The concept of standardizing and packaging ad space from multiple DOOH networks to make media buys easier for agencies is becoming more and more prevalent. For this post I borrowed a smart headline from Rob Gorrie of AdCentricity, who commented on the overview of DOOH aggregators published on Digital Signage Today.

The idea of media aggregation is a relative novelty only in digital signage. Traditional media started using web sites for aggregation of media properties in the late 90s. Online media agencies began doing that almost since the beginning of Internet advertising. This trend was followed by the idea of cross-media exchanges and auctions, all of which successfully collapsed when the tech bubble burst.

What we are seeing today is a re-birth of the idea of media- and cross-media buying platforms, on a new qualitative level. However, when it comes to digital signage, its specific nature inevitably causes ‘aggravation’ of aggregation, at least in its early stages. If we follow Bill Yackey’s overview on Digital Signage Today, it becomes evident why.The trick with digital signage aggregation is that it has little value without an automated campaign execution (see points 4 and 5 in the workflow described in Bill’s article).

No affiliation with a big-name agency platform can resolve this issue, as such platforms deal mostly with the planning and buying aspects, and campaign execution is always based on a manual workflow. In all other media except digital signage campaign execution is a relatively mature process that does not involve complete and complex control at the receiving end. TV sets are controlled by viewers; radios are controlled by listeners, static billboards are updated once in a few weeks/months and are at the mercy of weather and vandals; magazines and newspapers are beyond control once they are distributed; PCs are controlled by users, etc.

Only in digital signage it is required and expected that one must enforce playback to a single screen in a network, fully control what’s showing when and account for it. Add several other networks – and you have a nightmare tech challenge for automation. Most traditional media and cross-media aggregators do not realize this until they try to do something with digital signage… And when they do… many of them give up the idea.

The solution is also obvious – DOOH aggregators must connect their cross-network planning and buying interfaces to a cross-network campaign execution (traffic) tool. My next statement is self-serving, but also true: there is only one such tool on the market today and it is called BroadSign Open API. So far it works only with BroadSign-powered networks (total of 160+networks in 25 countries), but this is only the first step. The technology is there. I invite you click here to learn more.

“Nearly five years in development, the Eyes On ratings will replace the decades-old practice of relying solely on traffic counts to put a value on outdoor ads. The ratings will, for the first time, provide discrete demographic data pertaining to around 400,000 units. The service will go a step further than TV and radio ratings to incorporate the number of persons likely to see an ad as they pass a display.

“It’s a dramatic improvement in outdoor measurement. Quite frankly, it puts us in a position of having a better measurement system than any other medium,” said Paul Meyer, president and COO of Clear Channel Outdoor.

Eyes On has broad support among outdoor media companies, agencies and advertisers, which worked closely with the TAB to design a ratings system uniquely suited to the outdoor medium.

Practically owners of the new system, media companies invested millions of dollars, effectively rejecting The Nielsen Co.’s GPS-based survey, which was tested in Chicago and Los Angeles.

The writing may be on the wall for Nielsen, but the research giant is not giving up. “We continue to talk to interested parties about our service, which offers superior results,” it said in a statement. “We think it’s the best answer for the U.S.” (Mediaweek is part of The Nielsen Co.)

The TAB is scheduled to release the first market, likely Chicago, in June, then report ratings for all 200 markets in late fall. Ratings will be issued twice a year, once to update audience estimates and the second time to take into account changes in inventory.

For outdoor, it’s a huge change that will affect every aspect of how the medium is bought and sold. Marketers will now have the kind of metrics they need to evaluate outdoor alongside other media. Planners will be able, market by market, to determine weight and take into account an outdoor mix of billboards, bus shelters and posters.

“It’s a sure thing advertisers will spend more,” said John Connolly, COO at Kinetic, the world’s largest out-of-home agency and part of WPP. “A lot of agencies use optimizers, and they’ve never been able to plug in out-of-home.”

“For a lot of clients, we’ve had to sell outdoor into the plan as a test. The new ratings could open up new categories and new advertisers to outdoor,” said Jill Nickerson, vp, director of out-of-home at Horizon Media. “Packaged goods have always wanted more validation and more measurement because they’re used to national broadcast.”

