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Social networking sites are getting a lot of attention nowadays, due to their explosive growth. I agree, it’s a huge phenomenon; all of a sudden - everyone is on either Facebook or MySpace, or both, my family included. USA Today published an article today, saying that social networks will assume the role of TV networks, and marketers will benefit from placing ads on these sites.
Sounds fantastic, but I think something important is missing here. Let’s see. Have social networking web sites accumulated massive numbers of users? - Yes, they did. Do those users constitute the demographics most desired by advertisers: young, affluent, educated people? - No doubt about it. Now, will the social networking sites become an effective advertising vehicle? - This is where I am not so sure.
Online advertising has absorbed the largest part of ad dollars shifted from traditional media. However, the lion’s share of that money goes into Search Marketing - the most proven model for online so far (and the lion’s share of Search Marketing budgets go to Google AdWords):
Where do Facebook, MySpace and the like fit in here? They will probably compete with many others in the display ads category.
The problem I see with social networking audience is essentially the same as with TV viewers: they come to those web sites to socialize, whereas viewing or clicking on ads, no matter how relevant the messages are, is the last thing on their minds. Much like viewers turn TVs on to watch programs, not ads. So you are still stuck with the same predicament: no one really wants your ads, except for the media owners - the social network sites themselves.
By contrast, people who see sponsored links in their Google search results, view them as relevant timely information to help them find what they are looking for… Searchers actually appreciate those ads, and often click through them. This explains the high effectiveness of Search Marketing and its unstoppable boom.
As a TechCrunch blogpost put it, commenting on the above table: “The numbers look great for Google, with paid search advertising expected to hover at around 40% of the total online ad spend through to 2012, increasing as a whole from $8.6 billion in 2007 to $16.59 billion in 2012, a 92.9% increase over 5 years.”
Online advertising was propelled to its current height and market share after Google finally figured out a business model that harmonized the interests of users and advertisers. It worked like magic. Social networks, however, are yet to figure such a model out. Similar problems hamper the growth of online display ads. In many cases display advertising is bought just because it falls under a section in the media plan with a trendy title ‘digital’, which in the advertising lingo is synonymous with ‘internet’, while the metrics are still quite vague.
As we know, the only other advertising medium, apart from Paid Search, that has been defying recession is Digital Out-of-Home. Unlike the case of TV or social networking web sites, the business model here is pretty straightforward and fits the interests of both consumers and marketers:
- modern consumers are pressed for time and are receptive to brief info that may help them make a purchase decision, while on-the-go. They are NOT annoyed, because they are not interrupted. Therefore, the acceptance of DOOH advertising is much higher.
- operators can make sure that the screens are on and show the right content, therefore - the proof-of-play is predictable and measurable.
- the audience is more easily measurable. New technologies will soon allow high-precision, passive (automated) digital audience measurements.
- the ROI is more direct: one can trace an ad from proof-of-display to proof-of-audience - to sales increase, as the advertised products are usually not far from the screens.
My point is, I love the phenomena of Facebook and MySpace and they probably have a great future, but at this moment I wouldn’t give them a penny from my ad budget. There are much more viable advertising alternatives to TV networks than social networks as they are today.
May 12th, 2008
I’ve consulted on hundreds of digital signage deployments and implementations globally over the last 5 years and a specific recurring structure has emerged with regards to technology, content and workflows for managing these networks. The purpose of this article is to identify the basics of a digital out of home network for newcomers who wish to skip the learning curve or for those that wish to focus on the core elements that make a digital signage network a money making success.
The sea of decisions that must be made before spending the capital to deploy a network can easily lead an operator towards focusing on technology instead of focusing on building an effective communication medium.
My team and I (BroadSign Solutions) have had the benefit of repeatedly following the digital signage learning curve vicariously through the hundreds of entrepreneurs that have evaluated BroadSign Suite for its application to their business. This includes many of the members of OVAB and other industry leaders and pioneers. While there are many variables involved and decisions to be made to develop a digital signage network, there are not so many that they can’t be listed in a blog article, such as this. In order to create an effective communication medium, arguably the only real purpose of a digital signage network, a network operator must make all the decisions in the design of a digital signage network from the perspective of the audience. Since the experience of the audience is first and foremost a function of the venue, let’s list some example venues so we can see the variety of digital signage applications and use them as examples:
- Transportation: trains, airplanes, buses, in transit, boarding, unboarding, arrivals, departures, ticketing, lounges, concourse, …
- Retail: supermarket, convenience store, big box, outdoor facing, entrance, checkout, aisles, departments, freezer, deli, …
- Healthcare: hospitals, doctors, dentists, veterinary, surgery, waiting areas, in rooms, …
- Hospitality: hotels, resorts, casino, outdoor facing, lobby, elevators, in rooms, …
- Food/Drink: food courts, quick-serve, restaurants, coffee, bars, clubs, buffet, restrooms, …
- Outdoor: pedestrian, automotive, train line periphery, downtown, highway, tourism destination
- Active: ski, golf, gym, skate park, chair lift, pro-shop, cart, lobby, change rooms, …
The above list is by no means comprehensive, so it is easy to see that digital signage has virtually unlimited amounts of applications. So if I am going to deliver on my promise in the intro of this article, I must answer the question:
What is the common framework for all the different applications of digital signage?
