LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The Digital Signage Association announced this week that it plans to preview the release of its upcoming best practices report, “Best Practices: Digital Signage Content,” during this week’s Digital Signage Expo event in Philadelphia.

According to a news release, the release, the first of a series of best-practice reports coming from the association, will serve as a complete guide to content best practices for digital-signage deployments.

The full report will be available free to all DSA members on Sept. 30. Non-members may purchase the report for $750. An executive summary is now available as a free download. The preview presentation is set for 4 p.m. ET Sept. 17.

“Developing and delivering information that can dramatically improve the effectiveness of a digital signage deployment is a key goal of the Digital Signage Association,” said David Drain, DSA’s executive director. “I am especially grateful to all contributing members the Content Best Practices Committee, and especially to its chairperson, Keith Kelsen of MediaTile, for directing this effort and presenting a preview of this work at this week’s event.”

Content Best Practices Committee members include Charles Ansley, president and chief executive of Symon Communications; Jimmy Dun, vice president of business development for DYNASIGN; Linda Hofflander, vice president and chief marketing officer for Wireless Ronin; Nancy Radermecher, president and managing director of John Ryan; and Greg Weaver, manager of digital signage networks for Microspace.

“Digital signage is a new medium, and to gain the most from it, a comprehensive content strategy and plan must be created, delivered and managed,” said Kelsen, who also is the CEO of MediaTile. “By collaborating with other industry leaders, we are delivering a wealth of knowledge that will ensure the ongoing success of every network.”

Key elements of the report include general and venue-related digital signage considerations:

* Understanding average wait times, number of visits to location and audience demographics;
* Appreciating content specific considerations for building an interesting and compelling playlist sequence, while also integrating educational information and eye-catching elements;
* Creating a message matrix and scheduling tips that simplify the process of mapping viewer demographics to scheduled playtimes, day-part calendars or special events;
on-screen zoning practices and playlist tips that will help ensure maximum message delivery, without overloading viewers;
* And other subjects such as operator tips and the formulation of a complete content plan.

Trade media says metrics for digital signage that can be accepted by media buyers, are becoming a reality. Here is a brief overview of what the press has written on the subject in the past couple of months.

Nielsen is about to launch a new service that will provide monthly audience ratings for digital out-of-home networks in a format similar to that of TV ratings “pocketpieces” (booklets that you can fit into your pocket).

According to MediaWeek, “Nielsen has already issued its first report for Ideacast’s health club network. Sources confirmed other networks have also signed up for the service, among them Gas Station TV, Arena Media Networks and CBS Outernet.”

Katy Bachman, the author of the MediaWeek’s article, continues: “…standardized metrics could be a game changer for a medium advertisers find attractive but that lacks the metrics to give it a fair evaluation.”

“Measurement will bring some order to the whole medium,” said Jim Spaeth, president of Sequent Partners, a research consultancy hired by the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau to write research standards to be released later this summer.

MediaWeek says Nielsen will issue reports free to agency clients, which it does with its cinema reports. For Ideacast, it takes the business to the next level. “Nielsen has a database of 30,000 planners and buyers, and they’re sending this to their entire database,” said Jason Brown, president, sales and marketing at Ideacast, which has already begun selling with the data. “Our business plan and internal projections are based [on these reports]. It’s now our currency.”

MediaPost wrote that, “… perhaps the most important aspect of the new pocketpieces will be Nielsen’s imprimatur, a stamp of approval that would provide legitimacy and authenticity for place-based networks calling on advertisers and agencies.”

Another advantage, according to Paul Lindsrom, Senior Vice President-Nielsen Strategic Media Research, would be “the ability to flow place-based TV audience estimates into media-planning software from firms such as Nielsen’s IMS unit, or various media and marketing mix modeling systems.

Lindstrom called the plan a “fairly simple, fairly straightforward approach” that would enable place-based TV networks to be planned and bought alongside traditional TV outlets, writes MediaPost.