Out-of-home advertisers also will be able to aggregate local campaigns with more efficiency.
“We can promote ourselves as a national medium, particularly when you can compare CPMs across markets,” said Tony Jarvis, executive vp, global research at Clear Channel Outdoor,” reports MediaWeek.

It is not clear how Eyes On will affect measurements of digital billboards, but the elevation of OOH’s status as a whole to that of a viable and measurable medium and its broader inclusion in the media plans will certainly benefit the digital OOH segment. The introduction of Eyes On that follows the advances in measuring the effectiveness of internet advertising (notably – Google’s paid search marketing metrics) is essentially putting the TV industry on the defensive. Ironically, TV now has to play catch up with the new media, as advertisers demand at least the same level of transparency to the ad spend. The recent launch of C3 – or average commercial minute ratings for cable and network TV is regarded by many in the advertising community as an insufficient measure that would not last long. Some analysts think it will have to give way to a more modern and accurate way of tracking ad dollars.

The study, commissioned by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, was conducted late last year among 402 persons and seven digital billboards operating in Cleveland, Ohio.

Some significant findings of the research include:

• More than half of all Cleveland travelers notice digital billboards and the more a person commutes, the more likely they are to be aware of the displays.
• Public reaction to digital signage is positive. The billboard’s ability to display timely news, traffic, weather advisories and AMBER Alert notices makes the vast majority of commuters (over 80%) feel the digital signs provide an important community service.
• Digital billboards are an effective advertising platform. Over eight out of 10 travelers could successfully recall at least one of the ads running during the survey period and the majority of commuters agree digital billboards are a “cool way to advertise.”

Mediaweek, MediaPost and Media Buyer Planner covered the study (click on the links to read…)

You can download some key findings of the study here: Digital Billboards Study by Arbitron.

Ironically, it appears at this point that the conversion to digital, instead
of launching the TV industry into a new level of efficiency and prosperity,
might become another factor contributing to its current crisis. The TV is on
target to lose a large chunk of existing viewership. “About 42% of those
who’ll have no TV signal after the transition have no plans to do anything
about it,” says Consumer Union Senior Counsel Chris Murray, citing a
December survey by Consumer Reports (a quote from USA Today). That survey
also found that 36% of all consumers don’t know about digital TV conversion.
Most of the people who are aware misunderstand what it’s about or how it
will affect them, reports USA Today.

Even if the government campaign manages to raise awareness and improve the
numbers mentioned above, it is fair to assume that both the audience numbers
and the ad revenues will still be affected 12 months from now. We know TV
will not die; it will transform itself in order to survive. But while it
does, the advertisers’ trust in it will be further undermined.

When the magnitude of potential negative consequences of the conversion
sinks in, advertisers will have another good reason to have a closer look at
the alternatives, including Digital Out-of-Home (aka digital signage). By
the fall of 2009, I dare to predict from my backstage vantage point, this
medium will be considerably more mature, wide-spread, accepted and comparable in value
to any other media.

James is focusing on the fact that POS data analysis can help one define which type of content or specific content version resulted in better sales – and I totally agree with that. I would add, however, that, apart from the content, you can also test-change-analyze-change-test, etc. – all kinds of scheduling variations: was the day part picked right?; if there were several day parts, which one worked best?; was the frequency (loop saturation) right? was the overall loop length set right?; did the ad adjacency to other content play any role? did competitive ads or their absence have an impact?, etc.

There is more and more talk nowadays about reinforcing this type of campaign effectiveness analysis, that, by definition, can be done only in e-commerce and in retail digital signage. When such applications are standardized and mass produced they will pave the way for digital sigfnage to become part of mainstream media. 

“Daniel – great topic. We, at SeeSaw, whole-heartedly agree with the industry moving toward much greater accountability. It is refreshing to see your position that proof-of-play goes beyond logs of a playback device and needs to focus on playback at the screen level.

While we generally agree with your four components of an accountable digital signage reporting solution, we would respectfully add two additional factors: traffic and awareness. Traffic is represented the foot traffic passing by a specific location (the potential viewers) and awareness represents the percentage of people that are aware that a digital signage device is in place, displaying content. Everything in the system can operate perfectly, playback on the device is logged correctly, screens are on and displaying ads correctly – but without foot-traffic and awareness, there is no measurement of how many people actually SAW an ad.