We can start with the workflows and processes involved in the growth and operation of a digital signage network, since this is universal to all of applications:
1. Deployment / Operations
a) Planning and Selection
Before a deployment project can begin execution, one must select the technology vendors and service providers. This usually involves standardizing on a software platform, a small set of playback devices models, display technologies and to select a team of integrators to perform on-site installation and maintenance. One good practice at this stage is to create an operating system image that is pre-configured with the playback software and system drivers so all player PCs can be treated as identical interchangeable clones, i.e. a toaster.
b) Survey and Profiling
A site survey is performed to identify the tasks required for permanent installation of the display on location. For example, locating parts of the venue’s structure which can withstand the weight of the display equipment and the location where the player PCs will be installed and the whole wired together and connected to a network. It is also at this stage that the display units that represent the channels at that location can be built up in the software and categorized according to geographic location, demographic or other criteria for later use in targeting advertisements. Typically, the catalog of criteria used for targeting/grouping is defined by marketing for usage by the ad sales team.
c) Installation and Commissioning
If the site survey is completed and comprehensively planned, installation should simply be step-by-step execution by certified professionals. One or more players are installed at the location and they are plugged into a power source and a network source. The display technology is installed and is connected to the player. Approximately 50% of BroadSign powered players are collocated with the display while an equal amount are stored in a dedicated location and wired to the displays via a video distribution network such as video-over-cat5. If the network supports audio, the same statistics apply to the sound system. Activating a newly commissioned site is often the easiest aspect of the deployment process which is associating the player PC system to the display unit profile created in the earlier step.
d) Monitoring and Troubleshooting
Once a new site is commissioned, all the players installed at that location are added to the monitoring and troubleshooting pool. In the field, several revenue-compromising issues could arise that need to be dealt with as quickly as possible. There are 3 main classes of issues:
- Content issues: content is not downloaded yet, content errors such as missing codecs, content play time is truncated, etc.
- Display issues: display is not powered on, display is not on the correct input, display volume is not functional, etc.
- Player issues: player is missing in action, player is having difficulties polling, player has restarted unexpectedly, etc.
While most issues are either solved automatically by the software, e.g. content downloads, or for notification purposes only, e.g. player restarted unexpectedly, some may require you to send personnel on-site to replace units. One example of this is if the notification is the result of irreparable hardware failure. Since, from a remote monitoring system, it is impossible to distinguish connectivity issues from hardware failure (since both mean the player is no longer polling the server), programming monitoring thresholds is integral to proper issue escalation so you don’t spend an inordinate amount of money dispatching field technicians. Of course, another part of protecting against these costs is to select extremely durable hardware.
2. Media Placement / Advertising
a) Loop Strategy
A network’s content strategy is primarily driven by the nature of the audience at the venue. The first part of a content strategy is to determine the loop length, which should be equal to the average audience dwell time. The logic behind this is that each slot in the loop has an equal opportunity to be seen by the average viewer. In some cases, the loop length is based on other criteria, but this is typically combined with a default loop saturation (how many times the message appears in the loop) that achieves the same objective, e.g. a 6 minute dwell time location may have a 1 hour loop, but ads scheduled to play 10 times an hour by default, which means they play every 6 minutes.
The next step is to determine how much non-advertising content is necessary in the loop, where the rest of the loop is reserved for advertising (either promotional or for sale to third party advertisers). This non-advertising content should be beneficial to the audience and should serve the purpose of the real-estate owner, which may or may not be the network owner. For example, an office tower network may wish to have business news and a healthcare network may run health related content. Acquiring and licensing this content should be factored in as part of a network’s operational costs and is integral to its marketing strategy.
b) Ad Inventory and Rate Card
Typically, a media company will price its ad space by calculating its costs, adding a profit margin and then distributing that value to its prime day parts and locations. This means that, as long as that primetime is sold, the company will remain profitable. Assuming that primetime is desirable by advertisers and easy to sell, this also means that any remaining time that is sold is also pure profit. The next stage is to create a rate card for the network in a currency that allows advertisers to compare it to other media, for example a CPM value.
The rate card is intimately tied to the content strategy and campaign execution capabilities of the software platform. The rate card is a catalog of media packages chosen by marketing and sales to represent typical media buys on their network. As media packages are used to book campaigns, they carve out of the available ad inventor. Sales management is expected to monitor ad inventory, or avails, in order to focus the sales team on undersold venues and to resolve overbooking conflicts. Typically, a media package has the following components:
- Pricing, e.g. a CPM value
- Targeting criteria, e.g. a specific demographic or market
- Flight duration, e.g. 4 weeks
- Slot duration and frequency of appearance in the loop, e.g. 4 slots of 15 seconds each
- Other premium options, e.g. sponsorship, adjacency rules, exclusivity
c) Content Management and Campaign Execution
Digital signage is a communication medium and is one of the best media platforms for targeted campaign execution. The campaign execution workflow has 4 main components:
- Campaign: this is the stage at which you reserve slots in a series of targeted display units, for a defined flight period, day part and frequency in the loop. Refer to the earlier section on rate card and ad inventory for more details.
- Content: once content is created, it is uploaded into the system and undergoes quality control and approvals. It is at this stage that the content is ensured to playback properly (required formats) and will be of acceptable quality for the display (required dimensions)
- Schedules: content is tied to a reservation via playback rules, such as play times (time range, date range, week days), e.g. the same campaign can have a schedule for the “coming soon” creative of a movie trailer and a different schedule for a “now playing” version.
- Categories: another class of playback rule that helps define the content’s position in the loop. Categories can be used for separation, segmentation, preemption or synchronization, e.g. separate Coke ads from other ads in the beverage category or set a sunblock ad to synchronize with the beginning of the weather segment.
d) Effectiveness Measurement
In order to determine CPM, first one must conduct some formal research by a respected third party media research company, such as Arbitron. They perform compliance audits, which measures the effectiveness of content delivery to the display, and they also perform viewership analysis, which measures the effectiveness of audience delivery after the message leaves the display (and sound system, if applicable). These and their other services will help a media company’s sales and marketing efforts, for example to describe a media package as a compelling and measurable audience.
In an advertising sales environment, campaign execution is preceded by a proposal and contract negotiations. During this stage, an insertion order is generated which contains the price breakdown of each campaign in the media buy and the all-important planned number of impressions and ad repetitions that they will generate. During and after campaign execution, an affidavit report is generated which compares the original planned amounts with the actual amounts as measured by the software.
