Warning: credit crisis could hold back digital outdoor
A U.S. investment analyst has warned that the credit crunch could lead to outdoor-advertising operators cutting back their billboard digitisation programmes.
Downgrading Clear Channel Outdoor and Lamar Advertising stock this week, Laura Martin of Soleil Securities said that restricted access to capital could mean billboard owners slashing non-maintenance expenditure and postponing upgrades to digital.
And a weakening advertising market in the last weeks of the third quarter is 
Touchscreen slides along retail shelving
U.S. retail-merchandising specialist Frank Mayer & Associates will next week bring to market a touchscreen unit designed for use on store shelves.
The SlideBuy Shopper Information System combines an interactive screen with bespoke software and can glide along the shelf, pulled by a handle, allowing access to products stored behind it.
The unit will be available with a range of monitor sizes and customisable frame designs.
Channel M launches bilingual network for finance firm
Channel M in the U.S. is rolling out its first bilingual in-store network for PLS Check Cashers.
Following a 50-store trial, the Spanish-and-English network will be deployed across the PLS estate. The company has more than 300 cheque-cashing outlets in Alabama, Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Mississippi, New York, Texas and Wisconsin.
Promotional spots for PLS, which occupy about 60 percent of airtime on PLS TV and are produced
JCDecaux, News Outdoor still in takeover talks
JCDecaux is still in talks with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation concerning a possible takeover of its Russian outdoor-advertising subsidiary News Outdoor, according to reports.
Despite the current economic crisis, News Outdoor “remains a quality asset”, said JCDecaux’s co-chief executive Jean Charles Decaux (pictured) this week. His company is currently performing due diligence, Decaux added.
The deal, which would most likely create the world’s largest outdoor-advertising firm, was seen
CBS Outdoor goes all-digital for new London mall
CBS Outdoor is taking an all-digital approach to advertising in the new Westfield mall in west London.
When the £1.6bn ($2.8bn) shopping centre – billed as the biggest inner-city mall in Europe – opens on 30 October, all ad opportunities will be digital.
They will include 55 specially-designed pods (pictured) with 57-inch LCD units built into both sides; other screens near entrances; and three giant billboard-scale screens. The
Titan to invest $90m in digitising transport ad sites
Titan Worldwide will spend $90m over the next three years on digitising its transit-advertising portfolio in the U.S., the UK, Canada and Ireland, the company said today.
It is currently testing a number of screen formats for its bus, rail and subway sites, with particularly large digital rollouts expected in London and in Chicago, where Titan earlier this year won the right to sell advertising on the transit authority’s
Turkish electronics chain installs 200-store network
TVeez is rolling out a digital-signage network to most branches of Teknosa, Turkey’s biggest consumer-electronics retailer.
Designed in collaboration with in-store specialist Rattray+Magness of Atlanta, Georgia, the network will reach about 200 branches by the end of this year.
Teknosa has more than 230 stores in 57 Turkish cities, with 5m visitors monthly.
The network configuration varies from store to store to accommodate Teknosa’s different formats, Ediz
Manila billboards to show videos on social issues
Philippine digital-signage and billboard firm Globaltronics is to show short videos covering social issues on its digital billboards in Manila.
The joint project with the Philippine Business for Social Progress organisation will see the pair invite five-to-eight-second videos on the theme of corporate social responsibility as entries to their Advocacy Advertising in the Digital Age competition.
Globaltronics will also host a workshop on designing visuals for digital billboards.
Hitachi hopes 3D will grow share of Japanese market
Japanese firms Hitachi, CAD Center and Hitachi Information Systems are joining forces to market 3D digital signage for way-finding.
The trio plan to sell their systems to transport hubs and large commercial buildings, with 3D graphics showing maps and other location-specific information.
Hitachi claims to have about 13 percent of the $188m Japanese market for digital signage, and says the new venture could grow this to 20 percent
Frame Media puts digital signage in the living room
U.S. firm Frame Media, which provides content for digital picture frames in consumers’ homes, is to place advertising messages in the frames through a new partnership with Interpublic’s Initiative Innovations division.
Consumers can opt to receive any of Frame’s hundreds of channels, sent to the frames via a wireless Internet connection. The picture frames rotate the householder’s own photos with screens of content and advertising provided by Frame, which
Dubai office tower to get tallest LED screen
A 100m-high LED screen claimed to be the world’s tallest is to be erected on the side of a new office building in Dubai.
The screen is being built by Daktronics, whose recent work includes a giant display for Lamar Advertising on New York’s Times Square, as well as LED installations at the Argosy casino in Riverside, Missouri and the Grand Lisboa casino in Macao.
Framed in buffed
Scala upgrades flagship software package
Scala will this quarter ship release 4 of its InfoChannel 5 digital-signage software suite.
Among the more significant enhancements will be integration of Content Manager with Ad Manager – the element formerly known as Charting Pro that Scala acquired with its purchase of Market Information Services earlier this year.
Scala says this will provide functionality such as assigning media items to specific contracts, and generating playlists based on
C-store network partners with grocery distributor
Digital Promo Network (DPN), the U.S. operator of digital signage in convenience stores, is to jointly market its service with wholesale distributor H.T. Hackney.
H.T. Hackney, which distributes goods to more than 20,000 retailers in 21 states, will offer its customers the chance to join DPN’s network. The first joint outing for the pair is this week’s National Association of Convenience Stores expo in Chicago.
DPN, which has
Zoom adds Bally network to growing fitness empire
Canada’s Zoom Media & Marketing has built upon last month’s acquisition of ClubCom by signing a deal to provide a gym TV network to Bally Total Fitness.
ClubCom, based in the U.S. will become the exclusive advertising sales house and provider of digital media for Bally, which operates 350 fitness centres across the country.
The network, called Bally TV, is expected to include overhead screens, personal entertainment screens,
U.S. Navy shipbuilder chooses Omnivex system
Navsea, the arm of the U.S. Navy charged with designing, building and maintaining ships and systems, is installing a digital-signage network for staff communications.
PR and communications firm VOX Optima, acting as integrator, will place large LCD displays powered by Omnivex software in high-footfall locations, carrying both zoned and pan-network messaging.
“We have other ways to get messages out, but digital signage allows better message recall and comprehension,”
