Article

New apps for mobile-driven signage

Companies are investing more as content, interactivity improve.

July 6, 2008 by Digital Signage Today

When it comes to digital signage and the next wave of marketing advances, opportunity is not knocking. It is calling on a mobile phone.

Increasingly sophisticated technology is tightening the web that connects large-screen displays with the small screens — sometimes collectively dubbed the "fourth screen" — on mobile devices.

It's a trend that is energizing content developers such as online marketers, who are drawn to high levels of interactivity and the ability to allow users to generate their own content.

"Mobile-driven digital signage exploits the mobile device's ease of use and flexibility, eschewing the need to learn the use of new devices," said H. Jay Patel, president of BlueFire, a provider of mobile communication and entertainment solutions for the digital signage industry.

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"Mobile phones are one of the real keys to success" for the digital signage industry, said Jeremy Lockhorn, director of emerging media and video innovation at Avenue A/Razorfish, a web-design firm and interactive agency. This is especially so, he says, when one considers that "mobile devices are becoming the ultimate universal remote control for consumers."

Small screens, big impact

One company trying to take advantage of the convergence is LocaModa. From the company's perspective, combining mobile, online and out-of-home elements is the only way of presenting a truly interactive marketing campaign in public places, said Steve King, vice president of sales for the company. 

LocaModa's Jumbli campaign in Times Square.

LocaModa's social networking feature extends the reach of the initial out-of-home campaign to the web, delivering more overall impressions than out-of-home could deliver on a standalone basis, he says. For example, LocaModa calculates a generic text message campaign in a digital signage network of 1,000 bars would generate 60,750 messages a month, while a localized text message campaign connected to a social network would yield 431,000 messages a month.

A key part of LocaModa's effort was its partnership with SeeSaw Networks, a digital out-of-home network. The alliance allows users to interact with content on large screens in such places as bars and coffee shops via cell phone and transfer those interactive experiences to social networking sites like Facebook. What's more, users can interact not only with other patrons at those venues, but also with online friends.

Another application used Clear Channel Spectacolor's 40-foot by 40-foot digital screen in Times Square to bring a new form of advertising to that venue. LocaModa's first use of the Spectacolor screen was Jumbli, a text-based word game. Players submitting the highest scoring words from their mobile phones can view their names on the screen. Winning words from online players also are displayed.

Mobicom, a product and solutions provider, and Qkey, a digital marketing platform, are developing an application for upcoming release in Korea that will allow users to access information from outdoor billboards and download the information to their cell phones or e-mail address, according to Michael Levinsohn, CEO of Mobicom. The system, which uses GPS, will be rolled out later in other markets depending on user acceptance. 

Monitoring the effectiveness

Although there is limited public information on the marketing effectiveness of mobile-driven digital signage, much of what evidence exists suggests those systems have had a significantly greater promotional impact than traditional marketing and advertising techniques. "They are much more valuable from an ROI perspective, as they have been shown to increase brand awareness," he said.

A BlueFire digital application done with Cinema Scene Marketing.

The numbers generated were impressive. The most common interactions with the screen lasted up to a minute long, but several viewers interacted for between 30 minutes and two hours. In addition, the majority of users interacted more than once, with nine users sending text messages to the screen multiple times within 15 minutes of their first text. The heaviest interactions with the screen took place one hour after the content was displayed on the screen.

Challenges remain

But mixed among the robust search for new applications, Lockhorn cautions that mobile-driven digital signage is at a nascent stage, and has some significant drawbacks, including the mobile phone's lack of standardization and limited audience reach. There is a real danger, he says, that mobile devices and digital signage could overload consumers with ad-clutter in public places.

King dismisses the concern, saying a bigger one is to convince the target audience that the marketing truly is interactive. "Consumers have been bombarded so long by passive media that they tend to block out advertising altogether."

Nonetheless, Lockhorn advises advertisers to assess whether mobile-driven digital signage marketing campaigns truly fit their objectives before embarking on those campaigns.

Mobile-driven digital signage marketing applications are "currently limited in their reach, requiring the marketer to balance scale versus impact," he says, "but as technology standards begin to emerge in mobile-activated digital signage, that scale will come. Those marketers who experiment today will be in a stronger position once that scale is achieved."

The writer has written about digital signage for numerous publications.