In a non-advertising network, effectiveness measurement is more directly measurement of sales uplift, which may involve correlating ad play times with sales records from the point of sale.
Effectiveness measurement (ad delivery, audience delivery) is key to getting on the media plan, but it is even more important for the media research to yield outstanding results; this is directly a product of great design decisions.
Let’s chunk down design decisions into 3 categories:
- Audience Experience: the content and audio-video presentation must be built to harmonize with the reason the audience is at the venue, e.g. end-cap signage in retail brings awareness to the product and allows the consumer to dig deeper and find out more about the product if this is desired.
- On-site Infrastructure: mounting, wiring and physical protection are a function of the venue’s construction details, e.g. in a train car, signage must be physically secured from vandalism and must be connected wirelessly to its network update source.
- Software Platform: the capabilities of the selected software platform drive the integrity of the design and need to meet all operational requirements, e.g. if a software platform cannot support triggered content playback, then you cannot execute on a design that includes interactive signage.
Each layer or peel of the onion, so to speak, puts restrictions on the layer above it. For example, if the on-site infrastructure prohibits installing a display at eye level to the audience, this will filter down to the audience experience in terms of visibility. This being said, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, an effective communication medium is designed from the audience’s experience. While I will list details about on-site infrastructure and network architecture, my primary focus will be on answering the following question:
What properties of a digital signage application are part of the audience’s experience?
In short, the audience’s experience is primarily a result of the venue and a great digital signage application capitalizes on providing an easy to consume message that is relevant to the audience. Easy to consume and relevant means that it is easy to see (and hear, if this is applicable), that the message can be viewed in a measurable and predictable fashion, that it can be viewed without endangering an audience member (e.g. taking their eyes off where they are going), and that it does not disrupt them from achieving their objective at the venue. This is important enough that I wish to analyze it in a little more detail from 3 perspectives:
1. The Relevance of the Message :
It is imperative to remember that signage in an out-of-home network is secondary to the purpose of the audience at the venue. An easy example is that a consumer in a retail network is there to purchase products, so information about those products near where they can be added to a shopping cart. For an advertiser, being able to target their message to locations and times where it is contextually relevant is not only good for sales, but is also good for the brand since messages that are contextual are considered helpful and welcome.
Another aspect of message relevance is related to the non-advertising content, such as news updates. For example, elevators in business towers providing quick news headlines (business, local, national, world, sports, entertainment, weather) for the tenants of the buildings as well as visitors to those tenants is helpful and relevant. News content with audio works best in high dwell time venues such as transit applications such as trains or healthcare waiting rooms whereas RSS headlines are more appropriate in less captive environments.
2. The Content and Loop Duration :
The duration of the content and the loop determines how much of the message is received by the audience. For example, if the message is too long compared to how long the audience can look at the display, only part of the message is received.
Duration of Message: the more the audience is moving in front of the display, the less attention they can give to a display which gives you a shorter time to transmit your message. For example, a concourse application or a retail application in the aisles should design content to get the message across in 1 second. Due to this, even if the message displays for 30 seconds, as long as the entire message is persistent on the display for this period, the message will be delivered. Conversely, the longer they are immobile, the longer the content should be. For example, a message that persists on the display for 30 seconds will be boring to a captive viewer such as a sports arena or airport departures. In this case, a programming style similar to television becomes most effective.
Duration of Loop : as a rule of thumb, making the duration of the loop equal to the average viewer’s dwell time at the venue with line of sight to the display, then each slot in the loop has an opportunity to be seen by the average viewer. Typically, if the loop duration is much longer than the dwell time, then the media company will package several slots for a media buyer in a way that the frequency of ad plays equals the dwell time. For example, a retail location with a 6 minute dwell time may have a 1 hour loop, but all the advertisements run 10 times per hour, which means it plays during the average dwell time.
3. Visibility/Audibility :
The visibility of the display and, if applicable, audibility of the sound system determines how clearly the message is received by the audience.
Display: this is a function of display placement in accordance with the audience’s line of sight, the size of the display compared to the proximity of the viewer, and the brightness of the display contrasted to the ambient brightness of the venue.
- Although line of sight for a typical person at a venue greatly increases the possibility that content is seen, many venues have restrictions on installation that make this difficult to achieve.
- Being able to discern elements of an advertisement depends on the size of these elements and how close the audience is. For example, retail applications at the end-caps can have smaller writing since the audience is closer to read it, displays that must be further from the audience must be proportionately bigger so text can be read, etc.
- Plasma and LCD displays are the most prevalent solution as they represent over 80% of BroadSign Powered installations. These are mostly only applicable in an indoor setting, though outdoor casings are possible.
- LED boards are typicaly extremely bright and big which is good for outdoor applications. They are so bright that at night, the brightness must be tuned down. LED is used in less than 10% of BroadSign Powered installations and they are all in an outdoor environment, though indoor LED applications are also common such as in a sports arena.
- Projectors are typically not as bright as other signage and compete with ambient lighting which makes it difficult in a retail environment and impossible in an outdoor application. Projectors are used by less than 10% of BroadSign Powered installations.
Audibility: while some networks do not use audio due to restrictions at the venue, those that do must ensure the audio aspect of the program can be understood. Sometimes audio is secondary to the message such as background audio or radio, but often times it contains a large amount of the message. If the content relies on audio being understood, this is only possible in the venues that have low ambient noise (e.g. healthcare) or if the sound system can be extremely loud, e.g. directional audio in retail.
The above properties of a digital signage application are directly experienced by the audience, but what about those properties behind the scenes that have a direct affect on those properties. In other words, we must answer the question:
What are the types of requirements at a venue that can restrict the design of a digital signage application?
There are some venues that are more amenable to the introduction of an effective digital signage network. This is because the on-site infrastructure can limit what solutions are available. The largest challenge of digital signage design is to find a harmony between these limitations and the selection of digital signage application components that maximize the audience’s experience.
