Proximity triggered signage: A step in the right direction

 

Read also DT Research Advances Digital Signage System with Proximity Advertising

 

The concept is a good one and DT says the solution is already on its way 100 stores of a "leading U.S. mobile operator." But this still the first step in taking full advantage of the power that digital signage can provide for advertising.

 

Steps to dynamic ad provisioning

Proximity triggered ads  Screen show ads relative to products when shoppers approach them ↓ Audience measurement systems Determine the number of people whose eyes met the screen ↓ Gender/age range recognition System cross-references face images with databases to determine approximate gender and age range. Ads run accordingly. ↓ Dynamic ad provisioning Screen can determine multiple traits of the shopper and existing retail patterns to show highly relevant content on an individual level.

The ultimate goal here is something that Lyle Bunn, strategy architect for BUNN Co., calls "dynamic ad provisioning." This is the Holy Grail of digital signage advertising — where I walk up to a display in a shoe store, the screen recognizes that I am a young male, runs an ad for men's Nike running shoes and then tells me where to go in the store to get Nike socks.

 

Somewhere in between proximity triggered signage and this Holy Grail are audience measurement systems which we have seen at many of the digital signage tradeshows this year.

 

Two weeks ago at the Digital Signage Show Europe, Radiant Europe's integrated signage was running a Quividi audience counter, which only counted sets of eyes that met the screen. Cognovision showed a similar application at InfoComm in June.

 

I believe the system that is furthest along the path to dynamic ad provisioning is TruMedia's iCapture and iTally, which we saw at Screen Expo in February. The system recognized that a majority of people in front of the screen were male, so it ran an ad for men's Hugo Boss cologne. Later, when the viewers were mostly female, they saw a perfume ad.

 

Each of these companies mentioned are currently working on ways to further improve their systems so that they can effectively determine gender, age range and other factors so that ads can be "targeted" instead of "placed."

 

In the constant struggle to justify digital signage ad spending to agencies, any system that can be used to determine sound metrics is a positive step, as was verified last week at the Strategy Institute's Digital Out-of-Home Investors conference in New York.

 

In addressing the conference on October 7, Donna Speciale, president, Investment & Activation, Mediavest USA, reflected that better targeting of media presented on digital displays through ad triggering would improve the value of the medium.

 

"We should certainly move in that direction" she said.