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Glasgow subway deployment a 'unique' track for digital/traditional out-of-home ads

November 15, 2010 by Christopher Hall — w, t

The novel approach to the digital signage deployment in a Scottish subway system could provide a new model for integrating digital out-of-home (DOOH) and traditional out-of-home (TOOH) media.

It's a project that was nearly three years in the undertaking, but its significance for the DOOH world could be felt for even longer than that — as it sees digital signage management software fully integrated into the advertising management software used by the deployment's TOOH partners.

Remote Media recently announced that its signagelive digital signage software platform is powering targeted digital advertising and information displays operated by the outdoor advertising firm Primesight in stations along Glasgow, Scotland's historic subway system.

And in order to effectively target and schedule the digital advertising, signagelive has been integrated with Key Systems' Fusion software, which Primesight uses to manage the full life cycle of advertising on the static 12 sheets, 6 sheets, 4 sheets, escalator panels and carriage cards also sold for the Glasgow subway system.

In other words, rather than having to set up a separate and siloed ad sales platform for its digital signage assets, the digital signage advertising slots are being integrated into and managed by the traditional out-of-home management system.

"Where we are in the piece is, we're the operations piece," Remote Media CEO Jason Cremins said in a recent phone interview. "We're the FedEx. We're shifting the content around; we're interspersing the advertising content that's been sold with the content and the dynamic data ... and we mash it all together and prove it all works together."

What Remote Media's done is to use those open standards to create a full integration with the Key Systems digital director product, part of Key's Fusion suite, Cremins says.

"It makes a huge amount of sense, because companies that are already using the tools to manage vinyl, paper, lightboxes, whatever they've got currently, they don't want to have a completely separate platform for managing their digital inventory," he said.

Contrast that with the majority of DOOH software management platforms which have to be run separately from the TOOH, Cremins says, and now Primesight has an integrated module as part of their own software — so all they have to do is click on a switch and drive digital displays the same way they do the rest of their estate, or inventory, and signagelive makes sure it gets to the screen.

The integration of TOOH and DOOH inventories seems to be the most natural path for those companies which have been in traditional out-of-home and have developed their inventory to include digital, writes Key Systems director Michael Dillon in a recent e-mail. Companies in the market with a solely digital offering can benefit from adopting the systems developed over decades to satisfy TOOH requirements, rather than reinventing the wheel, he writes.

"The 'what' you do, the logic of what you do for digital out-of-home, is basically exactly the same as traditional out-of-home," Dillon said in a recent phone interview. "Now there are variations in certain areas which are particular to digital, but that's really on the how side of things, the physical side of things: How do we get the copy to the boards at the right time? What sort of technology do we use to get it there? And so on."

The signagelive open standards content playback software is integrated into six-sheet format display enclosures developed by Harp Visual Communications. The Rhino e55 LCD displays incorporate an embedded PC and networking gear that helps drive a 55-inch Samsung SM550EXn panel. Using Samsung's latest LED backlight technology, the panel consumes only 90 watts of power, substantially reducing the depth of the enclosures.

"Power consumption is reduced by 200 watts versus the competing LCD, and that means a reduction of up to 50 percent heat, which is very important in the underground environment," Ian Abernethy, head of UK sales, large format display, for Samsung said in the announcement.

The IP66-rated weather-proof displays use structural steel and laminate protective glass to withstand environmental conditions and tampering. Harp does extensive work in passenger information and dynamic signage systems and is the prime contractor for the supply, installation, maintenance, and day-to-day running of the installation, allowing Primesight to focus on media sales.

Cremins says it's the first time that Samsung's XM series of LED panels have been used in a commercial application. The lower wattage allowed Harp to engineer compartments for the displays that make them look, according to passers-by, "like a big iPad," because the lower-power displays don't need the same ventilation as other, more powerful displays, he says.

When asked about the DOOH/TOOH integration, Digital Screenmedia Association executive director David Drain called it a smart move.

"There needs to be more coordination in the advertising world, because digital out-of-home should be one of the components in a media buy," he said. "Sometimes you'd have a campaign that is going to be specific for digital out-of-home, but many times you have a campaign that's going to run in print, and television, and online, and digital out-of-home, so it should be integrated into a campaign. So it makes a lot of sense to me."

Advertisers and out-of-home companies have to deal with many differing formats in the print world, Drain says, so it makes sense they could easily get used to working with different formats in the DOOH world, especially since those formats are also consolidating somewhat and becoming more standardized

"This sounds very unique," he said. "It sounds like a good approach, though."

And this is only the first public partnership like this for the company, Cremins says, with quite a few others that will become public very soon.

"One of the things we were keen to do, and what we've tried to do as a business is to avoid creating a media sales proposition within signagelive," he said. "We have always seen a point in the marketplace where maturity, technology and open standards would enable collaboration through partners, and this really is the start of that journey."

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