There are seven aspects of a permanent digital signage installation that will affect its design, i.e. which components can be selected:
1. Security: in an environment where the display or other aspects of the digital signage application are publicly accessible, all components must be locked down. For example, displays that are housed in subway trains must be encased in vandalism-proof glass. Another example is that flight information displays must be protected against people unplugging cables or hitting the power button. In some cases, professional grade displays have their external buttons disabled to prevent tampering with display settings. The larger the daily audience, the more the signage is at stake. The less surveillance is possible, the higher the chance for vandalism.
2. Regulations: depending on the jurisdiction of the venue, regulations must be respected which often means some certifications must be obtained before installation can commence. One example is in public transportation networks where signage is part of an emergency broadcast mechanism. In this scenarios, the display enclosure must be able to withstand the full blast of a fire hose. Another example is signage in a medical setting where wireless signals cannot be used and there is a threshold on how much electromagnetic radiation electronics can emit.
3. Cabling: the based requirement of a digital signage network is to have a display and a player PC connected together via some sort of video cable and the two must be connected to a power source. Additionally, in some circumstances, the display and PC are also connected together via an audio cable (50% of BroadSign clients) and/or an RS-232 cable (over 80%) for remote device control and monitoring. In a situation where a venue has a back-office server room, the PC and display may be connected via a AVC (audio-video-control) distribution network such as a video-over-cat5 installation. In situations where the display is co-located with the PC, cabling is less of a concern, except oftentimes power and Internet cabling become the biggest challenge. Depending on the situation, you may need to use different types of video cabling, e.g. VGA (70% of BroadSign clients), VGA-Over-Cat5 (20%), DVI (10%), RF wireless (0%), etc. It is important to validate the video quality is acceptable from those technologies in a real-world test scenario before mass-deploying as this could be a lingering headache for the lifetime of the network.
4. Connectivity: in most digital signage applications, an Internet connectivity source is necessary in order to distribute content to the PC and to collect health and playback statistics. BroadSign clients are roughly using 85% broadband of which 4/5 are wired broadband and 1/5 is 3G cellular. Of the leftover 15%, 3/5 are using 2-way satellite with multicast, 1/5 are using 802.11 wireless and 1/5 are using dialup. The method of connectivity and the network topology has a large effect on what type of content can be scheduled and how often it can be updated.
5. Power: both the PC and the display must be connected to an electrical power source. In some cases, such as transportation applications, the vehicle’s DC power must be adapted to equipment which is tuned to AC power outlets (less than 5% of BroadSign clients). In other more extreme cases, displays must be powered by limited battery supply (0%). Power is nevertheless required in order for it all to work.
6. Temperature: temperature and heat dissipation are important when planning a digital signage application. Heat is the leading cause of hardware failure in this industry and proper, real-world endurance testing could prevent a lot of expensive maintenance down the road. The flip-side of the heat problem comes into play in outdoor networks where the equipment may be subjected to a wide variance in temperature. All digital signage equipment comes with documented operating temperatures. One very cold or very hot day could mean you need to replace all your equipment. In this case, a controlled temperature housing could be required to protect your capital investment.
7. Construction: the construction of the venue may prohibit the permanent installation of an eye-level display. Displays and mounts can be heavy and require reinforced structures at the venue to support them. Regulations may come into play and one has to think of withstanding natural disasters such as earthquakes and emergency situations such as fires. Some venues are just more amenable to signage that can meet the needs of the audience, e.g. a train car specifically fitted for signage, and some are much more challenging, e.g. product shelves in the aisles have no power sources for displays. All these challenges can be solved with construction, but not all construction projects will be welcome by the venue owner.
Hopefully restrictions at the venue have not restricted the selection of components to the point where the experience of the audience is compromised. The final set of design decisions are primarily driven by the software platform and network connectivity method, which begs the question:
What effect can the selection of a software platform have on the effectiveness of my network and what restrictions can it place on my business model?
It may seem overly biased for the head of consulting at a digital signage software development organization to answer this question. At the same time, who could be better qualified to synthesize industry demand and answer this question? Hopefully, the following seven aspects of a digital signage software platform will speak for themselves and will not seem like a commercial for BroadSign Suite:
1. Workflow Scalability: the two major workflows are deployment/operations and media placement/advertising. In terms of workflow scalability, you will want to look at what it takes to configure the software system on the PC once it comes out of the manufacturer. Is it compatible with mass cloning and what is the process for activating and licensing the software? You will also want to look at how easy it is to build a loop of independently targeted ad campaigns, i.e. a mix of local, regional, national and international messaging including editorial content and advertisements. One final area where workflow scalability is often compromised is in the area of proof of display reporting. Are summary reports readily available or must they be constructed using custom database work each time one is needed?
2. Supported Content Formats: some of the creative received by agencies and content houses are not in a format that is suitable for digital signage, e.g. analog tape, digibeta, Panasonic DV25 or uncompressed video. These must be converted to high quality-to-compression ratio formats such as MPEG-4 or WMV. Sometimes compatibility with MPEG-2 is necessary in order to support legacy content libraries. Typical industry standard formats are MPEG-2 (TS or PS), MPEG-4 (DivX, H.264), WMV (VC-1, WMA), MOV (Sorenson, H.264) and FLV (Sorenson and VP7). If audio is used, it is often either MP3, M1L2 or AAC. Other important content formats are Adobe Flash (SWF) and Web content (HTML, Javascript, etc.) permit richer applications such as interactive content, automated templates, third party database integration and more.
3. Software Security: you will want to look for a software solution that encrypts all control-level data and protects against tampering techniques such as data injection, man-in-the-middle. Typically, this is done by using SSL as the transport for this data. Another aspect of security is that the playback software should not be listening on any ports which could make it vulnerable to remote control via an API or through exploits such as buffer overflows. Finally, some level of content integrity should be verified before playback in case content was intercepted on its way to the played. Typically this is done by comparing a cryptographic fingerprint calculated on the player with one provided by the server over the secure SSL connection.
