Digital signage: motivations and measurements

It's easy to get lost in the details of planning a digital signage network. From software and hardware options to backbones and integrators, the decisions can be overwhelming and mistakes are often measured in the millions of dollars. But there are a few critical success factors that, if adhered to, are good indicators of whether a digital signage network will be successful in influencing consumer behavior in a retail environment, and chief among them is the relevance of the message to the needs of the consumer.

"The real value of digital signage is not to play DVD's over and over and over again just because you have a plasma screen TV," said Dick Trask, director of marketing at Scala Broadcast Multimedia. "The real value of digital signage is to be able to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person. In today's world, particularly in the retail industry, it's growing more and more important to be able to focus your message to the audience you want to sell to."

Making an impact

Content is king, Trask said. "You can have the best hardware in the world (and) the fastest backbone in the world, but if what you're showing on the screen isn't relevant and has no value, it's meaningless. You have a terrible digital signage system."

Studies indicate that as much as 75 percent of buying decisions are made spontaneously at the point of purchase, which only adds to the pressure of having something meaningful to say, once the consumer's attention has been grabbed.

So, what do people want to see and hear on a digital signage network? According to Bill Collins, a principal at digital media marketing and research firm WBC Narrowcasting Group, they probably want two things: help navigating the store, and help finding merchandise that is on sale or is relevant to them.

HMS Host concession properties at Tampa International Airport feature digital signage, which provides local news, weather, travel information and product promotions. The signage, which keys off the airport's recent upgrade to Wi-Fi capabilities, was developed and is hosted by Digital View, in partnership with RMG.

As proof of this, he gave a brief overview of how digital signage networks were first rolled out in shopping malls, between 1999 through 2002.

These early networks consisted mostly of loops of movie trailers, music videos, and national advertising. They were played endlessly in food courts using rear-projection technology.

"It was a complete flop," Collins said. "Just because you're sitting in a food court in a shopping mall doesn't mean you want to see movie trailers or national brand advertising."

The network developers retreated for a while to find out what went wrong. They wanted to know what kind of content mall shoppers would find useful. One of the emerging networks is from a company called Ad Space Networks, out of New York. They've spent much of the last year in shopping malls, asking shoppers to describe the kind of information they would want to see from a digital signage network.

What shoppers said was most important to them was information to help them find current sales in specific mall stores and information about activities going on in the mall.

"They're having almost no national brand advertising unless it's branding tied to way-finding," Collins said. "They're just beginning to test that model out, and it seems to be working. It takes a while to figure these things out."

Getting past ‘mental ad-blockers'

Consumers are a complicated bunch, and are increasingly getting harder to reach. Advertisers have bemoaned the arrival of pop-up blockers and TiVo, technological tools that allow viewers to skip ads — and that same process seems to be going on at a subconscious level, as consumers get savvier about what they notice and what they do not.

Digital View and Visual Graphic Systems helped Ohio State University install digital signage in several dining facilities at its main Columbus campus.

"The beautiful thing about digital signage, at least in a retail setting, is that the results are very apparent," said Brad Gleeson, chief executive officer of Absolute HD. "What you're generally trying to do is influence the customer's action in some way: to use their credit card for the purchase or get involved with your loyalty club or just make sure they buy this product versus that product. All those things are measurable at the point of sale.

"That's what's unique about digital signage. No other form of digital media, aside from Internet advertising, has that kind of response capability."

Metrics and matrices

Ringing cash registers are the most obvious validation of a network's message, but they might not be the best way to measure its effectiveness. Metrics can be slippery, requiring an analysis of multiple variables during the different stages of the network's rollout.

"You really have to try multiple scenarios," Gleeson said, referring to some work done by ASDA, the U.K. Wal-Mart subsidiary. "Almost a matrix approach, where you're addressing the content, the offer, the color scheme, the location of the display, the location of the product, time of day, etc. What you really have to do is a crosshatch pattern of many different criteria that you can test. Then you have to be able to measure all those criteria in real time and compare your results until you get a pattern."

But what about small retailers, the regional or local outfits without the deep pockets of a Wal-Mart to analyze their business?

Gleeson said that testing, regardless of the size of the business, is critical. "You have to be able to validate or make a decision about your digital signage network on several different levels: Is it going to enhance the shopper's experience? Is it going to create a differentiation in your environment? Is it going to say something about your retail establishment in terms of being current and exciting and interesting?

"Probably the number one reason we see digital signage failing is because people do it only because they think they need to do it. First and foremost, anybody who is considering a digital signage system has to ask themselves, ‘Why am I doing this? What is the result I'm looking for? How do I describe a successful implementation?'"

If smaller retailers do that, Gleeson thinks that they will consider more than just sales as part of their ROI. "They have to be sophisticated enough to do some types of testing or they need to partner or subcontract with somebody who can do that cost-effectively."

And while testing is an ongoing process, so is the tweaking and improvement of content. Like any crucial business process, this one is never finished.