The SCREENS.tv Digital Signage Blog

Man-eating digital billboards from outer space!!!!! (1 comments)

The sheer vehemence of opposition to digital billboards in some U.S. communities continues to bemuse me. What is it that people who’ve presumably lived with TV, and with conventional billboards, for most or all of their lives – and with the Internet for the past decade or so – suddenly have against a medium that in some ways combines the best features of all three?

And the latest tirade suggests that either the residents of Los Angeles have attained a new level of dainty refinement since I lived there a couple of decades ago, or this writer in the Los Angeles Times just can't resist a spot of purple prose.

“Degraded future-world with video screens everywhere assaulting me with propaganda”? A city resembling “a congested constellation of 900 drive-in movie theaters”?

Sure, there are legitimate reasons to raise questions (rather than jump to assumptions) about traffic safety and power consumption, and light pollution if you happen to live next door to one of the things. But come on, guys – it’s not as if LA is some prelapsarian bucolic paradise rudely assaulted by War of the Worldsesque monsters.

There are better things to worry about, and if you (understandably) have a problem with illegally-erected billboards, focus on that – and its implications for local government and urban planning –  rather than getting distracted by imaginary digital monsters.

What the Wall Street meltdown means for digital signage (0 comments)

“Madison Avenue is bracing for the worst ad slump since 2001 as a drop-off in consumer spending is likely to lead marketers to rein in their budgets”, reports the New York Post on September 21. “The anticipated drop in spending in 2009 comes on the heels of a slight decline in 2007 and a more noticeable dip so far in 2008, according to industry data,” writes the New York Post’s Holly M. Sanders. Most major press relayed a similar sentiment in the wake of last week’s meltdown on Wall Street.
 
The New York Times quoted the CEO of WPP: “In the last couple weeks, you could smell the fear in New York,” said Martin Sorrell, chief executive at the WPP Group, which owns agencies like Grey, JWT and Ogilvy & Mather, as “institutions that were regarded as invincible have gone down or had to be bailed out.””

The downturn in ad spending had started well before the “Black Sunday”: “… the Nielsen Monitor-Plus division of the Nielsen Company reported last week that ad spending in the first half of 2008 fell 1.4 percent compared with the same period a year ago. The laggards included ads in national magazines, down 3.1 percent; national newspapers, down 8.1 percent; and spot radio, down 10.1 percent,” says The New York Times.

Reports forecast that traditional media is going to be the segment worst affected by the financial crisis followed by online display advertising, which has already suffered a 6% drop in the first half of 2008, according to Nielsen. Display ads on the Internet have been largely dependent on financial and insurance advertisers.

The New York Post writes that last week’s turmoil triggered memories of not-so-distant past: “No one wants a repeat of 2001, when the dot-com bust and an economic slowdown caused ad spending to plunge 9.8 percent, according to figures from ad researcher TNS.
During that recession, widespread cutbacks led to layoffs at many agencies, including some closings, shrinking budgets for many TV and cable outlets and the failure of several print publications,” (New York Post, September 21, 2008)

However, in 2001 the media landscape was quite different. Internet’s paid search advertising was not yet as proven and accountable as it is now, thanks to Google AdWords. Outdoor was less prominent and not yet regarded as ‘the only true mass medium left’, and the digital out-of-home ad space was almost non-existent. There are clear indications that these media may benefit from today’s difficult times, as marketers will cut budgets and look for more cost-efficient media placement options.

“It’ll be more pragmatic. More measurable. More digital.” — Nick Law, exec VP-chief creative officer North America of digital agency R/GA told Ad Age (“How Creativity Can Carry Your Business through a Recession”).

If we look at the categories falling under ‘more pragmatic, measurable and digital’, and I would add, ‘targeted’, they all continued to grow at an impressive rate throughout the economic troubles that began in early 2008.

“Despite the overall decline, ad spending for cable television, syndication TV, and outdoor advertising remained fairly healthy. Cable TV grew 8.1%,” writes crainsnewyork.com. Paid search was growing too, according to Nielsen Online. Outdoor was boosted by digital billboards, and in-store digital media (digital signage in retail) was expanding, notwithstanding the lack of standardized buying criteria and measurements.

Online display ads, although digital and targeted, were an exception from the above group due to their exposure to financial ad budgets, and, some say, their intrusive nature. A good example of the exception that proves the rule.
 
Ad Age’s  analysis of what the meltdown means for the advertising industry included this abstract:

For agencies: “… there will be further retrenchment in the financial-services and automotive sectors, with some expecting telecom budgets to be hit hard, too. Across the board, the pressure on shops will intensify to prove return on investment. Expect less-brand-based and more-sales-led metrics.

For media: “…By now, if you are in the media, you know the story: fewer dollars to broad-scale media and more for targeted, accountable media and other marketing disciplines, such as direct and customer-relationship management. Some marketers will double down with their most trusted media partners to create big, provable multimedia programs…” (Ad Age, September 22, 2008, bold and italics mine)

Although it is a fast-growing sector, digital signage is still a minor portion of the Outdoor/Out-of-home media which, in turn, is a modest part of today’s media mix. But that is changing.

The recession will inevitably force marketers to scrutinize ad spending and eliminate a lot of marketing waste. At the same time, it presents a rare opportunity (that occurs only once in every few years) for digital out-of-home networks to demonstrate their unique value as the most flexible, targeted, cost-efficient and accountable medium. The medium that closes a sale.

BusinessWeek features digital OOH (0 comments)

Nothing here will be new to regular SCREENS.tv readers, but it is always nice to see the big business magazines covering this sector...

Fix Wikipedia and help save the world (0 comments)

Wikipedia’s article on digital signage is, frankly, a mess – and although a number of editors (the rather grand Wikipedia term for anyone who cares to contribute) have made efforts to correct this or at least stop it deterioriating into a mire of random statements and commercial Web links, no-one as yet has had the time to give it a major overhaul.

So: Wikipedia, and the noble cause of public understanding of digital signage, need you. Get over there and help improve the article! (You don’t even need to register, though it’s a good idea, and like everything on Wikipedia it’s free.)

One polite word of warning, though, if you’re a Wikinewbie: don’t be tempted to use it to hype, or link to, your company. Apart from any more high-minded considerations, it’s just not worth your time and trouble; another editor will come along a few hours, or even moments, later and remove the self-promotion.

Recession? What recession? (0 comments)

Okay, these three articles have little to do directly with digital signage, but they’re all worth a read to provide some context to this sector (and save some pocket change)...

Media Post has a fun update on what’s cooking at the MIT Media Lab plus some cheeky tips on how to get Wall Street Journal Web content for free.

Meanwhile, Advertising Age has been looking at what the Wall Street meltdown might mean for ad-dependent media. (My take on this: in theory, our medium should suffer comparatively little – and perhaps even thrive – thanks to superior ROI. Working against it, however, is the novelty factor; badly-bruised sectors might prefer to stay with what they know. So I’ll just sit on the wall for now...)

Thought for the day (0 comments)

Nice quote from YCD Multimedia’s Barry Salzman buried in a slightly predictable article on our market from today’s Guardian newspaper: “In 1996 it took three TV ads to reach 85% of women in America, in 2001 it took 100 TV ads and today it’s impossible.”

A pity, though, that the article overplays privacy concerns, which while legitimate are not really all that specific to digital signage; it’s not as if in-store technology is taking intrusiveness to a new level.

Companies gather data, and mine it, and crunch it; this is the world we live in; and if you want to avoid being monitored electronically in that world (as, perhaps, is your right), you have a whole lot more to worry about than a company that’s added a little intelligence to POS promotional technology.

Besides, it’s all too easy to forget that sometimes there are benefits to the consumer too.

Another day, another screen-size record... (0 comments)

Panasonic used the recent IFA event in Berlin to show off a 150-inch plasma display – the world's largest (for now). According to reports, the Panasonic Viera 150 has a resolution of 4096 x 2160 and stands 3.81m tall. No word on availability, but we expect it to reach major markets over the next six months or so.

Quality vs. quantity: more research (0 comments)

If you can stand the infuriating e-magazine interface, it’s worth taking a look at this article in Electronic Retailer Magazine on the need to draw distinctions between viewership and responsiveness. It’s another angle on the search for new ways to describe and assess the characteristics and value of audiences, which we featured in a special report last week.

Online conspicuous by its absence... (0 comments)

Out-of-home (not just digital, of course) was the third most popular medium in the shortlisted campaigns for the Effectiveness Awards from Britain’s Institute of Practitioners in Advertising. TV came first, print second.

Good reception for Wal-Mart move (0 comments)

Plenty of ink and pixels has been devoted to the next incarnation of Wal-Mart's in-store network; here is one of the more interesting discussions, from a retail rather than a digital-signage perspective. Encouragingly, 80 percent (so far) of those polled feel the Wal-Mart rollout will speed up the growth of in-store media. 

Another way of looking at digital billboards (0 comments)

The great U.S. digital billboards saga continues, and perhaps nowhere does the battle rage more fiercely than in San Antonio, Texas, where local opposition is surely balanced in politicians’ minds by the presence of Clear Channel as a significant employer in the city.

There’s a detailed account of the story so far in this article from a local alternative paper which, perhaps inadvertently, makes one point that the vendors of digital billboard tech would do well to consider. With sentiment in so many places turning against billboards (both conventional and digital) – if indeed sentiment was ever much in favour of them – the greater revenue potential per billboard of the digital variety starts to look very attractive from a PR/regulatory-compliance perspective.

We usually think of digital as a way to make more money – but it can also be a way to make the same money with many fewer sites, and gain a warm fuzzy community reputation along the way.

Of course, as the San Antonio article also points out, there’s the slightly less convenient green aspect to consider too...

Audience metrics: our top eight trends to watch (0 comments)

1. First and most importantly: don’t expect measurement to drift away as an issue. While some digital-signage networks are getting by nicely with few and crude metrics, for the sector as a whole the absence of a clear, standardised, reliable system of audience measurement is the single biggest barrier to going mainstream and gaining the trust of brands and ad agencies.

2. Expect the ultimate solutions to come from pan-industry bodies and very likely from organisations outside this sector, rather than from specialist screen-media metrics firms. Why? The answer’s simple: a means of comparing OOH screen metrics with those for other media is what the agencies really need, and bespoke measurement methods that can only be applied to screen media don’t provide that. Clever though many of them are, they’re likely to end up as useful adjuncts rather than the main methods of measurement.

3. Leaders will emerge. In the UK, look to Postar – the measurement organisation that already covers non-digital out-of-home – and researchers Ipsos MORI to provide the basic currency of screen-media measurement. But don’t hold your breath: it’s unlikely to be firmed up before the end of the decade. Organisations from the sector such as POPAIdigital and The Screen will have significant input.

In the States, meanwhile, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) is leading the way, with heavyweight support from an assembly of big screen-media players and other media firms – including, crucially, the measurement firms ACNielsen and Arbitron. Earlier this year, Nielsen committed to start providing ratings for networks including IdeaCast and Gas Station TV, while Arbitron’s Portable People Meter, devised for radio, can be applied to out-of-home too.

4. Accept that once the dust has settled on the great quest for metrics – around 2011, perhaps? – it’s very likely that there will be different methods for different kinds of screen media. After all, does it make much sense to measure a digital billboard in the same way as a salon chair-side screen? Content, dwell time, the mood of the audience and the trade-off between high numbers and high quality are dramatically different. Many in the sector argue that it’s a motley bag of rather disparate media lumped together under the heading “digital OOH”, and the development of metrics is likely to prove them right.

5. Don’t expect an international solution. Other media are measured in different ways around the world, and media planning and buying are largely done on a per-territory basis, so there’s not much precedent or incentive for an international metric. One possible exception comes from the world of in-store TV, though: Nielsen In-Store and the In-Store Marketing Institute (ISMI) have been working on PRISM (Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric), which could provide a measurement standard for all in-store media on both sides of the Atlantic.

6. Look out for more technology innovation. The measurement accessory du jour is the camera, used by companies like Japan’s NEC, France’s QuiVidi, Canada’s Xuuk and Israel’s TruMedia. Some are combining it with face-recognition technology to enable truly accurate measurement of exactly how many people viewed a given screen and for how long, as well as making a stab at their age and gender.

But while such  high-tech measurement methods will undoubtedly prove useful in some applications – for example, validating short-term digital-signage installations, or testing potential screen venues – we don’t believe they’ll become the standard. In the end, brands and agencies will prefer metrics that can be easily applied to any network, without complex extra equipment at the site.

Meanwhile, pocket-sized devices like Arbitron’s Portable People Meter and Nielsen Outdoor’s Nielsen Personal Outdoor Device – which uses GPS to track the movements of a sample group of consumers and establish which advertising sites they have encountered – are likely to provide much of the basic data necessary for understanding trip patterns, while controlled experiments with gaze-tracking systems will make clear how consumers interact with advertising on a moment-by-moment basis.

In retail, ever-tighter integration of screen-media networks with POS and – eventually – RFID systems will lead to increasingly solid numbers on sales uplift.

7. Expect a growing emphasis on qualitative and behavioural aspects of the consumer, as well as audience numbers and demographics. (See the report we published today.) This will be especially true in the UK supermarkets sector, hugely competitive and able to fund the chunky research needed.

8. Don’t expect to attend many presentations on screen-media measurement without hearing references to (a) Google entering the market and (b) Minority Report coming true. Our money’s on (a) happening first, though if Google is eyeing this sector, it’s more likely to come in with an integrated local-advertising offer that combines online, newspapers, broadcast and outdoor than just with a measurement system. 

Hitting back at ad avoidance (0 comments)

It’s got to be the non-surprise of the century: the reason people don’t like junk mail is that it doesn't interest them, reports TiVo.

TiVo didn’t actually say that “we shouldn’t show people adverts they don’t want to see”, but it did hint at it. Using phrases like “new insights that were unimaginable only a few years ago”, Tracey Scheppach of Starcom – which is partnering with TiVo on an advertising research tool called the PowerWatch Consumer Panel – said: “New viewing behaviours revealed by correlations between household demographic, product category and ad fast-forwarding shows that while everyone is fast-forwarding through ads, effective message delivery can help make an ad resonate more.”

So: when are we going to start sending people the ads they want to see? And not just on their set-top boxes, but in stores, and by the bus stop? Or as an ad-agency exec might pose the question, how do we con people into looking at ads they don’t want to see?

Half the skill of really clever creative campaigns is exactly that. Nobody needs brown water with bubbles in it, but advertising has made Coke and Pepsi Cola the brand powers they are.

But the lessons learned by the advertising industry may not be the ones TiVo is trying to teach. What TiVo has shown is that yes, people skip adverts – but also, they eagerly watch adverts that are relevant to them.

For out-of-home screen media, the lesson surely has to be that we need the sort of user data TiVo can offer its advertisers. We have to find ways of identifying the specific viewer, not just the demographic.

This means that we aren’t just going into DIY stores and showing videos of people buying plant pots, on the vague grounds that they might reach the same people. It means we are actually tracking their loyalty cards as individuals, and finding ways of working out which aisle they are pushing their carts down, and predicting what they are likely to need next.

Take someone who has purchased drill bits, a saw and rabbit food; do they actually have a rabbit cage already? Maybe they are the sort of person who could be tempted to buy the new, giant, multi-storey rabbit mansion? Or a rabbit security system (or even a rabbit cookbook)? Or planks and wire mesh? Or are they a doting grandmother, ready for adverts about cuddly rabbit toys?

TiVo-type user data would make sure we knew which person was interested in what. Cellular-phone data would give us a fix on where they are, to within ten feet. Loyalty-card data would let us know their purchasing patterns as well as their current interests. Computer data mining would make the entire process utterly painless and virtually cost-free.

So the problem of “which adverts do you skip?” isn't a problem – it's a powerful tool. If people skip a particular advert, don’t show it them! If you can spot the ones they stop and look at, show them more like those. How hard is the principle to grasp?

We need billboards that recognise individual buyers. We need Web servers which spot the particular surfer. And we need to make the audience understand the value, not just to us, but to them, of giving us access to all this data.

It all boils down to grabbing the “privacy” idiom by the neck, and understanding the real differences between genuine intrusiveness, and “providing a helpful service”. And the tools to nip the ad-blocking trend in the bud are within our grasp. All we need, frankly, is a few industry leaders with the courage to use them. 

Focus: still waiting for the money... (0 comments)

A while back I wrote about worries that Focus Media in China might run up against cashflow issues...and it seems the grounds for concern are still there.

While Focus's latest quarterly results continue to show spectacular growth in most areas other than in-store TV (which should improve once the restructuring necessitated by the CGEN acquisition has been completed), accounts receivable are still sitting unpaid for an average 124 days, little better than in the previous quarter.

Grail-seeking (0 comments)

The next metrics buzzword may be "fusion". As this well-written article explains, it's a kind of data mining (though the article doesn't use the term) which compares media consumption and purchase patterns across a mass of individuals to determine which media will actually reach those who buy a given product category, with a degree of precision that even the best demographic targeting can't equal.

For example, the media planner can use fusion techniques to target "true heavy beer consumers, as opposed to men 18 to 34."

Sounds good, doesn't it? But like any other approach, it's going to need some fine-tuning. At least in its simplest form, it's less useful for campaigns that seek to change rather than reinforce behaviour (how do you target "people who don't drink beer at the moment, but would probably like it"?). And of course there are groups that by its nature it can't identify, for example the lucrative first-time parents market (who by definition have never bought baby products before; indeed, a whole lot of their consumption patterns are about to change abruptly).

Most likely, the real value will come through correlating multiple behaviours. For example, consumers who purchase white wine and cola drinks might be good potential converts to beer: they evidently like chilled alcoholic drinks and are also not averse to drinks from cans.

All this, of course, presupposes that the presumption underlying fusion is correct  – that people exhibiting these behaviours are not randomly spread all over the place in terms of media consumption.

But if there's a trend toward this analytic technique, digital signage stands to gain (as, I suspect, do all kinds of specialist and niche media, at the expense of big-numbers primetime TV). The place-based nature of the medium already implies a certain degree of behavioural similarity on the part of its consumers, which the fusion approach should confirm. 

The law of unintended consequences in action (0 comments)

An odd, but logical, side effect of the increase in fuel prices: U.S. consumers are pumping less gas, therefore spending less time at the fuel pumps, therefore watching less forecourt TV. The obvious way to address this (and thereby improve the C-store sales uplift of the gas stations, which are suffering already from the decreased fuel spend) is to slow down the flow of fuel; but I've no idea if that's possible. Answers, please, on the back of a five-dollar bill.