4. Advertiser Accountability: playback reporting is crucial for the invoicing stage of the media buy post-execution. There are many layers of accountability: proof of play on the PC, proof of display on the screen, proof of click for interactive content. Typically, these are provided in customizable reports which are easy for a media buyer to understand, but can become more and more detailed and technical if comfort is not yet established between the network operator and the media buyer. For example, an affidavit report may display performance details of a campaign as a line item, but each campaign may also be described in a multi-page report which has per-venue or per-day breakdowns of playback measurement.
5. Campaign Capabilities: different campaigns have different objectives:
- Broadcast: many clips are grouped into segments and broadcast across all locations or to a class of display. This is typically done for editorial content or automated content such as RSS templates.
- Targeted: ads are targeted to a group of venues based on geographical proximity, demographics, aspect ratio of the display, language of the audience, legal restrictions, competitive restrictions, day parts, week parts and combinations of all of these.
- Interactive: microsites (aka kiosk applications) are broken down into a series of components where clicking certain links triggers their playback. This allows one to track the usage of different components of the application.
- Sponsorship/Adjacency: have one clip immediately follow another for sponsorship or co-marketing reason.
- Saturation/Separation: have slots of the same category be spaced apart as far as possible in the loop. This may be to space out competitor or to space out ads from the same content provider.
- Synchronization/Triggered: have slots from one campaign trigger the playback of another campaign in another zone or on another set of displays. This trigger can also come from third party technology such as a GPS geo-location device.
- Multi-Schedule: have one slot play a different message depending on the time of the day, day of the week or calendar date. For example, a movie trailer may have a “coming soon” version that plays until the day before the premiere and a “now playing” version at the day of the premiere and afterwards. Another example is the breakfast menu in the morning and the regular menu after 11 am. Finally, opening hours may change depending on the day of the week.
- Customizable: a default message may be customizable by the manager at the local venue, e.g. custom pricing or templated message.
- Preemptable: a message my fill up the loop, but is removed from the loop if its slot is needed by a higher priority message. For example, filler content can be used to make all loop the same length, but higher popularity areas will have less filler in their loop as it has been preempted by paying advertisements.
- Emergency: a message needs to be pulled immediately or some form of emergency message, e.g. amber alert, needs to take over the display.
6. Self-Healing Capabilities: due to the high cost of sending technicians on-site to troubleshoot problems, it is important for the software platform to self-heal as much as possible in the face of problems that compromise ad sales revenue. If it is possible to do so, it may also be helpful to have remote access to the operating system of the player PC, though this is often restricted due to stringent IT requirements. Examples of situations where you want software to self-heal are: deadlocks, memory issues, operating system crash, player crash, disk space issues, codec errors, display issues, and network issues such as high packet loss, high latency, late downloads or data corruption,
7. Compatibility and Extensibility: new and interesting technologies are constantly coming to market in this space, so it is important for your software platform to be able to work with these technologies in order to not be left behind when the next killer app enters the fray. Examples of new technologies include audience measurement cameras and mobile interactive applications. Extensibility is also important in order to develop a competitive edge. This can be done via content with software development platforms such as Flash and HTML, or via player control features such as halt/resume or triggers. Another important aspect of compatibility is the emergence of technical standards in the industry.
Why is audience-oriented design so important?
The networks that make the wrong selections will not last as the networks that are designed as effective communication mediums quickly take promenence in the market and thusly take a larger piece of the ad pie. If an entrepreneurial network operator has an exit strategy that involves being acquired by a larger media company, having a solid measurable medium that is reliable and is also easily consumed by its target audience will mean a much higher valuation.
Hopefully, this text has been helpful to you. If you made it this far and have questions or comments, do not hesitate to add a comment here or contact me directly daniel.parisien(a)broadsign.
May 2nd, 2008
DOOH Forum by Media Post, April 23, 2008, the Yale Club of New York, NY, NY.
This was probably the most authoritative conference on DOOH. It gathered some of the best brains from the digital signage and mainstream advertising industries. The Forum was the first event on digital signage organized by Media Post, with the Wall Street Journal as the main sponsor. There was almost no tech-talk. The focus was mainly on how advertisers and agencies are changing their view of this fast-spreading medium, the barriers to its broad adoption by media buyers, and the increasingly important role DOOH is playing as an alternative to the stagnant TV. The DOOH Forum was followed the next day by the Outfront conference - reflecting on how traditional media (namely, network TV), is adapting to the changing realities.
The DOOH Forum was also the most sold out conference I have ever seen. All the seats at the tables were taken early, then the organizers had to make extra rows of chairs in the back, and when those were filled, the balcony got packed to the limit.
You can see the list of speakers and the agenda here.
Here are some highlights and observations from the discussions:
- Several speakers (including outside analysts) named DOOH as the’hottest medium’ today, and it is spreading even faster than internet in its early days, because of its ability to reach consumers when they are away from home, its unintrusive nature, and its proximity to point of purchase and point of decision.
- After a few years of soul-searching, two terms seem to have stuck to the wall to describe the industry: ‘digital out-of-home’ and ‘digital signage’. Some still insist on using the term ‘place-based media’, but Google Search doesn’t return many results on that one.
- Agencies are now under pressure from both ends - advertisers and DOOH networks - to include digital signage in the media mix, so they are finally starting to embrace it as part of an “integrated approach” to marketing strategy, or “360 degrees marketing”. The issue everybody is struggling with is the metrics currency: what is the currency unit they should use while planning, buying and reporting on campaigns. At this point it takes agencies several times more effort to allocate a few million $$ to a DOOH campaign compared to quick and easy multi-million-dollar TV buys. The issue of commission is also not resolved in favor of DOOH yet, and that makes agencies reluctant to use it overall.
