Digital Signage Central

Businesses publicise in multiple mediums, aiming for extensive viewership and hence a good response. Next-gen advertisement techniques like digital signage solutions (DSS) have a very high potential in India, as it is possible to reach a large number of people; consumer density in India is significantly higher than in other countries. Digital signage at restaurants and clubs helps to display greetings, promotional campaigns or menus, with prices. In shopping malls, the aim is to display advertisements for newly-launched products, news, weather updates, or stock market information. Dynamic, real-time and content-rich ads tend to grab the attention of potential customers in a far better manner than static, non-interactive displays, print or other media.

Carinov Networks is one of India’s foremost players in the DSS arena. It has pioneered stand-alone digital signage (called Blue View) and networked digital signage (Digivoir), along with a hosted (SaaS Model) solution to schedule and manage screens remotely over an IP network. The company also has a user-friendly content creation tool to create multi-region layouts for content playback. The DSS solution integrates a first-in-India SMS and Bluetooth facility, making potential customer loyalty very high. This USP gives the firm a huge lead in the DSS market. Here are some of its unique selling points:

• SMS-based interactivity: SMS interactivity provides more entertainment to customers in restaurants/malls. The customer can request specific music, videos or other content, which can be played by sending an SMS to an advertised number on the digital signage screen — catching customers’ attention, and keeping them glued to the screen, waiting for a specific music or video request. Also, with SMS, the advertiser obtains solid data on the number of customers that a particular advertisement has reached.
• Low hardware/software cost: Carinov claims to use low-cost Intel-based hardware, which is capable of playing HD (high-definition) content. The hardware capabilities are fully exercised by Carinov’s proprietary, optimised, custom player software, which is specially designed for high-quality content playback on low-cost hardware. In addition, Carinov uses Linux, a free and open-source operating system, to further reduce licensing costs, yielding substantial savings as installations scale up.
• Easy content updation: Creating multi-layered content must be easy and quick, as fast updation of content is mission-critical to the media and advertisement industry. Carinov’s special content creation tool, CIGMA (which is designed with the help of professionals from the media and advertisement industry), is very user-friendly and intuitive, besides being fully-featured.
• High visual impact: For display layouts, Carinov has joined hands with a group of professionals from the media and advertisement industry to design layouts that maximise aesthetics and visual impact, while ensuring maximum screen utilisation.
• Scalability: Carinov Networks’ special network management system, C-Net, enables adding thousands of screens to a single client (media or advertisement company) and adding multiple clients to a single server.
• Reliability: Carinov’s hosted SaaS model (hosted in special enterprise server farms with 24×7 uptime guaranteed) means that clients need not dedicate a server or an office for content and screen management – this can be done using a laptop which has the content-creation tool installed, and has Internet connectivity.
• Highly sophisticated admin tools: Carinov’s admin tool, DigiVoir, not only enables clients to add/delete/manage screens and schedule content from anywhere, but also provides live player and content playback statistics, and can also provide network event alerts and daily/weekly reports as e-mails and SMS.
• Bandwidth optimisation: Carinov’s proprietary player software optimises bandwidth usage, ensuring that it is consumed only when a particular player needs an update in content.

How does the system work?
Clients push the content to be displayed to the screen over the Internet; it is stored on the player’s internal Flash memory or hard disk, and then played according to the play-list/schedule obtained from the admin server. Carinov’s Admin module enables each client to add players, and manage them through their own individual logins. (For more information on the content update process, please see the box.)

Customer base
Carinov Networks has recently bagged the contract to set up a digital signage network connecting 22,000 lottery outlets of Sugal and Damani, a leading lottery agency. In the first phase of this project, Carinov Networks will deploy its DSS to show live lottery results every 15 minutes, at over 5,000 locations. In addition, it will also show promotional campaigns, the mission and values of the company, along with targeted advertisements. Carinov’s other major client is Laqshya Media Private Limited, a company that uses digital signage software in entertainment networks, residential networks and malls in India.

The team
The team is led by four founders: Ansar S N, Nikesh S, Asif Iqbal Mooppan and Adarsh, who set up Carinov Networks in March 2007 in Bangalore. While Ansar, Nikesh and Adarsh manage business development, Asif is the technology head. The team members have experience in industrial engineering and technology, varying from five to eight years. Carinov Networks is funded by Micro Qual Techno Private Limited.

The team believes that real money lies in the media industry and software, which led to their venture, the first in India to develop a Linux-based digital signage system. As a young business establishment, the team faced the usual challenges such as employee retention, on-time delivery, customer relationship management, and of course, financial management and cash flow challenges.

The team at Carinov works with a mission in mind: “We work towards continuous innovation at all levels, to empower every employee, and to provide quality products and solutions to ensure the success of each customer.” And every action they take reflects this mission. The team strongly believes that “…innovative ideas get implemented only when the technology is honoured, and not just used.”

Future prospects
In the next iteration, the team is planning to integrate surveillance cameras to map viewer eyeball statistics, using a special algorithm to detect the eyes looking at the screen. According to Ansar, the DSS market in India is looking good!

Updating content with Carinov’s CIGMA

Here’s how the process of updating content works:

1. Get the content files to a computer where the content creation tool is installed.

2. Use the content creation tool to select any of the default layouts, or create a new layout as required.

3. Queue up multiple multimedia or text content items to the layout, or add many layouts with different content to make a playlist.

4.Open up the DigiVoir GUI at the hosted server URL; log in, then upload the created play lists and defined schedules for specific players.

Technical features
•         Controls the network from a centralised location

•         Internet-based content update

•         E-mail and SMS alerts for network failure and content updation; activity reports e-mailed to clients

•         Portrait and landscape layouts as pre-defined

•         Content creation tool has features such as timeline, drag and drop, preview

•         Supports multiple media types

•         USB authentication and content validation

•         Provides content security

•         Live Ticker update

•         SMS, RSS feed and multiple Web page display

•         Live snapshots and video of content play back

•         Bluetooth interactivity