May I suggest you investigate my company’s product, the BroadSign Suite. It has all the capabilities you describe above built-in (with the exception of visual recognition). We participate greatly in OVAB (www.ovab.org) and along with that group, we are committed to raising the acceptance level of digital signage advertising to that of other mainstream media such as television, radio, print and now Internet. OVAB and BroadSign are deep down a similar path Internet advertising companies had to go down just half a decade ago and we see the light at the end of the tunnel for digital signage.

You are correct, there will be a minimum barrier to entry for companies that wish to sell advertising. One of the benefits of using BroadSign software-as-a-service is that you join a group of 150+ digital signage network operators that are do business in over 25 countries around the world – each make revenue through the sales of advertising. These networks include Accent Health, Zoom Media, Channel M, NeoAdvertising and Reliance Industries.

We have the proper relationships and the functionality in our product to help digital signage networks participate in strategic planning with agencies and provide accountable reporting for all advertisements that played on displays connected to PCs powered by BroadSign Player software. These reports were designed in conjunction with BroadSign clients, OVAB members, Nielsen, Arbitron and our agency relationships in order to provide several layers of summary-to-detail reporting (all auditable by a third party).

If you are interested in more information, feel free to visit our website at http://www.broadsign.com/ or contact us at welcome@broadsign.com. I would be please to provide you with a demo of our software-as-a-service product and discuss our managed services offering.

Kind regards and keep up the good work!