- The new Audience Metrics Guidelines developed by OVAB are expected to be endorsed by the AAAA and ANA by the end of this year and adopted by networks and agencies as a common currency for negotiating DOOH buys.
- Although DOOH has an enormous potential in achieving the ultimate goal of advertising: ‘move the merchandize’, the whole traditional media planning and media buying infrastructure is built around the CPMs and GRPs that are based on Nielsen ratings - which in turn are based on elusive “impressions”. The accuracy of the current media effectiveness measurement was best described by Mr.Jack Wakshlag, Chief Research Officer of Turner Broadcasting System. On the second day, at the Outfront conference, after a few hours of detail-heavy scientific discussion of existing TV audience measurement methodologies involving Nielsen, TNS and IAG, Mr. Wakshlag exclaimed: “All I want to know is who is watching my ads. I (still) cannot get a straight answer!”.
- As for who watches TV ads: a speaker asked how many people in the audience watched a full commercial pod lately. Three raised their hands, all three turned out to be media buyers…
- Speaking about the current metrics system, OVAB’s president Suzanne Alecia said on the panel: “It took TV 50 years to come up with C3 (average commercial minute ratings, as opposed to program ratings, (NU)); it took Outdoor 100 years to come up with Eyes On (a method of determining how many passers-by actually looked at the billboards, as opposed to just passing traffic numbers (NU)); and it took us 18 months to achieve better results with our Audience Metrics Guidelines” (for the whole DOOH industry).
- Nielsen is introducing audience measurement methodologies for digital signage and conducts field studies with several DOOH networks. See details here.
- Arbitron is using its PPM device for audience measurenment in DOOH. The company is also testing the use of PPM for verifying proof of play data delivered by networks run on BroadSign Suite platform.
- Several speakers made it clear that even if the new ‘perfect’ metrics were introduced now, it would not cause agencies and national advertisers to start buying DOOH space immediately. Everybody openly agrees that “impressions” are a very deficient way of measuring a campaign, but the 70 billion-dollar TV advertising industry rests solely on them, and the inertia among traditional media buyers is still omnipresent. Therefore, in order to get to the negotiating table now, experts recommend to ‘not try and be too clever’ and to ‘dumb your offer down’ - i.e., show impressions, CPMs, reach and frequency, so you could be compared to TV or print.
- In the meantime, Nielsen’ 50-year-old monopoly on audience measurements seems to be eroding quickly - even in TV. A number of smaller companies with advanced technologies are making their way into the space. As media is going digital, including TV, measurements are increasingly based on digital technologies as well, thus becoming cheaper and providing data that is richer and more accurate. With TV in the US switching to digital in February 2009, the only analog medium left will be print.
- The old formula is: what gets measured - gets bought. However, for decades, traditional media has been able to get away with “impressions”, that provided the basis only for a semi-intelligent buying decision. These days are numbered, says Tim Hanlon of Ventures, Denuo. ‘Digital’ changes everything. No medium will escape granular metrics.
- There is a growing understanding among media buyers and planners that working in traditional silos (TV, Radio, Print) is a thing of the past. Many agencies have adopted an integrated approach (also known as 360 degrees marketing), when they carefully examine the client’s needs first and then create strategies across multiple media, including online and Outdoor/Out-of-home. The attitude towards new media is changing to more positive nowadays.
- Tip: if DOOH ad sellers want to be considered for a media plan inclusion, they should talk to everybody involved: agencies, media buyers, planners, advertisers (directly). As the whole media industry is in transition, there are no more clear-cut recipes for getting on media plans. If you can prove you can deliver a certain demographic in certain markets, you may be heard. Even better, if you allow the buyer to cherry-pick demos in addition to broad buys. Getting the attention of a strategic media planner increases your chances for success, industry insiders say.
- A lot of buyers are sitting on the fence, waiting for others to take a lead in DOOH. But, according to Tim Hanlon (Ventures, Denuo), buyers are ‘fast followers’, not pioneers by nature. Once a few major buys happen, the competitive pressure will trigger a domino effect.
- DOOH ad space aggregators like SeeSaw have a bright future as a single point of contact for buyers, as long as they manage to offer standardized buys by demographics and markets.
- The entry of big traditional media players like NBC, CBS, Viacom, Clear Channel, JC Decaux, Publicis, WPP, Omnicom, Wall Street Journal, Nielsen, Arbitron and others into DOOH makes both advertisers and buyers pay attention, brings national scale, and facilitates entry for other viable DOOH sellers. It is also a sign of a growing market maturity and consolidation.
- DOOH is doing very well in the recession.
- The lack of new, DOOH-era creative is still a big issue. Many networks have to set up their own creative shops to deliver the best value to clients. Re-purposing TV commercials is unacceptable, but most advertisers still have no clue.
- The long-awaited tipping point for digital signage is now.
Also, read Joe Mandese’s coverage of the Metrics panel discussion here. And a detailed coverage of the discussions by digitalsignageuniverse.com here.
April 28th, 2008
Last week the Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB) - the US Out-of-home media auditing organization - unveiled its new ratings system for the industry. Not only is the system a milestone for the outdoor ad business, but it also breaks new ground for media ratings as a whole, writes MediaWeek. Here are some excerpts from the article by Katy Bachman. My comments are at the end.
“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.
April 21st, 2008
The Out-of-home media, along with internet, is doing well, despite the drop in overal ad spending. Media Life Magazine’s Diego Vasquez quotes ZenithOptimedia Worldwide, “whose most recent forecast for U.S. spending has out-of-home spending growing by 11.2 percent this year, to $7.83 billion.”
