Since beginning this column last fall, I've attempted to point to tendencies, evaluation and reviews that gauge the event of digital signage and establish the strengths and opportunities for this rising medium.
I'm not alone on this mission. A superb white paper from Profitable Channels makes a powerful case for digital signage networks as an efficient promoting medium with the flexibility to compensate for deficiencies in tv promoting manifested in more and more fragmented audiences, digital video recording and its accompanying business "zapping," and the lack of certainty in measuring audience metrics.
The white paper presents highlights of a larger in-depth report entitled "Adding Out-of-Home Digital Advertising Networks to the Advertising and Media Combine" by Worthwhile Channels companion Stephen Diorio.
The white paper makes a strong case that entrepreneurs should take digital advertising seriously. It's in the perfect interest of their firms, the white paper contends, to "ensure that their agency companions are contemplating" Digital Advertising Networks "as a part of the advertising and marketing/media mix." Moreover, it recommends marketers must be setting aside a portion of their advertising budgets for this emerging new medium.
Based on the white paper, rising Digital Advertising Networks offer five advantages over traditional media offerings, including:
measurable sales influence
proximity to the sale
better ways to target media
better relevance to the product being bought
tighter integration with native selling efforts
Many marketers have begun to recognize these benefits. The white paper points out that as of August 2006, 37 of the 50 largest supermarket chains "are rolling out, piloting or planning" for in-retailer digital signage networks and that greater than 4,000 "massive-box retail shops" display in-retailer video advertising. Further proof supporting that entrepreneurs see the worth of Digital Advertising networks comes in the type of budget allocation.
Referencing analysis from Veronis Suhler Stevenson, Carat Media and others, the document asserts that by 2011 "as much as $40 billion of conventional media spending" might be shifted into new media. Obviously, a big portion of this might be dedicated to Internet advertising and other new media, but Digital Advertising Networks stand to profit as well.
"This reallocation of media spending reflects a shift in shopper "attention" away from conventional newspaper and broadcast media to the Web and new digital media, including cell telephones, video video games, podcasting, and out-of-dwelling Digital Advertising Networks," the white paper says.
You will need to be aware that the report lumps "cinema" into the overall digital media networks category without distinguishing between commercials and still advertisements projected on-display by digital projectors and digital signage in and around motion picture theaters to advertise films. Equally necessary to know is that the previous is prone to be significantly bigger than the latter at this point. Regardless, the white paper identifies the general power of Digital Advertising Networks, of which digital signage is an important half, and the likelihood that they are going to only proceed to grow.
Perhaps best of all, the white paper identifies five separate research organizations that have found consumers like Digital Advertising Networks. All show these networks have "value to, acceptance by and positive response from consumers."