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Four purposes for retail signage
A Frost consultant explores the benefits of in-store signage.
Max Engel is astrategic analyst of broadband and satellite industry information and communication technologies for Frost & Sullivan.
It is a common misconception that digital signage is simply a set of dynamic signs scattered about a retail establishment showing simple recorded messages. The reality is much more complex.
Digital signage was once a display and a video tape recorder where programming was delivered monthly (at best, weekly). Digital signage now includes four basic models served by much more sophisticated delivery mechanisms: in-store advertising, marketing, perceived wait time reduction and corporate communications and training.
Each of these applications is used across a wide range of industry verticals when suitably customized for each venue. They are not exclusive. Each of these tools is used in combination with the others according to an organization's needs.
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It is important for a sales organization to understand that even though a company may appear to have a single focus for its digital signage plans, the layering of different uses for the satellite network may greatly increase the chance of closing the sale, as it attracts support from different parts of the deployer's organization.
In-store advertising
In its most common form, in-store advertising is the closest application to the idea of dynamic signs. Stores will often contract a third-party advertiser to provide the video display hardware, video management, network connectivity hardware and video programming. In return for the use of their stores as a venue, retailers receive a percentage of the network's advertising revenues. This advertising-based model of digital signage can be applied on any scale. Large operations such as PRN service thousands of stores while a smaller regional player like OOH Vision Networks may serve a few hundred stores, or even less.
Although advertising networks such as PRN's were the first major digital signage networks in existence, in many ways, they are already outmoded. For a company that wants to control the in-store environment, these networks may not be a solution. They allow for some filtering of ad content to ensure that inappropriate ads are not run, but the use of digital signage for marketing calls for more direct control over the network and its programming. Third-party networks will continue to appeal to those who simply want another revenue stream without the effort of establishing their own network, but for more advanced users they will grow less common as independent digital signage networks proliferate.
Marketing
As opposed to the simple advertising model where content is only loosely linked (if at all) to the venue in which it is shown, there is the in-store marketing/brand building approach. Although the physical layout of video screens in a retail establishment may be identical to that used in advertising based systems, the video programming is designed to achieve a different end and the funding and management of the network are very different. In an advertising network the purpose of the content is to serve as a "call to action" that motivates a specific result. A marketing network is designed to support a set of broader goals.
When digital signage is used in a marketing role it is intended to provide information that supports decisions that the operator wishes the customer to make. Marketing networks influence both individual buying decisions and general feeling about a brand. For those reasons, it is harder to measure the ROI for these networks because they do not provide results as simple as "we sold 50 percent more mud pies." The goal of such a network is to leave consumers feeling that they want to buy from a given store. Properly done, a marketing network will work to improve the sales of all products in the store. This calls for a much more careful integration of the message and venue in order to have the desired result.
Perceived wait time reduction
Advertising, marketing, entertainment and information come together in digital signage to reduce perceived wait time. In many ways this category is the least defined because it isn't tied to revenue generation.
Wait time reduction results in making customers happy with the store experience. Multiple goals, such as advertising, marketing and customer experience, call for careful management of programming to achieve all three at the same time. This is, however, perhaps the closest that current deployments will come to the model in five to 10 years. As digital systems develop, they are likely to become a seamless video environment in which many goals are pursued simultaneously through a sophisticated mix of diverse programming.
Corporate communications and training
While the first three digital signage models discussed above were outward, or customer-facing, corporate communications and training has an inward focus, aiming at an enterprise's personnel, not its customers. Although some analysts do not count such inward facing networks as digital signage, it clearly is to a digital signage provider. The creation of an outward-facing digital signage network allows an inward-facing network to be added at minimal cost. This fourth aspect of digital signage is a natural complement to the first three and helps garner support for a digital signage build-out from a broader segment of an organization.
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