MediaBuyerPlanner.com explains: “Whereas television and internet audience estimates are taken from consumer panels, Nielsen will gather data for the out-of-home video networks primarily from compiling and modeling third-party data, and combining that with Nielsen research conducted by telephone.”

MediaWeek says Nielsen already has competition in digital signage measurement: “While Nielsen is the first research firm to try to establish currency for the medium, it may not go unchallenged. Several other players, including Arbitron, Knowledge Networks, Edison Research, Peoplecount and MRI, as well as TruMedia and Quividi, have developed research and have worked with OVAB to develop guidelines.

“There are a lot of companies out there [looking to measure OOH video]—two companies may also work together,” said Suzanne Alecia, OVAB’s president. “Our guidelines are a rule book for any research provider to use,”” writes MediaWeek.

Advertising Age pointed out on June 23 that, “While out-of-home video advertising was estimated by PQ Media to take in $1.28 billion in spending in 2007, the emerging media sector did so with no standardized metrics for advertisers and agencies to buy it efficiently. The 18-month-old Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau is working with more than two dozen vendor and measurement partners (including Nielsen, Arbitron, Screenvision and CBS Outernet) to help create a universal measurement checklist for out-of-home media buyers. But even after the metrics receive official approval from the American Association of Advertisers and Agencies, they’re not likely to be employed until early 2009.”

My colleague Brian Dusho and I were part of several rounds of discussions of the OVAB’s Audience Metrics Guidelines, and I can testify that the document absorbed input from all stakeholders: the largest networks, research firms, technology providers, agencies and advertisers. Once endorsed by trade organizations and published, it will be a solid starting point for standardizing the digital signage ad space.

The UK chapter of POPAI, in cooperation with the Imperative Group, released a report on the use of digital signage and other forms of digital media at retail. I just had the chance to read the document (formally titled Guide to Digital Media in Retail, though they seem to favor the unpronounceable G2DMiR moniker), and thought I make a few comments to anybody who has been on the fence about spending $200 (free for POPAI UK members) on yet another research report.

First of all, at only 26 pages it’s a quick read, which is not a bad thing at all. Having read more than my fair share of reports over the last few years, my estimate is that about 75% of the stuff in there is often hype. The G2DMiR is largely hype-free and statistic-rich. Instead of taking the position of infallible research company, they also took the very nice step (in my opinion) of soliciting case studies and anecdotes from numerous industry experts (at companies including Dunnhumby, Retail Week, Spar, and The Co-operative Group), which gives them an extra degree of accountability (or, they’re all a bunch of liars, though I suppose that’s not too likely

So, for example, I could tell you that “I’ve heard that some retailers see a 20% in sales of advertised products, with a 3-5% lift on the whole category”. But it wouldn’t be very verifiable, and in fact I’d probably forget where I first heard the statistic so you’d be out of luck trying to follow up on it yourself. Or, you could read that very stat in the report, as written by Susan Beetlestone at the Co-operative Group, who manages Europe’s largest digital screen network. Need to cite something to an investor or advertiser? You now have a company name and responsible party.

So should you buy it? I’d say that depends on what your business is, and how far along you are. If you are focused on the retail vertical and are concerned about things like sales uplift and retail case studies, or if you want some details on what the UK’s top companies think about loop length, playback frequency and using audio in your content, it’s easily worth the money.

From the AudienceCount Blog

http://www.audiencecount.com/audience-measurement/nec-digital-signage-ad-targeting-screen/

I ran into this article at The Times Of India webpage and was surprised to see that my long time notion about large companies was correct; these big name companies are working behind the scenes in building their own measurement / targeting tools.

The article talks about how big name NEC has created a technology, which through the use of a camera placed on top of a large Plasma/LCD display can identify the number of males/females and age ranges of the audience. After identifying the audience, the system then automatically targets them with suitable advertisements. NEC Corp said that this new form of targeted advertisements will be featured at an annual festival in Tokyo by Fuji Television network. The festival will run till August 31 and Fuji hopes to draw more than 4 million visitors to beat last year’s record.

