Australia has just launched Digital Radio (launched on the 1st July 2009)!!!

Now if you live in a more advanced country than Australia you might be thinking to yourself, “We had Digital Radio several years ago!” but this shows that Australia is slowly catching up with the rest of the world and are embracing and deploying new technologies.

For those that don’t know much about digital radio, it’s basically like switching from your standard Analogue TV to Digital TV. Surely you must have seen the difference – better video and audio quality and better features.

Basically this is the same with Digital Radio, switching from your Analogue radio to digital means you receive crispier audio quality and additional features (i.e you can receive on screen information of what is actually being played, easily tune to your channels). Now like digital TV you needed to buy a set top box and much like with digital radio you will also need to purchase a digital radio receiver.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is one of the main broadcaster of the digital radio services and if you live in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth you will be able to tune in to the digital radio service. If you don’t have one of these digital radio receivers you can easily purchase one at your local ABC Shop (even go to the ABC Shop website) or go to a leading electronics store.

How do you see digital radio being integrated with digital signage?

Feel free to submit your answer as a comment.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Events, Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News, Featured Post

digital signage At Its Best!!!

In the past two months advertise me has been busy providing the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) with an innovative digital signage solution for their new concept shop in Westfield’s Bondi Junction.

The new ABC shop opened its doors on 15 May 2009 with a fresh new look but more importantly it introduced digital signage.

The three main reasons for introducing digital signage to the ABC shop were:

1. to draw additional customers into the store;
2. to increase overall sales; and
3. to showcase some of the other broadcasting services that the ABC provides e.g. ABC news, ABC TV, ABC radio and the ABC website.

Advertise Me understood the significance of what the ABC wanted to achieve and ensured that the digital signage solution that we provided was not only able to meet the requirements of the ABC but could also be easily adapted to other ABC shops.

The Digital Signage Solution

From a visual perspective this is what the Advertise Me’s digital signage solution looks like:

Digital Signage Behind the Counter to show promotions

Digital Signage Live ABC News and RSS News Ticketer

But to really understand how the digital signage solution was tailored to the ABC requirements is to understand the audio and content challenges faced in the integration of digital signage with ABC’s audio and visual equipment. This is because providing a digital signage solution is more than just connecting a PC to a display screen.

The Audio Challenge

The ABC required that the digital signage solution enable it to switch audio between songs, store announcements, advertisements, ABC radio and audio from live ABC news.

This meant that the Advertise Me’s audio solution would require the overhead speaker system to be connected to an audio switching tool that allowed the switching between the CD player, the digital signage player and the set top box.

The result was a digital signage solution that ensured that live ABC news, product videos, advertisements, announcements, music and much more was heard in the ABC shop.

Digital Signage promoting JJJ by streaming audio and ABC streaming news

The Content Challenge

The ABC required that the digital signage solution to easily manage content from one central location.

This meant that the Advertise Me’s content solution would require a dedicated Content Management Server to house the content and playlists.

The result was a digital signage solution that ensured that all content scheduling was performed at ABC’s head office with the use of a PC software tool to schedule the playlists in a calendar view so that staff could easily manage the content. The digital signage solution also ensured the ability to display live ABC TV, in store advertisements, RSS news and products by using zoning.

Digital Signage displaying product releases

In addition, the digital signage solution enabled the ABC marketing staff to update content, schedule items to display on the screens and manage the overall solution from one central location without having to physically be onsite.

Results

Advertise Me’s digital signage solution met the ABC’s technical requirements and has already resulted in an increase in the number of customers walking into the store and an increase in overall sales.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Events, Digital Signage Blog News, Digital Signage Case Study