According to Vasquez, next year ZenithOptimedia expects the OOH industry to grow at a similar pace: “11.3 percent, to $8.71 billion, and in 2010 it will grow another 11.5 percent, to $9.72 billion.That’s against 3.7 percent growth this year for the entire U.S. ad economy, which is down from the 4.1 percent growth ZenithOptimedia forecast back in December. It’s forecasting even slower growth in 2009 and 2010, by 2.1 percent and 2.2 percent.ZenithOptimedia is forecasting that worldwide out-of-home spending will grow 9.4 percent this year, 8.0 percent in 2009, and 8.3 percent in 2010.ZenithOptimedia senior publications executive Anne Austin defines out-of-home as including all outdoor advertising, from billboards to bus shelters and other forms of alternative media.Just last month, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America reported that 2007 OOH spending had risen 7 percent over 2006, to $7.28 billion,” writes Diego Vasquez.The rosy view of the medium, whose growth to a large extent is driven by digital technologies (billboards, digital signage networks), was supported by TNS Media Intelligence in New York. The research company reports that spending on TV, radio and newspaper advertising fell last year, but the outdoor ad category rose 4.9 percent. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interviewed Jeff Golimovsky of the OAAA last week, who said that the first digital billboards went up several years ago, and OAAA estimates there are now around 800 and growing, although that’s still a small portion of the nation’s 400,000 total billboards.
David W. Miller, an analyst with SMH Capital in Los Angeles told Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Lamar Advertising claimed to have more than 600 digital billboard displays in 37 states and Canada as of December 2007, according to regulatory filings. The Baton Rouge, La., company has been, as Mr. Miller described it, among the most “evangelistic” about going digital.
Even as recessionary pressures seem to be slowing growth in the outdoor ad business in 2008, Lamar expects demand for space on its digital locations to buoy overall results, Mr. Miller said.
In a recent MediaWeek’s interview with top ad experts about the OOH evolution, Mark Kaline, global media manager for Ford, said this about the industry potential:
“Out-of-home is a sleeping giant. It is being kicked by technology. It’s being rustled by measurements. It’s being awakened in a way that’s very close to what the Internet is experiencing right now. It provides us with an event in a local market that we’re able to build launches around. It’s got the best of both worlds. It’s a national medium that can be localized in a way that allows you to geo-target. You can now tailor your ads using digital boards in a way that’s never been done before. With dayparting, there is now the opportunity to reach a certain audience while they’re traveling in close proximity to whatever it is you’re selling—it’s great. You can tell a story over time with a lot of little simple messages that add up to a big story.”
April 21st, 2008
Spending on alternative media hit $73.43 billion in 2007, a 22% increase over the previous year, and will continue to grow, reports Ad Age, quoting PQ Media’s Alternative Media Forecast: 2008-2012, released last week. The research firm tracked 18 digital and nontraditional segments, with a combined 16.1% of total advertising and marketing dollars in 2007, up from 7.9% in 2002, yielding a compound annual growth rate of 21.7%, writes Ad Age.
The forecast predicts a 20.2% increase over the next year, to a total of $88.24 billion, and a compounded annual growth rate of 17% for 2007-2012, reaching $160.82 billion. By then, alternative media will represent 26.6% of all advertising and marketing dollars.
Digital signage, or, ‘digital out-of-home advertising’, as it is called in the report, got a special mention from PQ Media. Here’s an excerpt from Ad Age’s interview:
‘Where the money is going…’
The upswing is as much a result of the effectiveness of new media in a fragmented market as it is from a lack of confidence in traditional media, said PQ Media President Patrick Quinn. “Traditional ad budgets have been going down, but spending has remained stable. This shows where the money is going,” Mr. Quinn said.
“There is a lack of standards in these new areas,” Mr. Quinn added. “Digital out-of-home advertising is getting recall rates as high as or higher than traditional mediums, but there are few studies on this. They’re going to need more and deeper metrics: The bar is being raised across the board.”
So, researcher Patrick Quinn added his voice to the unanimous acknowledgement of the ‘lack of standards’… This is where our industry stands now. As we wrote in many of our previous posts, the money have started pouring (or rather, trickling) into digital signage advertising even before the standards and metrics are introduced. This is a good sign. However, the danger is that until the metrics are in place:
- digital out-of-home will have a hard time demonstrating its enormous potential and will not get the deserved share of budgets in the media plans soon enough, compared to other, more measured, but not necessarily more effective alternative media.
- lack of ROI measurements and disparity in buying standards may lead to a disappointment of first-time advertisers, who may choose not to repeat their campaigns. It might be hard to win them back for a while.
The ball is in the court of the OVAB and other organizations working on bridging the gap between heterogenous networks and the media buying habits (and stereotypes) of the mainstream advertising community. Rumour has it that OVAB is making good progress in high-level negotiations with advertising trade bodies to agree on the terminology and the currency for buying digital OOH space. OVAB’s member base has grown rapidly since its launch over a year ago, and it keeps growing, judging by the news coverage.
March 31st, 2008
As of this upfront season, the US division of Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) - one of the largest media communications companies, will only be buying media that can produce more advanced metrics.
According to MediaWeek, “Starcom USA will no longer do business with unrated networks that are not measured by companies or rating services that can offer documented data on viewership.”
“In prior years, standard industry practice has been to negotiate TV buys from unrated networks based on estimates from those networks and disparate sources,” Starcom said in a statement. “The availability of second-by-second data from companies such as TNS, in its alignment with Charter and DirecTV, allow for national performance metrics for these previously unrated networks and reveal never-before-seen insights into behaviors of those networks’ audiences.”
The move is significant (if it had been in the 80s, I would have said: paradigm shift), as Starcom USA is probably the largest media agency, and when it sets the bar for accountability and ROI higher, others will certainly pay attention. It will also prompt the channels with less adequate metrics to try and comply in the nearest future.
Since the Internet started providing reports on referring sources, targeted impressions, click-throughs and sales conversion data (for e-commerce), it has been enjoying double-digit growth in ad revenue and, along the way, has pushed the standards for accountability for other media. This, along with traditional media fragmentation, led to advertisers’ increasing disenchantment with network TV, and budgets started gradually shifting towards online, Outdoor and now - to Digital Out-of-Home (digital signage).