When the system identifies the age ranges and gender of the viewers standing in front of the digital screens, the system will tally which of the audience demographics is the largest and will dynamically target ads to them,

For young women in their 20’s it may show ads for the latest iPhone, and women in their 40’s it may show Prada handbags.

“Conventional advertisements may show cell phones for young women to men over 60,” said Hiroshi Takahashi at NEC’s solution business promotion division.

“Changing advertising products in accordance with the viewer would bring advertising closer to the purchaser,” he said.

But the system is seen as having growth potential as companies struggle to win the attention of customers who are increasingly bombarded by advertisements throughout the day.

The underlying technology behind this or any other form of digital signage ad targeting system has to be an audience measurement system; whether it’s a proprietary technology from NEC or a third party technology solution licensed by: Quividi, CognoVision, TruMedia, VideoMining, Xuuk, or Wututu. The main purpose for using these technologies is that there needs to be some face detection in order to process audience demographics in real-time and the only technologies that currently perform these are audience measurement tools. There are obvious alternative applications for these customer centric measurement tools. I’ve read in articles, whitepapers, and blogs that the sales cycle for digital signage deployments is long and for audience measurement probably a lot longer. In the meantime I’d like to see more audience measurement technologies powering large digital signage ad targeting networks, if the sales cycle for audience measurement deployments is long, why not try another channel of distribution.

Please share your comments, ideas, or thoughts on this article.

From DailyDOOH:

Thomas Dockter, Dockter Marketing has told us about the “Digital Signage Best Practice Awards 2008″ which will be presented at Viscom Framfurt 2008 which we wrote about earlier.

We are told that “The organiser of Viscom, Reed Exhibitions Deutschland GmbH, would like to particularly improve the acceptance of this rather young medium with the Digital Signage Best Practice Awards and also hopes to motivate more companies to extend their portfolio to Digital Signage products”

There are three categories in which manufacturers, service companies, agencies and integrators can enter their products and these are: -

1. Retail Signage – Digital signage applications in the retail sector
2. Information Signage – Digital information on public displays
3. Guidance – Digital guiding systems in the public domain

In assessing the products we are told that the jury will evaluate the relationship between content and technology while taking the design, setting and communication target fulfilment into consideration.

http://www.dailydooh.com/archives/2577

So, did you see the new Proof of Performance reports that were released the other day? According to the American Association of Advertising Agencies website:

“The AAAA Out-of-Home Media Committee, chaired by Steve Mueller of Outdoor Services, recently met with Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) representatives to discuss updating proof of performance reports, particularly for the new digital billboards.

The Committee and OAAA agreed these reports provide a spot or “play” list similar to what is common in radio and television reporting. They are generated by the out-of-home vendor’s computers that operate the digital networks and provide exact campaign details.”

To view a .pdf copy of the new digital proof of performance template Click Here.

What do you think? Should this become the de facto standard in reporting proof of play for the digital signage industry?

Almost 10% of digital signage projects “fail completely” to meet their objectives.

In a Futuresource Consulting white paper, a study of nearly 100 such initiatives showed nine to have failed completely and another 10 were declared only partially successful.

The company found that although the hardware and software platforms were now available for many businesses to take advantage of the benefits of digital signage, major obstacles still stood in the way of the format replacing print and entering the mainstream.

In some of the projects studied, the fact eight different parties were engaged and a lack of metrics to measure success or failure made digital signage overcomplicated and impossible to measure the return from.

However, Futuresource Consulting said this is likely to change, with more plug and play devices coming on to the market and industry standards beginning to emerge.

Even so, it recommends a “temperate approach to market potential” of digital signage.

The survey polled senior decision makers responsible for signage and digital media networks in France, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK.