New Digital Signage Analyst Coverage

Research and Markets, a Dublin-based analyst firm, has announced a new report, Digital Signage Market: Global Perspective.

Following is the table of contents (sorry, but I haven't read the report, but it looks interesting):

Content Outline:

1. Global Digital Signage Industry

2. Digital Signage Markets

3. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

4. Supply Chain of Digital Point of Sales: Major Players

5. Recent Digital Signage Products

6. POS Application Software

7. Strategic Alliances in Digital Media Content

8. Market Opportunities

9. Market Barriers

List of Figures

-- Figure 1.1: Components of a Digital Signage Project

-- Figure 1.2: Evolution of Dynamic Digital Signage

-- Figure 1.3 Revenues: Worldwide Retail Digital Signage (2002-2004)

-- Figure 1.4 Retail Signage Market - Average Selling Price (ASP) Trends
(2003-2009)

-- Figure 1.5 Worldwide Retail Signage Revenue Growth Compared To Other
Pro/AV Applications (2003-2009)

-- Figure 1.6 Digital Signage Revenue Forecast For LCD And Plasma (2004-2009)

-- Figure 6.1 global shipments of POS Application Software (2002-2007)

Digital Signage - The Store is the Medium at Wal-Mart

Excerpt from comments from John Fleming, EVP, Chief Marketing Officer of Wal-Mart on the company's 2007 Digital Signage Strategy.

I said [that the store is our #1 medium] about six months ago and it got picked up. The store is really our number one media challenge. It is the best way for us to communicate to our customers. Said another way, we have 138 million people that shop our stores every week. I know in your business everybody's vying for the best place to get your message out. In the advertising world the one that probably gets the most talk and hype is the Super Bowl. Well, at Wal-Mart we have a Super Bowl every week. We have 52 Super Bowls a year. So this is a great opportunity for us to reach our customers and communicate to them.

This is a powerful endorsement of retail digital signage by the biggest retailer of all.

Digital Signage + Text Messages

We blogged about a company called Qtags before.

The company continues with interesting activities. It has signed a couple of restaurant chains, Red Robin and Popeye's, to campaigns.

Red Robin guests in Texas who use their mobile phones to text “rrmarqe” to 78247 (q-t-a-g-s) will receive a text reply welcoming them as a new Red Robin VIP, with instructions for redeeming a $5 voucher that can be used on their next visit. Guests will also receive future updates from Red Robin about promotions and news via the qtags’ text message service.

One of the ongoing challenges for advertisers with digital signage is measuring audience size. Qtags or similar texting technology could be a great way to demonstrate viewer response to digital signage content.

Phones + Kiosk = Personalized Digital Signage

According to an article in Advertising Age, abstract here in Lisbon's airport, a digital kiosk is promoting Nokia's N-90 camera phone.

The kiosk automatically senses the presence of a passenger, swivels to the face the passenger and provides an advertising message for the Nokia phone, highlighting the phone's camera capabilities.

To drive home the point the kiosk then takes a picture of the passenger and displays it on the screen.

Are we ready for this level of customer engagement?

Getting Them When They’re On the Move

The Globe and Mail (Canada) has a big article on digital signage out-of-home advertising here (registration required). Sorry, but I couldn't find any non-registered copies.

It's very bullish on the future of digital signage and other OOH media.

"The two fastest growing media are the oldest, out-of-home, and the newest, the Internet," says Roseanne Caron, president of the Toronto-based Out-of-Home Marketing Association, which was formed last year by a quintet of leading Canadian OOH media providers: Astral Media Outdoor, CBS Outdoor, NEWAD, Pattison Outdoor and Zoom Media.

The numbers support her claims about OOH advertising. According to the Canadian Media Directors' Council's latest Media Digest, OOH marketing in Canada was a $303-million dollar industry in 2004. Although this sector accounted for just three per cent of the country's $11.1-billion in ad spending that year, OOH has been growing steadily for the past decade - in 1996, the industry weighed in at $165-million.

Targeting is viewed as a key advantage for OOH:

Debbie King, executive vice-president of Zenith Optimedia, a Toronto-based agency that buys media space for clients such as L'Oréal SA, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, General Mills Canada Corp., and Nestlé Canada Inc., attributes OOH's growth to a number of factors, including its ability to reach consumers on the go.

"Particularly in young demographics, we're becoming increasingly mobile as a society," she says. "Out-of-home allows us to target specific demographics while they're in vehicles, on foot and on transit."

Ms. King adds that as the media becomes more fragmented, OOH's ability to zone in on niche groups is a big selling point to media buyers. "Out-of-home offers environment-specific opportunities by targeting entertainment and business hubs or retail locations," she says. "It can also be demographically targeted: students on campus, trendy clubs, upscale restaurants, fitness clubs, and even further segmented through restroom advertising."

The article describes a couple of innovative uses of the dynamic nature of digital signage.

Furthermore, wireless technologies permit screen content to be synchronized to real-time events, and even allow brands to invite viewers to participate in the ads. One such example is OBN's 2004 Live Tuning Campaign with Toronto radio station Q107, which won a Media Innovation Award. Video boards across the city announced song titles as they played on the radio. "You'd be in your car and you'd see, 'Now playing Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town.' You'd push the button and the song would come on," Mr. Irwin recalls.

Yet it was OBN's 2005 Nokia campaign, also an award-winner, that quite literally turned heads. "We integrated product into the actual ad," Mr. Irwin said. "We went around taking pictures of people with the product [a camera phone]. Then, they turn around and there's the ad featuring them on the billboard. The images ran all around the city, next to the phrase, 'Picture Yourself Here.' "

British Digital Signage Survey

AKA.TV reports on a digital signage survey of British retailers. Some key findings

• The average number of screens per outlet is three
• 77% of retailers operate one channel
• Content is most frequently updated weekly (41.7 percent) or monthly (33.3 percent)
• 48.8 percent of those surveyed – including retailers who don’t currently employ digital signage – are likely to increase screen use.

Burgers with Signs

McDonald's has completed what sounds like a pilot project for digital signage in a Chicago restaurant.

The story describes only McDonald's advertisements and doesn't mention any third party ads. The description of the computing power necessary to run the installation is daunting:

The nerve center is the store’s tiny office, which looks like a server room, including the several CPUs the digital signs require, and the many other computers required to run a modern McDonald’s. TAP TV chief executive John Malec said the Linux-based computer systems use 2.2ghz AMD processors, Invidia graphic cards and 250 gigabytes of storage per computer – which gives many of their clients more than 1 terabyte of content storage.