By adding these two data components, the advertiser now has a more complete picture of their digital signage campaign’s performance. As Tom (Muniz) mentions, it’s imperative that standards be put forth by those looking to lead this industry.”

I think Ken brings a highly valid point: in order to get reliable impressions numbers, you need to measure the audience and match that data with the proof of play (rather, proof of display, as per Daniel’s definition).

The problem is, in the real world, a lot of networks have neither accurate proof of display stats, nor regularly updated audience measurements. The audience surveys are very expensive and are usually done only once in a few months or once a year at best. So, the accountability becomes fuzzy.

This could be resolved first of all by improving the proof of display reporting process, and, secondly, by implementing digital monitoring of viewership.

Digital cameras that capture every instance of a customer looking at a sign, the duration of eye contact, often even the age, gender and ethnicity of a viewer are already available on the market. The monitoring is real-time, and various types of reports can be generated based on that data. This new technology allows networks to deliver the ad impressions numbers as “hard” data, as opposed to the “soft” data, when only a sample of audience is polled by way of traditional exit interviews and then the results are extrapolated to the whole “universe”.

Such proof of performance can be sufficient to analyze the effectiveness of media spending in a non-retail environment. In retail, however, the ultimate goal is sales lift (see the previous post on the topic), so the campaign performance picture would be completed if sales conversion data is added to the two previous tiers, i.e., proof of display and audience measurements.

Earlier this year I proposed draft definitions of ”the three tiers of accountability” for in-store digital signage:

Tier I:
Proof of ad delivery: How many times was my ad displayed on the targeted screens, in what markets, locations, sites, and over which period of time? Such analysis requires robust proof-of-play reporting mechanisms. This level of accountability is critical for justifying billing per campaign and reconciling invoices. It also facilitates pricing your airtime, if you want to base it on the cost per ad play.

Tier II:
Proof of audience delivery: While my ads were served, how many customers had the opportunity to see them, or actually saw them? The trick here is: you cannot prove audience delivery without having accurate proof of ad delivery first.

Tier III:
Sales uplift measurement. This is the crowning achievement of advertising effectiveness analysis that has become easily available so far only in Internet advertising (when it is combined with e-commerce) and at properly set up in-store digital signage networks. It requires correlation between ad campaign data and POS data.

As my colleague Nurlan has been saying for years, digital signage has a strong advantage over broadcast media because of the fact that it can account for every ad played on every screen. Imagine if you could track with certainty every single time a commercial is displayed on every TV screen in the DMA when this TV set is on and tuned to the proper channel. Such tracking would be worth a lot of ad money, but it is not feasible for broadcast TV (except by way of expensive metering of sample audiences).

Well, the good news is that, in digital signage, near-real time tracking of each ad play on each screen (not just a player) can be a standard and automated procedure.

In order to take advantage of this, networks need to put in place the four components of a properly accountable digital signage reporting system:

1. Provide Proof of Display, not just proof of play. Proof of play is the term used in digital signage to describe the summary playback reports and the raw play logs. Proof of play is the equivalent of tearsheets in newspapers and of online impressions and click-through reports in pay-per-click marketing. While it seems obvious that proof of play should report on which ads were actually displayed on each screen and when, most of these reports only register which content was played by the playback device at best, not on the screens connected to it. If one or more of the screens are off or disconnected from the player, the proof of play would not detect that in many cases. This leads to the wrong count of ad plays, distorted count of impressions and the wrong conclusions in the post-campaign analysis. So by saying ‘provide Proof of Display versus proof of play’ we want to stress the importance of reporting of what really matters: playback at the screen level.

2. Audited Play Logs: most digital signage playback devices produce raw play logs that track what ad played, the date and time when it played and the duration of time it has played. In order to validate the accuracy of the entire reporting system, these play logs will need to be audited by a third party. Again, these audits register what’s being played on the actual screen, and then the results are compared to the play logs.

3. The Campaign Plan Report: the purpose of the campaign plan is to be able to provide a promise to the media buyer before they sign the ad contract. Using the characteristics of the network, one can generate a forward-looking plan that estimates how many times the ad will play in each targeted location. Having a Campaign Plan report with planned ad plays numbers will make it easier for you to justify your initial billing estimates.

