers to record and share highlights of their own weekly softball games, try their hand at stand-up comedy, or impress their friends with their stupid human tricks. It personalizes the bar experience, and encourages use of the bar as a meeting place."

On the one hand, this could be a pretty cool way to bring social media into social venues, and has the potential to add a new form of entertainment to the relatively stagnant bar scene. On the other hand, without really, really good content filters (and admittedly I don't know anything about the system, how one uploads videos, or what mechanism puts it to the screens afterwards), there are so many ways that this could end badly. You can use your imagination (and I'm certainly not going to give anybody any ideas here), but let's just hope that the TAP.tv guys have given some thought to the kinds of social videos that many bar-goers would a) bother to generate, and b) get a kick out of seeing in public.

Tags: digital signage, TAP.tv, bar signage, out-of-home advertising

3M, Retravision and Telstra shoot for digital signage down under

A few months ago there was some pretty big news out of 3M and Australian phone company Telstra where Telstra had agreed to license 3M's digital signage software for... something. Truth is, nobody (except for the involved parties, I'm sure) was quite certain what the news meant for the burgeoning digital signage industry down under.

Today things are a bit clearer, thanks to this article at Computer World outlining the companies' plans, including a partnership with major electrical goods retailer Retravision for the first major deployment:

After an initial pilot involving four stores in separate states, Retravision will have 115 stores and 6000 screens fitted out with the solution by December with plans for a complete 400-plus store rollout across Australia and New Zealand next year.

While the project is billed as having major in-store advertising potential, it's clear that the digital signage is going to be used extensively for remote training and corporate messaging. The article also goes on to mention that the software is hosted in one of Telstra's datacenters, and the service is provided over their IP pipes (they've also been preparing for a wave of IPTV services, so it's likely they have the capacity, at least to the more populated areas).

So in the end we're essentially left with the major incumbent phone/data/mobile carrier offering turn-key digital signage service over its existing high-speed data lines. I have to hand it to 3M: they did a good job putting that deal together, as it gives them a pretty tight grip on the Australian market. Granted, they only have about as many people on the entire continent as there are in the city of Los Angeles, but even so, it's a pretty impressive play with some potentially large upsides for all involved parties.

Tags: 3M, Telstra, Retravision, digital signage

GSBC promises world domination, Fortune-500 position, all-nude revue

Ok, I can't verify that last part, but after reading this marvel of a press release, can you blame me? I know that sometimes I let my competitive nature get the better of me and I feel the need to bash on some poor PR, but in this particular case, I don't think I could do any worse than to simply request you read it. Look at this:

Ronald Flynn then said "using and applying the current contracts and our current target markets we estimate that GSBC will have revenue over the next five years of $43.2 billion USD. Our revenue model coupled with our global acquisitions will help us dominate as we own the hardware and now the software and as I've stated before we want to corner the digital signage business.

and this:

After the introduction, the CEO of GSBC stated, "I would like to thank everyone involved with GSBC for your continuous support and want to make it clear that our initial target market will start in Asia. We are convinced that NET.TV which is listed on the German DAX, under the symbol WGJ.F and in America under the symbol NNNV.PK, will most definitely corner the market in Europe. We will have over the next 36 months a large market share around the world and will continue our quest to become the largest digital signage company on the planet."

Well, it's nice to have a goal. Then there's this:

Later that evening, GSBC kicked of the event with many Thai superstars such as Pamela Baudin, Thailand Superstar Show, dancers, and singers. The event lasted until midnight.

Money well spent, I'm sure.

Forget for a minute that the press release reads as is if it were written by a 3rd grader doing a report on "what I watched daddy do at work today." Forget that every other sentence starts with " Ronald Flynn." And even forget that you've probably never even heard of most of the companies that are preparing to own the digital signage market, crushing the competition into little more than dust. $43 billion in revenue? To put that in perspective, Google did about $10.6B last year, and Cisco did about $28.5B. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest GSBC's projections might be a tad optimistic.

But then again, if they were (completely hypothetically speaking, of course) preparing for some kind of stock pump-and-dump operation, all this posturing might make sense. You'd have to be targeting a very specific group of wealthy but relatively unintelligent investors, but I understand that there are some of those out there.

And of course, there is always the outside chance that GSBC really does have something amazing cooking that they've been keeping under wraps and will soon unleash upon the digital signage industry. I'd much prefer to see that, in fact, since healthy competition will do more good for the industry than an ugly scam will.

[2007-02-16 11AM UPDATE]: Dave Haynes at the sixteen:nine blog has summed up his opinion on the matter with an oddly appropriate image.

Tags: digital signage

A different kind of digital signage may be on the way

When we talk about "digital signage," usually it's in reference to a moving image on a screen or screens placed in out of home environments. But a promising new technology from Fujitsu may energize the static poster and display market by providing low-cost, low-power, full-color electronic paper in the next few years. While companies like E-Ink have been touting such paper for years now, it has still remained too low resolution and low-color to be used for serious graphic display. Should Fujitsu's tech pan out, that could all change, with poster slideshows becoming more prevalent as the stuff takes off. For those of us looking for new and bigger screens to compete against today's LCD and plasma displays, we'll have to wait a bit longer, as Mike Nelson, general manager of sales for Fujitsu Europe noted that:

the technology, which can run on very little power, was not yet in a position to handle moving images and was therefore not a threat for LCD in the short term.

"LCD is much better at the moment for moving images, the update on here is relatively slow - about one second or so. That's OK for flicking through the pages of a book or newspaper but it would not be any good for video in its current state."

He added: "The technology is very similar to LCD screen technology except with a conventional LCD screen as soon as you remove the power the image goes.

"With this once the LCD has set the image it says there forever. With an A5 size screen I could change the image every two seconds for more than a year from the power in a single triple A battery."

Tags: E-ink, Fujitsu, electronic paper, digital signage