Digital Signage or (DOOH) Digital Out Of Home advertising, is probably, one of the most promising marketing ideas to come along since John Wanamaker a 19th Century Philadelphia merchant, became the first modern advertiser to buy ad space in newspapers to promote his stores.
Digital Signage is not new and has been around for a number of years but with the cost of the equipment becoming much more affordable the popularity and the potential for these marketing devises seems to be taking off.
Digital Signage or (DOOH) Digital Out Of Home advertising, is probably, one of the most promising marketing ideas to come along since John Wanamaker a 19th Century Philadelphia merchant, became the first modern advertiser to buy ad space in newspapers to promote his stores.
Digital Signage is not new and has been around for a number of years but with the cost of the equipment becoming much more affordable the popularity and the potential for these marketing devises seems to be taking off.
In a recent trip to a DOOH industry convention held in Las Vegas I was amazed at how many companies were offering various hardware and software applications relating to the distribution or application of digital media. It made me think that this could possibly be the next big thing to hit in the crazy world of technology and of course everyone I spoke with claimed to have the next big breakthrough in the field. Regardless of all the sales hype I have to admit the ideas and concepts are ground breaking in their scope.
From all of this I did learn one rather disturbing thing and one that could turn into a potential killer for many of the possible purchasers or users of this technology. Nearly all the companies selling the software or the services claim to be able to divide the display screen into separate zones that can display assorted content. This can be a variety of functions including static advertising images, menu boards, videos, scrolling text news or weather, special announcements and TV programming. All of which are great for providing a lot of information and entertainment.
It is the TV programming that seems to be setting a number of fires around the country. It seems that cable providers don’t like the idea that someone can take their feed and reduce it to a portion of the viewing screen. The cable providers are also not very happy that many of the display locations will insert paid advertising into some of the other zones on the screen. These paid ads are not shared with the cable services and become a revenue source for the displayer. This whole dilemma does present some very interesting legal issues.
First, if the displayer is paying for the cable service does he not have the right to show it on his TV in whatever manner he chooses? Many TV’s have picture in picture and you don’t find cable providers calling people to complain that they are using the picture in picture function on their TV. Is the monitor not the property of the displayer and the way he views it not his right? These are tough questions.
In defense of the cable providers, they do own the rights to the content that is being presented through their service. They pay big money to have those rights and they will do whatever they have to do to protect those rights including service disruption or cancellation and in some cases even law suites.
I guess as a consumer and business person, I look at the potential of this technology and think what huge potential this could have in future communications and marketing. For the displayer or the business who wants to use the technology to promote their products and services, the uses are endless and could save business owners thousands of dollars in printing, time to market costs, advertising expenses and number of other areas that I can’t even imagine.
For cable providers I would think that there are a number of ways that they could resolve the issues at hand and work with displayers to improve the presentation of their content. Again it is the consumer that we all must please and if providing TV content on big huge monitors in the mall is what keeps the consumer in the mall and spending money then it must work for all concerned.
Cable providers as well as display owners have an obligation to the general public to provide quality content. Cable providers are required by law to meet some very strict standards and display owners need to do the same or be subject to the same standards as cable providers. If you, as a business owner, have considered setting up one of these display units in your business kudos to you but be aware that all the claims made by any company trying to sell you on all these great features that this technology provides may not be available. If they claim that you can ad TV content be sure that the provider of that content is OK with you using their feed before making any investment.
There are a number of good Digital Signage companies that can help find the solution that fits your particular need so shop around. A few you might want to look into are Scala.com, Realdatacommunications.com, BroadSign.com, cisco.com/go/signage. These companies can get you going in the right direction.
The Digital Signage market is growing at a dramatic rate and the economic slowdown doesn’t seem to be affecting it at all. Retailers like Wal-Mart, ad agencies like Digital Ad Source and Internet marketing companies are helping to put Digital Signage on the cutting edge of technology. Wal-Mart alone has invested millions in its TV network and ad agencies like Digital Ad Source specialize in advertising for Digital Signage displayers. There are even services that now specialize in Digital Signage content and will help displayers with managing their monitor content. It is definitely a growing market.