Mind you, there's a bright side. The CEO of Lamar, which needs all the positive spin it can get right now, reckons that higher gas prices mean more carpooling, and that means "more attentive eyeballs" for roadside billboards.

Implausible development of the month (0 comments)

The company's latest financials may have investors weeping, but one Oregon artist is finding laughs in Lamar with what we think may be the first ever comic strip on the theme of digital billboards.

Take a look at the latest strip here.

Can Disney be far behind? 

Signage for Small Businesses? (2 comments)

Technology is spreading. Over the last decade, scores of once-niche hi-tech gadgets and peripherals have become commonplace. Mobile phones are no longer the preserve of Filofax-wielding yuppies, games aren’t geeky any more, almost everyone has a home computer with internet access and multifunction printers have brought photocopying facilities into the home. Maybe digital signage could be the next niche technology to spread…

There’s more to captive-audience advertising than 42” plasma screens and professionally-produced presentations. You don’t need acres of wall space for a stupidly-expensive monitor, and nor do you need Steven Spielberg to carry your message. If you’ve a business where the public is allowed onto your premises, you can maintain a perfectly practical signage display with nothing more expensive than a digital photo frame.

Although designed for use in the home, displaying an ever-changing series of pictures taken on your digital camera, digital photo frames make an ideal low-budget signage solution. These days you can get a decent-quality unit, which can handle sound and short movie clips as well as jpegs, for around £50-£100. With a little work on your PC, you can then create high-quality advertising for your business, save it to the required memory source (usually an SD card) and loop it on your digital photo frame – much more practical than, say, playing a PowerPoint presentation directly off a computer.

Digital photo frames are useful for businesses of any size, even your local newsagents; it’s a great way to tell your customers Kit-Kats are two pence cheaper or you offer free delivery on newspapers and magazines. Much more exciting than day-glo paper and a marker pen.

Don’t overdo it, though. Shouting your message over migraine-inducing flashes of colour irritates your customers and drives your staff to distraction. Mostly-silent presentations, with the odd sound effect to herald particularly-important screens, work much better. You can start by looping a few jpeg graphics created in your picture editor of choice, and as you grow in competence and ambition, add some short movie stings or product demos. It’s fun!

It’s been said that Web 2.0 has empowered the ordinary man in the street to become their own publisher or documentary maker, with online blogs and YouTube videos reaching a potential audience of billions. With the same tools, you could create digital presentations previously only available to the biggest of businesses. Signage 2.0 begins here, folks…

Focus: is cashflow an issue? (0 comments)

Well, I was wrong when I suggested that Focus's Q1 results wouldn't reflect the disappearance of the wireless business; indeed, the quarter's headline loss figure was entirely down to an accounting adjustment made for just that purpose.

Even so,  scepticism of Focus continues on Wall Street today after Friday's price plunge and massive trading volume. At around midday (U.S. time) today Focus stock had dipped to 30.12. That's very close to the 52-week low, and Focus's valuation is now a full 25 percent down on the 30 May figure.

Meanwhile, the influential Seeking Alpha Website makes a point that just could prove prophetic:

The company is clearly growing at exponential rates but an Achilles heel may be developing with the accounts receivable list growing and days sales outstanding heading the wrong way. A quarter is 90 days. So basically, on March 31 the company still had not been paid for sales from the last week of November 07.

I don’t care what you may say about cultural differences of operating in...China, all business cultures understand cash. This company may have a big problem.

We won't have a clear Focus for a while (0 comments)

In the past few months, we've carried a number of stories on new contenders for the role of China's top digital-signage company  – a role which just a couple of years ago few doubted would be occupied for the foreseeable future by Focus Media Holding.

So Focus's Q1 results, due after the U.S. markets close today (Focus is listed on the NASDAQ with the ticker symbol FMCN), will be much picked-over – and all being well, we'll have a detailed report in place on Friday It will be particularly interesting to see how digital-signage installations are progressing, and how much new business is coming in.

But it's worth noting that while the latest financials will give some indication of where Focus is heading, they won't reflect the blow dealt to its SMS business toward the very end of the quarter, when Focus was accused by Chinese authorities of spamming.

What's more, revenue figures for the second and third quarters (at the very least) are likely to be quite distorted by the Olympics effect.

It may not be until the beginning of 2009 that we can determine how strong Focus's position really is.

Ubiquitous networking (0 comments)

BT futurologist Nicola Millard has produced a white paper entitled The Multichannel Swap Shop: Exploring the Behaviour of the Multitasking, Multicultural, Multichannel Customer.  Much of it concerns the relationship of Internet to bricks-and-mortar retail, but there are some thought-provoking points for our sector, like this:

The biggest consideration for companies with respect to multichannel strategies is the increasing convergence of networked devices combined with the increasing ubiquity of the internet. Convergence will start to blur the physical and the virtual worlds through the use of GPS, RFI ID tags and machine readable physical objects such as ‘shortcodes’, ‘SMS codes’, ‘QR codes’ or ‘UPCODES’, which can be printed on packaging or advertising material.

Hypertag, where a code is embedded into advertising posters, has already been successfully trialled with users able to order products using their phone and a short code. ScanSearch and ScanZoom have been trialled in Japan and the US. ScanSearch, from Amazon Japan, allows the 27% of Japanese customers who currently own a mobile phone equipped with a barcode reader to compare prices on the go with those on Amazon.co.jp and, if lower, buy straight from Amazon via their phone. ScanZoom allows customers to take a photo of a product’s bar code and then get access to PriceGrabber or Amazon’s information for that product, from product descriptions and customer ratings to pricing.

Physical spaces can start to be embedded with social networks - stories, memories, opinions and other social information left by individuals, groups and businesses. This so-called “geo-web” will enable people with mobile devices to access information relevant to their current location – including information sensitive to locale and local culture. Imagine being able to post reviews of hotels or restaurants whilst actually still being there and instantly having that information available to all.

In this converged world, customers can simultaneously be present in both the physical and virtual world. So there need to be tools to manage presence markers (i.e. I am here), attention management tools (i.e. there is something that might be of interest to you here) and the ability to multicontext (i.e. switch between physical and, potentially multiple, virtual channels). For companies, this allows the possibility of helping customers to shop and get service using location data as well as the data in CRM systems.

In addition, products get social and services get smart – whether through the power of IP (Ipv6 addresses) or self-configuring sensor networks. Connected devices (phones, computers, mp3 players, TVs etc) increasingly become intelligent servicing platforms, diagnosing, updating, reordering and supporting an array of products and services without the need for any human intervention (unless, of course, they choose to be involved).

You can download the white paper here.

Advertising: enough is enough (0 comments)

Busking is a way of making money, but I’d be reluctant to call it a business plan.

In the opinion of computer pioneer Charles Babbage, it was an evil so great that he went to the trouble of lobbying Parliament to have it banned; and banned it remained in London till very recently indeed. It was a nuisance, he said. And most of us, if inflicted with a hurdy-gurdy grinder outside our home, would probably have supported the bill.

Parliament told the buskers: “Go away.”  And a lot of people who made an adequate living out of performing on street corners were suddenly out of work.

Similar fates await the advertising bubble, on computer desktops, and in public, if the marketing world can’t get reality into perspective. Yes, there’s money to be made in advertising. But it’s no substitute for having a real product that people want, when it comes to media.

Recently, a group of venture capitalists bemoaned the fact that most Internet startups, when asked where they thought their revenue would come from, said: “Advertising, of course!” And they spoke as people speak of a resource; something that was there like sunlight; and all you had to do was expose yourself to it.

But speaking purely as a consumer of advertising, I’ve had enough.

On my computer, recently, my Internet browser was using 98 percent of the available processing power. And it was all going to running programs I didn’t want to have running – advertising. The culprits: all the big news sources from the Wall Street Journal to Fox to the Telegraph to CNET and a host of others. Pouring data into my computer, they had flooded it. My only option was to get a much, much more powerful machine, or block the adverts. I chose the latter: I said: “Go away!”

The thing is, most advertising is not of interest to me. Like busking, it’s assembled to suit the tastes of the bulk of the market; but when I want music, I like to make my own choice. And when it comes to advertising, there are actually things I want to buy, about which I’d welcome more information. There are also things I don’t want to buy, will never buy, cannot use. How many tampon adverts is it worth showing me? What are the chances that I’ll be asked to advise on lipstick purchases? What on earth is the point of offering me cheaper car insurance when I already have the cheapest deal available? Go away.

Information announcements are equally insensitive. Having forked out a very tidy sum for DVD entertainment, I’m about ready to download every free video on the Net. Reason: I’m fed up of being preached to about how wicked it is of me to download free videos. Me, who just bent the credit card almost double pouring cash into their coffers! Go away!

Those who blithely assume that people will tolerate advertising, however much of it they are subjected to, may be wrong. I’m not the only angry one.

Adverts on TV are a good excuse to press pause on the digital video. It’s less easy to block out posters and screen media in supermarkets and conference halls, but I don’t think we can assume that this means we have a licence to cover the world with flickering images. As poet Ogden Nash put it, “I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree”.

The backlash will come. I don’t think people will tamely sit by and watch the world blotted out by excited marketing messages much longer; I’m pretty sure they will start demanding action to stop it.

And at that point, media which have loyal, paying subscribers who actually know what they want and spend money to get it will be able to continue. And free media which provides the public with exactly what they pay for will be squeezed a lot tighter than Babbage’s buskers.

No, I don’t think it’ll happen this year, but if we don’t become more intelligent in the way we target our commercial messages, it’s pretty much inevitable. 

Outdoor phoenix from AsiaWeek ashes (0 comments)

Redgate is becoming important in outdoor media in China. Its recent acquisition of MediaShell  and two television companies pushed it up the ladder a few rungs.

As far as is known Peter Brack came to Hong Kong as publisher and managing director of AsiaWeek which was then owned by AOL Time Warner who were pushing the line the magazine had to go electronic. To underscore this point, Brack burned a copy of the old-style magazine in front of a gathering in Macau of ad sales staff.

AsiaWeek closed shortly afterwards for it was set up and staffed to be a printed magazine and economies are not the same.

The official story is that it was finished by the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Peter Brack said, 'We had a plan, and the plan was working up until the middle of this year. We were struck by lightning.' Which, of course, was nonsense because the magazine simply was unable to make the uneasy transition from print to electronic media.

Peter Brack went on to found Redgate which is now called an integrated media firm. Fiirst it acquired FLOG Media which was a smallish Shanghai-based outdoor sports venue display advertising firm. Then for an undisclosed sum, it acquired outdoor display advertising company Shanghai Hong Men Advertising.

This added Hong Men's network of billboards which includes hundreds of light-box advertisements in affluent areas of Shanghai.

Redgate said that Hong Men's client base included a number of domestic and luxury and consumer goods advertisers and advertising agencies. Redgate plans to double its existing light-box inventory this year.

Peter Brack said, 'Hong Men is an important part of Redgateís strategy to broaden our platform to outdoor media, and we are very pleased to have such a strong presence in the important advertising market of Shanghai.

'Hong Men is one of the leading outdoor companies in Shanghaiís high-end community advertising business, and we look forward to continuing our expansion in outdoor on top of this strong foundation.'

Now Redgate Media, which is referrred to as a leading integrated media, entertainment, and advertising company in Greater China (when you are registered in Hong Kong always refer to Greater China) has announced that it has agreed to acquire MediaShell.

MediaShell is a leading out-of-home advertising company that specializes in poster networks in office buildings, shopping malls, and residential buildings. The company covers over 500 locations each in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzen, with an additional 1,200 locations in Guangzhou, giving it a solid reach to Chinaís most affluent demographics, both at home and in the workplace.

So from the death of AsiaWeek -- a pity but it was bound to happen -- we come to one of the liveliest companies in outdoor advertising which is pushing hard into the lightbox areas.

Now Redgate Media has acquired Yarun Culture Communication Shanghai Dianguang Media Broadcasting Company.

These are leading television advertising sales companies based in Shanghai with both offering strong coverage of key markets including Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan and Tianjin. Through their combined operations, Redgate will be able to offer advertisers exposure in several important markets across China, via top-rated sports, general entertainment, and movie channels.

So practically from nowhere one person, Peter Brack, by chosing the right partners, has built up a serious multi-media company in China which could, eventually, challenge the major players. 

Outdoor signage in Asia creeps up the chart (0 comments)

In a research brief from the Center for Media Research there were figures which shows the vital importance some of the Asia markets will have in the nearish future.

In its first advertising expenditure forecasts of 2008, ZenithOptimedia downgraded its combined growth forecasts for North America and Western Europe this year from 4.4% to 3.8%, as consumer and business confidence is negatively impacted by current economic conditions. However, says the report, growth continues to strengthen elsewhere, and Zenith increased its 2008 forecasts for the rest of the world from 10.9% to 11.1%.

If you take ALL advertising spending for 2008 North America would be nearly $200 billion while Asia  Pacific would be $107 billion. Roughly North America is twice Asia Pacific.

Now extend the forecast to 2010 and the United States has hardly budged (still around the $200 billion mark) whil Asia Pacific has gone from $107 to a forecast $122.5 billion. True, it is nowhere near overtaking the United States but it is moving upwards. Putting more precise percentages to it North America rate climbs 2.4% a year and Asia Pacific 7%.

Now look at the forecast top contributors to Global AdSpend and the USA has a growth rate of 8.3% while China has 61.5%.

The report said 'Digital technology is likewise enhancing the value of outdoor to advertisers.' It is still a small piece of the pie (definitely in single figures with 6.9% being suggested for outdoor advertising and no figure being given for digital technology.) But there is little doubt is Asia, specifically China, is where it will catch on, and the spend could quite soon, quite easily overtake the United States.

Jason buys back some Focus Media shares (0 comments)

The finances of business have always been a little beyond me. Therefore I cannot give a reason why in China Focus Media Executive Chairman Jason Jiang has purchased 100,000 Focus Media shares at an average price of US$34.19. Which means he laid out $3.419 million. Which, given the fact that last year he was declared the fortieth richest person in China probably came from his pocket money.

Sort of explaining it Jason Jiang said, 'In 2008, we will focus on building our business based on the existing platform and increase our margin and free cash flow generation. I am fully committed to the future of Focus Media.'

Financial Officer, Daniel M. Wu will present at the 11th Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference which is being held even as we speak at the Island Shangri-la Hotel in Hong Kong. It will be interesting to see if he even mentions mobile spam.

In an earlier conference call Daniel Wu said 'We expect our mobile handset advertising business to be affected in the next quarter, given that we will put in place very strict control, in terms of what good business conduct we need to carry out for Focus Media.'

Signage age/sex detection technology - a revolution in the making... (1 comments)

TruMedia's signage analysis technology (see story here) is a significant step forward for the digital signage industry.

The reason, of course, is the fact that the company's smart box is capable of working out the age and sex of the face belonging to the person who is looking at the screen.

The technology stays on the right side of privacy protection since it only stores the image for analysis for the 30 seconds or so it takes to relay the age and sex of the face owner to the company's servers in Florida.

After that, the data is deleted.

The smart box is reported to be simple to deploy, plugging into the camera attached to the screen concerned, and then across a standard ethernet connection for Internet access.

The important thing to realise is that the face data can be transferred to TruMedia's servers in real time, meaning that the signage content on the screen in the mall, or wherever, can interpret this data - also in real time - and take appropriate action on the content front.

The last time I saw this type of technology in action was in Paris last summer when a digital (outdoor) billboard was displaying a series of ads for passing motorists.

As soon as I walked past, it detected a pedestrian and the content changed to details of local attractions plus concerts.

The text and pictures were a lot more concentrated, so clearly, the content had been adapted for longer dwell times and pedestrian viewing.

Just imagine if that billboard could analyse my sex and approximate age - the content could be adapted to target me better. It might even work out whether I was a real Parisien or a tourist and further adapt the content for my consumption.

There are clearly privacy concerns here. I suspect that, as the technology develops, there will be civil libertarians getting uptight about the personalisation of the content, but I think the advertisers/sponsors will respond positively by offering discounts on products and services they promote.

That will appease and very possibly appeal to the viewer. Everyone loves a discount, especially if it's appropriate to their needs.

As I said, this technology is a significant step forward for the signage industry. It will be fascinating to see how it develops in the months ahead...

No Metrics = No Buys: The War of Metrics Has Begun (1 comments)

As of this upfront period, the U.S. division of Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) – one of the largest media communications companies – will only be buying media that can produce more advanced metrics.

According to MediaWeek, “Starcom USA will no longer do business with unrated networks that are not measured by companies or rating services that can offer documented data on viewership.”

“In prior years, standard industry practice has been to negotiate TV buys from unrated networks based on estimates from those networks and disparate sources,” Starcom said in a statement. “The availability of second-by-second data from companies such as TNS, in its alignment with Charter and DirecTV, allow for national performance metrics for these previously unrated networks and reveal never-before-seen insights into behaviors of those networks’ audiences.”

The move is significant (if it had been in the 80s, I would have said: paradigm shift), as Starcom USA is probably the largest media agency, and when it sets the bar for accountability and ROI higher, others will certainly pay attention. It will also prompt the channels with less adequate metrics to try and comply in the nearest future.

Since the Internet started providing reports on referring sources, targeted impressions, click-throughs and sales conversion data (for e-commerce), it has been enjoying double-digit growth in ad revenue and, along the way, has pushed the standards for accountability for other media. This, along with traditional media fragmentation, led to advertisers’ increasing disenchantment with network TV and the gradual shifting of the budgets towards online, outdoor and now to digital out-of-home (digital signage).

It looks like Starcom is determined to break the 60-year-old advertiser-agency-media relationship system, which has been centered around network TV and newspapers, while everything else was essentially an afterthought. The wise joke: ”I don’t know which half of my ad budget works” is not amusing to national advertisers any more, and agencies are finally hearing this, embracing the most measured medium: digital. Starcom recently discontinued a contract with Donovan Data Systems (DDS) – a near-monopoly software platform for tracking media buys and billings – citing DDS’s inability to efficiently process digital media transactions.

The agency’s divorce from DDS sent shock waves throughout the advertising community and put extra pressure on DDS to catch up with its smaller rival MediaBank in introducing digital media management capabilities.

In a separate development, Advertising Age reported recently that digital services in 2007 accounted for 12.3 percent, or $4.7bn of worldwide revenue for advertising’s Big Four — Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic and Publicis. “Put another way, writes Ad Age, “digital’s share of revenue at each of the top holding companies is higher than digital’s estimated share of worldwide media spending.” Or, “put another way”, as marketers shift money from TV and print, the Big Four have become more aggressive in increasing their digital spending than the industry on average. Starcom MediaVest Group is a subsidiary of Paris-based Publicis Groupe.

As organizations like OVAB, OAAA, Arbitron and Nielsen are spearheading the development of metrics for digital signage, we can expect similar budget shifts towards our field within the next couple of years. Meanwhile, TV channels are working to offset the losses and bring their own measurement instruments closer to par with the Internet. The war of metrics has begun. 

Focus Media runs into spamming problems (0 comments)

It seems like only yesterday Focus Media had digital advertising in China totally under its control and was rapidly and profitably expanding into other fields. That is no longer the case -- although it still dominates the field -- and it is now clear why Jason Nahun Jiang has been eased upstairs. Jason Jiang is now Executive Chairman of the Board and Dr Tan Zhi is Chief Executive Officer.

Although the accounts came out and seemed fairly splendid everything was not as it should be.

The revenue from the in-store network fell to $6.5 million which is about 17.4% down year over year and attributed to strong competition, mainly from CGEN. In true Asian tradition Focus Media has now bought CGEN which strengthens its market position.

Up to that point everything looks pretty good.

From now on dates are needed to keep track.

March 15: The share price of Focus Media on NASDAQ closed over 16% up at $37.41.
March 17: It slumped by 26.59%, bottoming out at $29.25, a new low for the year.
March 18: A press release from Focus Media said: 'Focus Media does not approve sending advertising messages to mobile users without user consent.  FMW (Focus Media Wireless) has established an internal policy to strictly prohibit sending SMS or MMS messages without the explicit consent of the receiving mobile user'.
March 21: The China Daily (this is a government newspaper) reports Focus Media Wireless, the mobile advertising subsidiary of Focus Media, was sending more than 100 million spam text messages to cell phone users in the country, 100 million a day, every day, without their consent.
March 21: Later the same day -- the government, through its press agency Xinhua, announced Focus Media Wireless was totally banned from the two major mobile phone operators. This is fairly astounding news because it means Focus Media Wireless simply cannot function.
March 21:. Later yet. Jason Jiang, in a press release, said he was sorry for not fulfilling supervisory and control duties and said Focus Media Wireless would stop spamming. Which is a bit pointless because if the telephone companies have closed you down you cannot send spam.
March 23: The extent of the spamming becomes public knowledge. According to Nanfang Metropolis News, Focus Wireless' Zhengzhou subsidiary sends out 200 million SMS every single day (twice what was originally thought) -- while several other company subsidiaries send out upwards of 30 million SMS per day.

Plainly all of this nonsense has been boiling for some time and is one of the reasons Jason Jiang has been moved upstairs.

For the moment Focus Media has suspended its message service and in a press release has the line: 'which after all is only a small part of the company’s business.' In fact it brought in 9% of the net profit declared which may be is 'a small part' but it is a significant small part.

Richard Ji, an analyst for Morgan Stanley, said that Focus Media had planned to separately list its mobile handset advertising business and the departments involved. This will plainly not now happen.

Richard Ji also believes the 26.59% drop in the firm’s share price was an over--reaction. The company’s 2007 fourth quarter operating income from wireless advertising amounted to only 9% of the company’s total operating income. At worst, without its present wireless advertising business Focus Media’s value would decrease by only 5% to 10%.

Focus Media now divides its business into four groups: digital outdoor advertising, Internet advertising, mobile handset advertising and digital TV advertising.

The conference call about the quarterly report from Focus, to which this writer listened along with a Mandarin interpreter, did not spell out exactly what was happening but it gave many clues.

Jason Jiang, the man who started the company and was until very recently Chief Executive Officer, spoke through a translator although his command of English is pretty fair.

One analyst asked Jason Jiang, 'Jason, if you can talk about the logic behind you giving up the CEO position and basically being solely chairman.'

The reply, translated,  was that Jason Jiang wants to spend his full time on the Internet, mobile advertising, and other new media areas because in those areas the industry is growing very fast and changes rapidly. He said, 'Focus Media today in those areas has not reached such a strong position as we have in the digital out-of-home business.' Notice he did not once mention the problems with Focus Media Wireless.

Dr. Tan Zhi then added, 'Under Jason's leadership in the past three years, the company has grown so fast and through this growth, we certainly have demonstrated the business model works. It really provides the customer with a very good value.

'However, after such a long, fast growth, the company reached to a certain size and at this size, we do need to watch ourselves, not only to our ability to expand the market share but also make the operation well-organized.'

It was an excellent PR exercise. But it could be read as saying that Dr Tan Zhi is going to run the company that makes the money while Jason Jiang eals with the very serious problem of having crossed the line with spam from the Focus Media mobile service. And, in doing so, has crossed swords with the government. In China this is not a good move. At a guess Focus Media Wireless will be reconnected. But the Spam that has been making its profits will stop dead in its tracks. Which will leave Jason Jiang with not that much to do to occupy his time.

Where to see signage robots working (0 comments)

The problem with any site is the editor has to make decisions as to size. Same thing on daily newspapers. The fact that author thinks the article is being severely damaged by this editing is besides the point. It has to be done.

So about those robots at the airport in Korea.  They carry a signage board above their head -- just like sandwichmen did in days of old.

What the article does not say -- it was cut out by a cruel and heartless editor -- is that you can see one working in a YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPpnt_fPfcc although, unfortunately, the signage board is only visible in the last part of the video and is in Korean script.

However, vistiors to the airport can get English information from its chest and it talks in English. You can ask it the way to somewhere and it will tell you where it is or take you there. As it is unisex, toilets are no problem.

There is an age problem. Children have no problem with it all. The older the customers the more difficult the interaction. People over fifty went to some effort to stay right out of its way.
Difficult to see precisely how this would work in, say, a crowded store but at the airport they seem to fulfill their tasks -- giving information and greeting visitors -- very well. Watch the video. I think it ace even if the editor doesn't

Carrefour's Brazilian signage investment - a logical step? (0 comments)

On the face of it, Carrefour's decision to satellite-connect and upgrade the signage systems in its 108-strong hypermarket chain across Brazil (see story here) looks a bold initiative.

It's only when you realise the fact that more than 15 million Brazilians cannot read or write that you begin to understand the logic behind the move.

Traditional print advertising does not work if you cannot read or write and, whilst Carrefour, in common with several other major companies in Brazil, is helping the government with its education programme on that front, the situation is likely to continue for at least one more generation.

Despite this lack of literacy, Brazil's economy is growing fast and the country is in the fast lane in terms of new media.

Depending on who you speak to, Carrefour has somewhere between 400 and 450 stores across Brazil, with approaching 50,000 staff. Not bad for a country with almost 200 million citizens, making it the sixth-largest country in the world in terms of population.

The country's demographics are a media professional's dream - multi-ethnic and 75 per cent Catholic, 42 per cent of the population are under 20 and urban.

Despite the influence of the Church, all retail stores are allowed to open seven days per week, 24 hours a day.

In the light of this, you can begin to see the potential in Brazil - no wonder Carrefour is investing so heavily in its retail outlets, setting up petrol station forecourts and buying into pharmacies across the country.

You could argue that Carrefour is to Brazil as Tesco is to the UK, but the depth of commitment goes much further than that - Carrefour is a major investor in people in an emerging market. It also has a positive track record of more than 30 years in the country.

The company organises a number of original social programmes for its employees. In ethical terms, it instils the values of respect and integrity into its managers and employees through its Pro Etica programme.

For several years, the firm has run the Carrefour Volunteer programme, designed to promote skills sponsorship and volunteer work. As part of this initiative, more than 1,500 employees devoted four hours per month to performing voluntary work in aid of 8,000 children and teenagers in 2006.

It's against this backdrop that you begin to understand why Carrefour has invested in a satellite-connected digital signage system for its hypermarket chain. The country is definitely on the up.

Compare and contrast that to the economic meltdown taking place in the US at the moment. I wonder how long it will be before the US signage majors start acquiring Brazilian operations?...

Battery-powered LCDs? No, it's not an early April Fool... (0 comments)

When I first heard of Digital View's battery-backed signage system - VideoFlyer-SP - due to be unveiled at a trade show in Chicago next week (see story here), I must confess I thought it was an early April Fool.

And I've heard a few April Fool technology stories in my time, like the mobile phone that lasts a year between charges (you carry the batteries in a rucksack -Ed) and the floppy disk that doubles the amount of data stored on the disk by spinning the drive head as well as the disk surface (think about it -Ed).

But the technology is definitely not an April Fool and is much-needed in the retail industry.

Not all retail stores are purpose-built emporiums built in a modern shopping mall. A quick stroll around the cities of Manchester and London here in the UK reveals a number of stores built into the shells of old Victorian buildings. And likewise in many cities across the US.

These old buildings were built before the electric revolution and, as a result, power cables are very much an afterthought. This often means that the number of power outlets in the stores are limited.

Short of rewiring these old stores - at considerable cost - the VideoFlyer-SP is the best option to get signage out into the shelf space.

The aim of the battery-powered signage system, says Digital View's Dusty Perryman, is to engage the customer at the point of purchase.

For that to happen you don't need a 64 inch portrait LCD screen - all you need is an eye-level five or seven inch display and a presentation that sells the product. Once it is in the shopper's trolley or basket, the signage's work is done.

This is what makes the VideoFlyer-SP a breakthrough. It will be even more of a breakthrough if the company comes up with a new type of power source which it claims to be developing.

But that, as they say, is another story...

Silver screen? More like gold (0 comments)

To intermittently-sunny Brixton in south London today, wearing my other hat as an independent film exhibitor, for a conference with the inevitably punning title Independents' Day.

The news for Britain's cinema-exhibition sector is...well, let's put it this way: it's not as gloomy as it is for many of our mainstream media. Audiences are way way up on the grim days of the 1970s and 1980s, and ad revenue, while not exactly soaring Internet-style, is at least showing growth in good years. This year the annual growth rate should be more or less on a par with outdoor's, in fact.

And as well as the familiar pre-show reel, there's another aspect of cinema advertising that's attracting much interest: place-based promotions, including foyer screens. The digital side of this is not a huge market yet, but it can only be expected to grow as the move to digital projection leads cinemas to install more infrastructure, and as acceptance of screen media in general grows.

But the really nice thing about these ad opportunities is the audience. Not only is it younger and more affluent than the population as a whole, but it's in a great mood: the top five traits of cinema identified by audiences surveyed for the 2008 Film Audience Measurement and Evaluation survey were "glamorous", "clever", "trendy", "upmarket" and "sexy". Many marketers would kill for brand associations like those.

What's more, the same survey showed that not only do 85 percent of cinema visitors usually watch the (big-screen) advertisements, and a full half discuss them afterwards, they also spend an average of 18 minutes in the building but not in the auditorium itself - primarily, of course, in the foyer, refreshment, or cafe/bar areas.

The audience loves the environment, is in the mood to watch ads (very likely encouraged in this by the extremely high creative values and often intriguingly wacky concepts of British cinema advertising)....and hangs around for nearly 20 minutes. What better recipe for a screen-media location? 

Focus on the puzzle of Chinese names (0 comments)

The Focus Media story shows that writing Chinese names in English is not easy. How you spell it depends, in part, on where you are.

There are two famous cellist  twins -- Ng Pei-Sian and Ng Pei-Jee. (Incidentally, they are quite remarkable and well worth making an effort to hear play.)

A Chinese name is written with the family name (surname or last name) first and the given name next, therefore "John Smith" as a Chinese name would be "Smith John".

So their family name is Ng which is also Cantonese for 'five'. Their given names are Pei-Sian and Pei-Jee.

If you were reporting their playing in Hong Kong in, say, the South China Morning Post, you would follow house style and give their names, correctly, as Ng Pei-sian and Ng Pei-jee.

But on assorted web sites you will see it reversed.

As Ng is the surname they become, on some sites, Pei-Sian Ng and Pei-Jee Ng. (Interesting that they are Australian and barely speak Chinese at all. I speak Cantonese better than they do and I know them both quite well and we joke about it.)

The same rule applies to, say, Mao Tse-tung who I did not know quite well or, indeed, at all. That is how you used to spell it in Hong Kong English language newspapers and elsewhere. But in China it is spelled Mao Zedong. So perhaps that is te spelling we should all adopt.

So, in theory, you would call him Mr Mao although I doubt there was ever a lot of that around.

Many Chinese dealing with Westerners sometimes take European names so that they become, say, Jason Jiang. These are not always felicitous results as they are working in a foreign language. Thus an Alcohol Wong, April Fu and so on are widespread especially in Hong Kong.

(This is not something I laugh at. When I first went to Thailand I used the slang for my first name and was known as Khun Garry. This caused no end of amusment because Garry pronounced the Thai way comes out as prostitute. So I changed by name to Khun Garrett which means Mr Gold and the tittering has stopped.)

The new CEO of Focus is called Tan Zhi or Zhi Tan in different news stories.

He got his Master and Ph. D. degrees in computer science at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA and then moved back to China in 1987 and is thus often referred to, correctly, as Dr. Tan Zhi.

His family name is Tan and his given name is Zhi yet he appears variously in the press as Tan Zhi or Zhi Tan. Correctly it should always be Dr Tan Zhi or, more informally, Tan Zhi.

Yes, it is complicated and, yes, journalists get it wrong all the time. However, the Chinese can always take their revenge.

In Hong Kong and most of China I am known as Sor Gai which translates as 'Crazy Chicken' and comes from an earlier television show, 'Sor Gai, Sor Ngap' which means 'Crazy chicken, crazy duck.'

I do not know what I have done to deserve that name.

Interactivity - the Packaging Needn't Overshadow the Message... (0 comments)

Well, well, well - would you Adam and Eve it (guvnor)? Do you remember those adverts from a few years back, where a couple of fast-driving cockneys who looked just like Regan and Carter from Seventies cop show The Sweeney took to the road? Of course you do. Remember how they raced around every corner with tyres screaming in protest? Of course you do. Do you remember what it was they were actually advertising? erm...

Research has shown that while adverts were getting cleverer and more eye-catching, their intended mission statement got lost somewhere along the way. Surveys suggested few who saw the Sweeney-inspired car advert (for the Nissan Almera, as it happens) could name the vehicle that was being advertised, and a significant portion of viewers didn't even realise they were advertising a bloody car. The packaging had overshadowed the message, and while entertaining in its own right, it had totally failed to do its job.

Fast forward to this year, when another hugely entertaining car advert was trialed in London's Cineworld theatres. Here, cinema-goers got to 'drive' a Volvo XC70 by waving their hands over their heads, swinging right and left to steer the car using motion-sensor technology. The campaign, labeled 'Human Joysticks', was hugely ambitious - and it worked! Apres-movie surveys showed 'a remarkable 71% of moviegoers recalled that the virtual car they'd driven was a Volvo', and they even enjoyed the movie more than audiences who weren't shown the advert beforehand.

It just goes to show clever, original advertising needn't overshadow the product that's being advertised, and that interactivity facilitated by the application of new technology offers potentially huge rewards for early adopters.

No, the next station is not Clapham (1 comments)

Sometimes the simplest things teach you an important truth about digital signage.

When this happened, yesterday, I was not in Asia. I was in England travelling from Victoria Station to the depths of Sussex. (As you read this, all Gods be thanked, I will be on my way back to Asia and warm.)

Inside, at the front of each carriage is a scrolling digital sign. It has important information. It tells you what carriage you are in (some stations have short platforms when you need to know this), the name of the next station and the other stations on the line.

On this journey every time it lights up it reads: 'The next station is Clapham Junction' accompanied by a mellow female voice confirming this.

It does it while we soar past out to Gatwick Airport and beyond.

An increasingly desperate train guard comes on the loudspeaker system at every station and assures us it is NOT Clapham Junction, it is Christ's Hospital or whatever.

Digital information screens are wonderful which is why we write about them. But they are only wonderful when the information they give is timely, apposite and, above all, correct.

White is not always the answer (0 comments)

In London to hear a contest for classical musicians. Get the train from Victoria Station going to some place in West Sussex. In the station going to the platforms on one side is the list of trains and the times they are leaving. On the other side an escalator leading up to a shopping center. Between, a massive digital sign.

Sometimes it shows Sky News, sometimes an advertisement. Interesting. Passes the time. Then I notice a strange thing. When one advertisement comes up people turn away, cover their eyes, avert their gaze.

The advertisement is in white on white and it is blinding. The eye cannot take it.

It is for a charity which is carbontrust.co.uk. Later I go to the site and find that:

'Our mission is to accelerate the move to a low carbon economomy to reduce carb emissions and develop commercial low carbon technologies.'

Good. Nay, excellent. But you do not have to blind people to do it. If you changed that white screen to something a little less dazzling it would work better. Just because somebody shouts out very loud does not imply they have a sound argument. Honest. 

Thought for the day (0 comments)

“Digital signage is coming almost to be an alternative name for our industry.”

Neil Weinstock of Be Media, writing about the commercial AV sector.

Casino signage: lots of innovation, lots of regulation (0 comments)

Digital Signage Expo Day Two, and there was too much happening on the news front to spend a lot of time in the conference sessions – not least Dynamax’s deal with Clear Channel, which really catapults the former company into the big leagues internationally and not just in the UK.

But there were a few interesting sessions going on upstairs at the Las Vegas Convention Center, not least a panel discussion on digital signage in the (U.S.) casino business. Chaired by Bill Yackey, who edits Another Website and I suppose ought to be my mortal enemy but isn’t, the panel also featured Brent Brown, VP of International Business Systems; Drew Topel, now director of media technology with Titan Outdoor in the U.S. and previously on the other side of the fence with CoolSign; and Lance Hutchinson, director of Digital Display Group.

The first thing that struck me was the incredible amount of regulation these guys have to put up with when installing their screen-media systems – not only from state authorities, but also from the administrations of the individual Native American tribal territories in which so many U.S. casinos are located. Essentially, it seems, any technology that physically or virtually touches the actual gaming systems has to be ratified before it can be installed, lest it affect the fairness of the games.

The underlying rationale of consumer protection behind this kind of regulation may be difficult to fault, but it means that even apparently innocent applications such as remote diagnostics, let alone real-time jackpot displays, have to get through the red tape.