It looks like Starcom is determined to break the 60-year-old advertiser-agency-media relationship system, which has been centered around network TV and newspapers, while everything else was essentially an afterthought. The TV-era wise joke: ”I don’t know which half of my ad budget works” is not amuzing to national advertisers any more, and agencies are finally hearing this, embracing the most measured medium: digital. Starcom recently discontinued a contract with Donovan Data Systems (DDS) - a near-monopoly software platform for tracking media buys and billings, citing DDS’ inability to eficiently process digital media transactions. The agency’s divorce from DDS sent shock waves throughout the advertising community and put extra pressure on DDS to catch up with its smaller rival MediaBank in introducing digital media management capabilities.
In a separate development, Advertising Age reported last week that digital services in 2007 accounted for 12.3%, or $4.7 billion of worldwide revenue for advertising’s Big Four — Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic and Publicis. “Put another way, writes Ad Age, “digital’s share of revenue at each of the top holding companies is higher than digital’s estimated share of worldwide media spending.” Or, “put another way”, as marketers shift money from TV and print, the Big Four have become more aggressive in increasing their digital spending than the industry on average. Starcom MediaVest Group is a subsidiary of Paris-based Publicis Groupe.
As organizations like OVAB, OAAA, Arbitron and Nielsen are spearheading the development of metrics for digital signage, we can expect similar budget shifts towards our field within the next couple of years. Meanwhile, TV channels are working to offset the losses and bring their own measurement instruments closer to par with the Internet. The war of metrics has begun.
March 24th, 2008
According to the recently released Arbitron study of digital billboards, the ads displayed on them drive traffic to local businesses, radio and TV stations and brand web sites, have a high recall and successfully reach the elusive and desirable 18-34 year-old consumers, among other demographics.
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.
March 9th, 2008
Most of the OAAA’s newsletter this week was dedicated to digital billboards. OAAA president and CEO Nancy Fletcher writes that “Digital outdoor can provide opportunities for industry growth little imagined only a decade ago.”
The Federal Highway Administration ruling last fall that digital billboards were ‘permissible’ unleashed a flurry of new installations, pilots, studies and local regulations. Nancy Fletcher summed up the recent developments in the field as follows:
“People Like Digital
Consumers and advertisers are strong advocates of digital outdoor. Arbitron just released a report saying digital billboards are noticed by most drivers and appreciated as attractive and useful, particularly with younger (and harder to reach) audiences. See page three for Arbitron highlights or download a copy at www.digitalooh.org later this week.
Traffic Safety
Separate research conducted by Tantala Associates and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) last year in Cleveland, OH, showed digital billboards are compatible with traffic safety. Digital billboards are safety neutral to motorists, while accident data does not link digital billboards to accidents. Analysis of accident data by state officials reached the same conclusion.
Expect more research. The Transportation Research Board (TRB) has held a workshop to discuss future needs of traffic safety. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has awarded a contract to SAIC to develop a research plan concerning digital safety; the first phase is due for completion in June 2008. In addition, state highway officials (AASHTO) have initiated a worldwide literature search of traffic safety studies affecting signs that will be released this summer.
The National Alliance of Highway Beautification Agencies (NAHBA) is considering
additional research following the results of these earlier studies.
Digital Brightness is Controlled
A primary issue affecting digital billboard deployment concerns brightness and lighting levels. OAAA commissioned Dr. Ian Lewin, a principal at Lighting Sciences in Scottsdale, AZ, to recommend standards designed to minimize the risk of glare or unreasonable driver distraction. The resulting criteria followed the lighting standards established by the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA). Details of these requirements will be released this week.
Digital is Regulated
Steadily, state statutes and regulations are being established to govern the use of changeable message signage. To date, 38 states allow digital technology and
five others allow tri-action devices. Only three states (ND, NH, and WY) are left to enable some kind of changeable message signs. While the state regulatory picture is encouraging, the real action today exists at the local level, where a number of communities are considering ordinances, regulations, and applications for digital outdoor displays. As with every regulatory issue, a well-prepared and properly informed industry can best educate policy makers about the benefits of digital outdoor.
Digital is Important The ability to change messages in real time is a benefit to advertisers and a vital public service. Millions of motorists have seen presidential primary results via digital billboards. The FBI is using digital billboards to find fugitives, while AMBER Alerts help locate abducted children.”
Overall, the Outdoor advertising seems to be in much better shape than TV, radio and print. According to the OAAA’s newsletter - total revenue for the outdoor advertising industry in 2007 grew 7% compared to the previous year. Total revenue for the industry grew 6% in the 4th quarter compared to the same period in 2006. The revenue figures are collected in aggregate each month by certified public accountants Miller, Kaplan, Arase & Co., LLP, and used by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, in combination with other sources, to release industry revenue information on a quarterly basis. Revenue estimates include billboard, street furniture, transit, and alternative outdoor media spending.
I would still like to see the numbers for digital billboards separately and I would assume that those would reflect a much higher growth than that of the whole Outdoor segment. If anyone has access to the digital billboard stats and would like to share them, feel free to post them in a comment here…
March 3rd, 2008
The end of analog broadcasting is exactly a year away in the US and everyone
from The Commerce Department’s, National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) to Best Buy are looking at ways to help the 14 million
US households that still depend on an analog signal. Vouchers will be mailed
out to households so they can purchase discounted government-approved
converters. According to USA Today this will be “the boldest technology
conversion ever attempted” but something is troubling in this picture. When
the transition to digital was planned no one in their wildest dreams could
have predicted that by the time of the switch TV would be in such a poor
shape, with its audience fragmented, shows undermined by the recent writers’ strike and the annual upfront ad sales event in question.
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.
February 20th, 2008
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