The broadcast industry is going through a seachange, and there has never been a more important time to not only seek out new technology solutions in the digital TV transition, but to seek out new vertical markets for technologies. There is much promise for growth in digital signage, a market that was born in broadcast.
Digital signage ("narrowcast" content centrally managed, but pushed out to public spaces in retail, transportation, education, or corporate settings) is accelerating rapidly, even in the midst of a recession in the larger economy, because of the confluence of two major trends.
Brands, retailers, and news/information providers are shifting money into the places where consumers commute, travel, and shop; and, price declines for flat-panel and other digital technologies means "AV" can now easily and cheaply move out of the studio, classroom, boardroom, and living room, and into those public places.
Add to that a demographic shift toward younger consumers with mobile technological devices (the long-awaited "remote control" for digital signage), and you have the ingredients for a bona fide technology boom.
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| Harris Punctuate | |
Many, if not most, of the digital signage content management software solutions flooding the digital signage space are really broadcast content management products repurposed for digital signage and Digital Out of Home (DOOH).
It's all about centrally managing and targeting content and advertising to a network of screens and doing that easily and cost-effectively to get the right message to the right people at the right time.
The transition is not as seamless as it might look at first glance — especially for the end-user or integrator. Because managing content for often-cobbled-together retail networks, or over corporate IT systems, for example, is not as easy as doing it in in-house broadcast suites.
The digital signage content management software that organizes and directs how content will play is central to providing the unique, powerful and inherent capabilities of digital signage. But the selection of software can be complex and daunting to an end-user.
There are more than one hundred software providers for digital signage, and to the nonbroadcast customer, software doesn't have the kind of "specs" that allows easy A/B comparison when deciding which product to go with.
This problem is more pronounced in the DOOH space, where software specs are more confusing because of multiple formats across networks, different screen configurations (a mix of 3x4, 16x9, 16x10, etc.), SaaS vs. imbedded platforms, interactivity requirements, and a multitude of other variables that make moving content to public spaces much more challenging than one-way broadcasting out to standard format screens.
Look to the NAB Show to provide a glimpse at the next-gen software that is both rules-based — à la broadcast TV — but that is scalable up to a cross-network, cross format level that will bring the new digital signage market up to par with its broadcast TV parent.
A good example of a successful transition is Harris Corp. Harris's DNA was forged in the broadcast TV world, so it makes sense that they would be aggressively targeting the digital signage space.
Harris has done that with a new traffic/scheduling/billing software product, called Punctuate, for the digital signage market that is a direct result of Harris' experience in the broadcast world.
"Digital signage networks give advertisers out-of-home options to reach consumers on the move, using creative tools and delivery methods to capture the attention of their target audience," said Harris Morris, vice president and general manager, Media and Workflow, Harris Broadcast Communications. "Our Punctuate technology lets operators easily, yet precisely, schedule and manage their content, rather than repeating the same content loops across the entire network. This enables them to reach the right audience at the right time and maximize the value of their advertising and promotions."
Punctuate is not just about managing and scheduling content — it's also about helping to sell "media buys" in public spaces because it will enable sellers of in-store network space, for example, to more clearly define the media buy, as is done routinely in the broadcast TV world.
This is much needed in digital signage: broadcast-style traffic/billing that will propel the new medium to a true media buy, not just a technology buy.