But the specialists in this field clearly do manage to get through it, because Topel and Hutchinson pointed out some interesting gaming trends,which I offer in no particular order:

• “Proximity meters” visually indicate how close a given player is to a jackpot – not necessarily the big one, but enough to keep them playing. Increasing individuals’ playing time is a goal for casino operators.
• Devices like this may be necessary in order to create a buzz in today’s casinos, which are increasingly cashless, relying on ticketed plays instead. With the chunk-chink of a big prize paid in quarters gone from the soundtrack, can digital signage provide the same allure?
• To the same end, casinos are dividing screens into segments so that the current jackpot total is always present – rather than disappearing while other messages are shown.
• And all this, said Hutchinson, also ties in with the use of digital signage to “affect perception of luck and winning” – a big part, of course, of casinos’ psychological marketing.
• On a tech level, LCD screens actually mounted inside slot machines are on the rise, said Topel.
• Finally, digital-signage screens can also be used to show conventional TV during special events, such as big sports games. (If nothing else, this dual purpose should mean that the digital signage benefits from good screen size and quality.)
  

And they lived together happily ever after (0 comments)

Ad agencies love us. No, really, they do, according to Jack Sullivan, senior VP and out-of-home media director at Starcom Worldwide.

And all we need to do to take the affair to the next stage is give them the kind of insights they need to properly assess the effectiveness of our screen-media networks – assuming, that is, that they are effective in the first place.

Sullivan made these semi-reassuring points in a panel discussion at Digital Signage Expo on Wednesday (along with the ubiquitous Steve Platt of the eponymous institute and Brian Dusho of BroadSign, both of whom surely either have doppelgangers or never get into the office).

“Clients love this medium, they love the digital mindset,” he said. “There isn’t a plan at agencies where it isn’t thought about seriously.”

But agencies need more information, he pointed out, including a research currency that is consistent  with those used in other out-of-home media.

And qualitative info is important too, according to Sullivan.

Rather than just getting numbers, he said, “I’m more apt to want to know the mindset of the commuter as they travel malls, commute…there’s a huge field of behavioural science out there for advertisers”.

When contemplating a network buy for a client, said Sullivan, he looks beyond the simplistic claim that a screen in a venue constitutes coverage of that venue – after all, we’re all familiar with some terrible screen locations, like the one Sullivan mentioned in a corridor leading to the washrooms.

He considers factors including the geographical locations of the venues; the nature of the venue itself (footfall and so on); and the number and positioning of screens.

“You have to, at the end of the day, deliver impressions – not opportunities to see – I want  likely to see,” he said.

“Preach [that] we are the medium that sells – other media reach consumers, we reach decision-makers, we are the end-aisle display.”

Global AND local? Reuters manages it... (1 comments)

Reuters’ digital-signage supremo Christopher Burtt and JCDecaux North America’s CIO Eric Penot joined me on Wednesday for a panel discussion at Digital Signage Expo, on the refreshingly non-specific topic of digital signage around the world.

That didn’t rule much out, so I got to all but circumnavigate the globe (from China to Brazil), throwing in deeply prejudiced opinions on what’s hot and what won’t be, as well as a few neologisms (though I’ve just been disappointed to find that according to Google, about 300,000 people came up with “Chindia” before me).

And Penot had some fantastic pictures of JCDecaux’s transport installations which really brought home the power of some of the company’s airport work, in particular.

But it was the presentation from Reuters’ Burtt that highlighted better than any I’ve heard recently how the devil really is in the detail of a screen-media project.

Although one of its Times Square installations (the one opposite the NASDAQ) is revenue-generative, Reuters is using digital signage primarily to get its brand out there – particularly in front of the finance professionals who are the customers for its lucrative business-information service, now a much more important part of the company than the news agency for which it first became famous.

Typical of this approach is its Infopoint network (which uses Wireless Ronin technology), with units placed in, for example, the lobbies of large financial institutions. Infopoint units are also placed in Reuters’ own offices to keep staff aware of the range of Reuters’ information businesses.

So, with a network that includes many third-party sites around the world, how does Reuters ensure the whole thing keeps running smoothly?

Burtt’s key lessons: make it easy to install and support, ensure it is accepted locally, and follow a philosophy of “central control with regional flexibility”.

Sounds great. What does it mean in practice?

Central control means: a standard ordering process, plug-and-play installation, limited configuration options, instructions in simple English (for the benefit of non-native speakers), brand guidelines, and “push” rather than “pull” updates (that is, centralised network  control sends updates to the individual displays, rather than waiting for requests).

Flexibility, on the other hand, means: content in the local language; using local experts to customise content (getting little things like date formats and temperature scales right matters, says Burtt), and allowing local content within defined constraints.

All pretty obvious, eh? But I suspect the fact Burtt made it sound so easy is testament not to an easy ride for Reuters, but to plenty of sweat, tears and learning the hard way on the part of Burtt and his team. 

Beyond Chindia (0 comments)

So I’m sitting in Vegas, making some last-minute amends to my presentation at this week’s Digital Signage Expo, and waiting for a snail-slow AOL connection (for which thanks to fellow SCREENS.tv blogger Steve Gold, who leapt to the rescue after my…no, you really don’t want the soap opera of my laptop woes, do you? I’m sure you have your own.)

Anyway, this gives me time to think a bit laterally around the obvious topics of my presentation, which is going to focus on some of the more interesting recent deployments outside the American market.

And one of the questions which strikes me is: when asked about the next big markets for screen media, we’ve all said “China, India” so often that it’s becoming Pavlovian. But where else – specifically, not just in vague regional terms?

Here’s a shortlist to kick the discussion off, at least.

The Middle East is a no-brainer and indeed there are already signs of conference/expo activity there, which is a good indicator. The UAE and particularly (but by no means exclusively) the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi are likely to be early hotspots; we’ve also reported recently on a flurry of activity in Turkey.

Among the other nations, I’d give serious attention to the potential of Egypt, Lebanon if or when stability permits, and Saudi Arabia for some applications, not forgetting either the small nations of Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, which should all exhibit UAE-style demand. All these can be serviced from the Gulf relatively easily. Israel of course is also a likely player with a strong tech and media pedigree.

Latin America is a big place and I think we can separate it into three strong markets. First, Mexico. Second, Brazil. Third, Argentina (which is largely to say Buenos Aires) and Chile. Serving these may well require on-the-ground presence in multiple cities.

Central and eastern Europe, with its patchwork of languages, cultures and histories, is perhaps even less cohesive than LatAm. There’s been a fair bit of activity already in Poland, but there’s surely room for much more; Hungary has struck me as pretty quiet to date, an impression that a quick screen-media-hunt on a recent expedition to Budapest did nothing to dispel; the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Ukraine and of course Romania, where Monopoly Media is already so active, should all go on our shortlist too.

We're also hearing encouraging things about a ramp-up of activity in South Africa.

And I’d turn to the Antarctic market next, except the AOL download has finally finished. Maybe at DSE…

Windows vs. Linux (again) (0 comments)

Why did TruKnox opt for a Windows operating system rather than a Linux-based one? In our interview, the company’s Rajesh Monga referred to several factors.
 
Firstly, the resulting cost of running Linux is not necessarily lower than that of using Windows, he said.

“If I consider my customers as my partners, then this factor, which pertains to economics, is surely a critical one,” he said, adding that a licensing fee is only part of the overall expense (Linux may score in terms of being free) but hardware support is not usually available with the free versions.

“Plus we don’t see a major evolution of Windows’ current operating system before 2011,” said Monga. 

View24*7 in the Mumbai restobars (0 comments)

This week’s big news about India’s View24*7 may be its move into supermarkets, but the company also has an interestingly-structured leisure channel which makes good use of research and offers some tightly-targeted content.

Here’s what president Nayan Bheda told me: “We have two channels under Sellivision. One is In-Store channel and the other being Leisure channel – having around 250-odd screens across 125 restobars in and around Mumbai. These restobars are further segmented as Premium, Popular and Regular covering most of the socio-economic class.”
 
Premium stands for up-market locations, Popular stands for popular restaurant joints and Regular ones are the permit rooms (those with licenses to serve alcohol). “Currently we have Premium 96 screens, Popular 94 screens and Regular 62 screens,” he said.
 
“We have developed a location matrix based on parameters like footfalls, attention span, quality of attention (fractured/non-fractured), class of people etc. Based on this matrix we have selected the restobars which are more conducive for an OOH TV channel being the place where the consumer spends around 90-120 minutes of leisure time, unlike moving crowds in malls and multiplexes,” said Bheda.
 
Apart from producing in-house content, the company has tied up with EMI andT Series for music content. The Leisure channel airs content such as live sports and music videos on one screen and on the other plays in-house content and television commercials.
 
“We also have tie-ups with Forbes and Playwin to play Raffle at these locations. This not only ensures sure-shot eyeballs on the screen, it also generates revenue.  In future, through Playwin, we anticipate to live telecast horse-race on our Sellivision network. All such games are branded as Bingo,” said Bheda. In Raffle a $0.25 ticket will be sold to the viewers and one can  win a prize worth $125.
 
