End-user perspectives on software

By Bill Collins, principal, and Carol Shea, insights director, DecisionPoint Media Insights

Out-of-home screen media networks are being developed across the globe today at a rapid pace. As Web-based marketing increasingly proves its effectiveness to the brands, retailers and media companies, many of the market-acceptance barriers to these "digital signage" and kiosk networks are beginning to fall away.

However, just because these barriers to acceptance are falling away, it does not necessarily follow that network operators and retailers are automatically finding the best programming formats or the best locations for those networked out-of-home screens. Also, it is important to understand that most retailers and networks operators do not yet understand which technologies will be the most effective at driving their programming, leveraging their venues and most importantly, meeting customer needs.

At this stage, the network operators, brands and retailers are beginning to identify which screen-media formats work for them and which do not work for them. As this happens, they are developing different programming and venue models that, in turn, are driving the market segmentation of the technology vendors that serve this market.

For this study, DecisionPoint Media Insights surveyed ten digital-media professionals who work with "digital signage" software as a regular part of their jobs. These ten professionals work with five of the most popular software packages that serve the North American market.

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Editor's note: This white paper is provided by DecisionPoint Media Insights. Statements made in the text reflect the views and/or opinions of its author(s) only.