4. The Campaign Performance Report: the campaign performance report aggregates the raw play logs for that campaign and presents the total results of the campaign against the “promise” made in the campaign plan report. The comparison between the planned plays and the achieved plays is how performance is calculated. The first 3 components are what make this report the basis for invoicing the media buy, make-goods or invoice reconciliation.

Based on my experience, the vast majority of digital signage networks out there do not have even two out of the four of the above components of a fully accountable digital signage reporting system.

Some networks charge a flat fee for a week-long, a month-long, three month-long, etc., campaign, based on approximate “impressions”, without providing any proof of play (or providing just an affidavit). Since the ways the impressions are calculated vary from network to network, such campaign cost estimates (and CPM values) are highly questionable.

Some provide a proof of play report, or play logs. As I mentioned earlier, most of the play logs, however, only report the fact that the player was on when the ad was supposed to play, not what played on the screens.

How is the industry getting away with it? I think the answer lies in the inherent appeal of digital signage as a medium. We see that even without any standards and metrics, retail digital signage and digital outdoor billboard networks are attracting more ad dollars every year.  I believe that, similar to the world of Internet advertising before it, digital signage will soon undergo a rapid shift where the wheat will be separated from the proverbial chaff.

The question for network operators then becomes: will your network be ready in time for this shift?

They had a big presence at the DSE show this spring in Chicago, and now they are doing a three-city road show focused very specifically onese kinds of opportunities.

Called TransVolve, the shows are set for tomorrow in New York and then the following week in LA. BroadSign will have people who will be hanging out and staring longingly at the free open bar at the show in LA.

LG’s description:

Learn from LG and other industry leading digital signage hardware, software and services companies how to maximize the use of digital signage to drive customer loyalty, increase profitability and drive sales. Grab the attention of your customer and don’t be left behind as you “Transvolve” your message to the public. 

You have to register to attend and for all you freeloaders out there, it will greatly enhance your chances of getting in if you are actually IN this industry and might buy something.  You could win a flat screen just by showing up, so bring you sister’s mini-van.

More details and registration here … 

Eric Kanagy, who blogs about his journey with his start-up RedPost, went to the Chicago show last week. He noted attendance was not all that great, so hopefully time and a little publicity will jump up the numbers.

“Once the test period has proven successful, 150 units will be rolled out across the selected tube stations from the start of 2008.

The XTP system will only project images and not sound at this stage, but is expected to reduce 4.1 tonnes of waste.”, says the article.

Sounds like a good week for the outdoor industry. Digital billboards were ruled ‘permissible’ in the US on Monday, and now – the digital posters in the underground.

The CBS Outdoor web site calls it:

• World’s biggest outdoor contract
• Investment to change the face of London’s Tube network
• New innovation to establish digital outdoor as a mainstream media

The web site says further: “The London Underground contract, the largest of its kind in the world will run for 8.5 years and includes management and maintenance of all advertising locations across London’s Tube network – consisting of 33,000 poster sites at 275 London Underground stations, as well as 88,000 panels inside Tube trains. The Victoria Coach Station contract includes advertising rights at what is the busiest station in the UK.”

According to AVInteractive, the technology for the contract is supplied by Digital Projection International (DPI).

Potentially, digital signage in retail can offer the same or even higher accountability than online advertising. Once the customers are in the store, they have a broader choice of goods to buy and they are more responsive to relevant product info because they are already in the purchasing mode. So, it seems obvious that you should be able to look at the digital signage campaign schedules and content data and see if the campaign had any effect on the Point-of-sale transactions.

Sounds easy? Not quite, say the experts interviewed: Bill Gerba, June Peoples and Dick Trask. There are challenges to overcome, such as: correlation of large volumes of non-standardized data, reluctance on the part of some retailers to grant access to their POS reports and the need to integrate digital signage in the overall in-store marketing strategy.

But still, I would say, it’s not rocket science… and both databases are digital after all. I think it’s fair to expect someone to come in and make it easy to track sales uplift against digital signage campaigns within the next 2-3 years. DS-IQ seems to be firmly in the lead in this field. I wonder why nobody else is claiming this niche opportunity.