Apart from common content, specific content is aired as per the type of location. For example, in Premium restaurants, there is more information related to gadgets, holiday spots and quiz; in Popular restaurants, there is content related to bikes, cars, recipes; and in Regular restaurants, because they are permit rooms, there is airing of health tips, hangover remedies etc. 

The perils of counting your chickens? (0 comments)

Wrong, perhaps, for a newcomer like me to give advice to the giants of digital media but an incident in Australia reinforces a long-held belief: stay away from the city and tall buildings. You may get blown away.

Consider, with sadness, the plight of the New South Wales branch of Australian-based, av media systems (trendy spelling all lower case.) It had its offices blown up after a suspected gas explosion destroyed a chicken shop at the base of a building on Mountain Street in Ultimo, Sydney.

As it happens, your reporter worked nearby for years at the Sydney Morning Herald and knows the area well. Indeed, he often parked his car across the street from where the explosion took place.

According to media reports, an explosion occurred on the ground-floor which destroyed the chicken shop and an adjoining store  while offices above were severely damaged. Glenn Richards, NSW director of av media systems, said the blast took out windows and around five or six stories of office buildings.

He said, ‘One of those offices happened to be mine. The offices within the building are so severely damaged.’ The company’s content insurance will cover his laptop and three projectors stolen by looters, but a lot of customer information, databases and other valuable information cannot be replaced.

Richards said: ‘I couldn’t get to our database, diary and PCs. I literally had to go and buy a pen and get an exercise book to write down the details of customers that called wanting to know why we didn’t turn up for a servicing job. We had all of our calls diverted to the Melbourne office, but the postie had nowhere to put the mail because the mailbox was also destroyed.” 

Pigmy keeps on growing (0 comments)

Watching a pigmy grow is fascinating. Lightscape Technologies keeps signing agreements all of which are aimed at ultra-rapid expansion. Now it has signed an agreement to sign an agreement (the second one being a formal version of the first) to develop an economic information broadcasting system in Hong Kong and China with  CEInet Data (H.K.) which is  the Hong Kong branch of the China Economic Information Network, CEInet.

Sort of ho hum news. Not as exciting as the lighting it did for the Starworld Hotel in Macao.

That is  until you work out the wider implications by knowing more about CEInet.

It is, in fact, the government of China in one of its many guises.

CEInet was founded in 1996 by the China State Information Center (SIC), a government think tank affiliated with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top macro-economic authority and planner.

CEInet is a national information network in China that produces a broad range of Chinese economic information. CEInet's economic information includes economic statistics, trends and forecasts, government and regulatory information, industry research reports and real-time business news. So what we have, in reality, is Lightscape Technologies signing an agreement with the government of China.

This agreement makes  Lightscape Technologies, run by a cove called Bondy Tan who is very quick on his feet, the exclusive partner of CEInet to broadcast CEInet's economic information and real-time news in China and Hong Kong through Lightscape's network of indoor and outdoor LED screens.

As part of the development project, Lightscape will provide banner space on each of its LED screens to display a variety of economic information and business news produced by CEInet.

Bondy Tan, President and CEO of Lightscape Technologies said, 'We have the opportunity to access an unparalleled source of economic and business content to display on the network of LED screens which we are currently establishing throughout China and Hong Kong.'

Which is true. It also means that Lightscape now has some, admittedly minor, standing with the government in China in that it is broadcasting official news from one of its many departments. With that connection the potential for Lightscape to expand even more rapidly ratchets up a few notches.

Don't tell the anti-billboard campaigners... (2 comments)

We've heard both sides of the argument surrounding digital roadside billboards' impact on safety, and it seems that if carefully designed without too much motion they don't have a deleterious impact on drivers' attention. But there's a new twist with this report in Time magazine suggesting that roads could be safer without (most) signage, full stop -- and yes, that includes road signs.

In a nutshell, the Dutch engineer whose concept this is believes that if you take away the signs, drivers will be forced to pay attention to their environment. (We thought paying too much attention to the environment was the supposed problem with digital billboards, but what do we know?)

Have the Loonies taken over the asylum? (0 comments)

Is this the future of digital signage? According to 2000AD’s Judge Dredd storyline, at the dawn of the 22^nd Century, adverts will be beamed onto the surface of the moon, creating the world’s largest billboard. Actually, scratch that. You can hardly call it ‘the world’s largest’ when it isn’t even on the planet... Naturally, not everyone is impressed. After all, how can you gaze at the light of the moon and tell your partner you love her when our silvery satellite is emblazoned with an advert for breakfast cereal? In Dredd’s world advertising on the moon is limited to six hours a week for this very reason, but that’s not enough for a sinister cult called The Loonies, who claim their god has been defiled and take violent direct action against the proprietors of Moonray Tower.

Far-fetched? Perhaps, but bear this in mind. The Dredd story in question (Loonies’ Moon from 2000AD Prog 192, fact fans) was published in 1980. Almost two decades later, in 1999, a 60ft high nude Gail Porter was beamed onto the Palace of Westminster in an advert for lads' mag FHM, to much protest from our own cult of loonies, The Daily Mail. Maybe beaming advertising onto the moon isn’t such a daft idea after all. I bet Bill’s already bought a prime slot to plug Windows 2100…

Pygmy gives giant illumination expertise (0 comments)

The announcement of a joint venture between Lightscape Techonologies and New World Development came from Lightscape. It suggests that this was an equal partnership. Far from it.

New World is massive. It is on the Hang Seng Index with a total asset value exceeding $144.1 billion.

Lightscape Technologies (formerly Global Innovative Systems), while it is a leader in the lighting industry, typically has annual revenues around $16 million. And in the second quarter of last year was reporting a loss.

This is not a marriage between equals. More like the mating of a pygmy to a giant.

Having said that  it makes a lot of sense in that New World can now use LED lighting solutions in all of its many properties and, at the same time, acquire expertise in this area.

NEC Australia - pulling out of entry-level LCDs? Bad move guys... (0 comments)

Interesting to see that NEC Australia has pulled out of the entry-level LCD monitor marketplace in order to concentrate on its `premium' products such as medical monitors, home entertainment systems and - of course - digital signage.

The move will cut NEC's distribution channels significantly in Australia and will almost certainly mean some high street retailers no longer stocking the company's LCD products.

The official line is that NEC Oz will concentrate on MultiSync LCD displays, as well as MultiSync DLP and LCD projectors, PlasmaSync displays and digital signage systems.

Daniel Hancox, the firm's national sales manager, has pulled no punches - he says that it's no secret that no-one is making any money from selling entry-level LCD monitors.

Am I alone in thinking this is a seriously retrograde move by NEC?

Surely the company can continue to offer entry-level product to the sales channel in Australia on a cost-plus-30-percent basis?

This means that, even if the product appears a little over-priced alongside the competition, at least the product is out there in the marketplace, keeping the NEC flag flying.

If NEC disappears from the budget LCD sales shelves, then it will disappear from consumers' minds. And, ergo, from business buyers' minds also.

So when an NEC digital signage solution is offered by a systems integrator to a company customer, they may not be aware that the company is in the LCD space.

Panasonic or Sony, on the other hand, are always going to be well known in the LCD monitor space.

I think NEC are definitely missing a trick here. I remember my time on a PC trade magazine in the early 1990s when IBM pulled out of the entry-level PC market.

The company lost its high profile in the desktop space and ended up being classed as a laptop maker, a tag it struggles to leave behind even today.

NEC may make more profit in the shorter term, but I'll wager it will soon regret its decision in Australia...

Red Flag as a training ground for outdoor digital advertising (0 comments)

In China, a deal which, at first sight, does not make much sense.

Jingwei International has bought the outdoor advertising company Red Flag which specializes in operating LED/LCD panels at bus stops, including 2,000 such panels in the capital city of Zhengzhou in the province of Henan.

(To place Henan think of Beijing and then travel south a bit. The name Henan can be taken to mean south of the Yellow River.)

Jingwei (which has a market capitlisation of around $90 million) paid about $12.5 million for the company which may seem a tad on the high side. True, Red Flag states it intends to roll out into five additional cities in 2008 but, as always  when making a deal in China, that is classed as future hopeful, not present actual.

Jingwei, which is based right across the country in Shenzen, near Hong Kong, is a leading data mining company which provides CRM services to top telecom players including China Mobile and China Unicom where CRM is short for customer relationship management.

In one definition CRM entails all aspects of interaction a company has with its customer. Jingwei is expanding its client list outside of the telecommunications area and advertising is, of course, a part of CRM. Outdoor advertising perhaps, with some difficulty, can be made to fit in there somewhere. Still, on the face of it Jingwei is moving into an area in which it has little experience.

Explaining this, George Du, chairman of Jingwei, said that it "signals our ongoing move into the new media business in China, which includes digital outdoor advertising and real-time consumer marketing in both outdoor and mobile media".

Red Flag may not seem, by Jingwei terms, a major acquisition but it is possible Jingwei sees outdoor digital advertising as the future and it can use Red Flag as a training ground. In which case the purchase makes total sense.

The sincerest form of...something (1 comments)

I could have sworn that colleague Paul Mallaghan and I had left aka.tv for the verdant new pastures of SCREENS.tv, but comparing their piece on Wal-Mart's animated Lisa with our earlier reporting of the same story (read down a few paragraphs), not to mention their piece on the Tommy Hilfiger window touchscreens with our story -- again a few days earlier than aka's -- I had to wonder if it was all a dream...