Every sign has a purpose. Of course, some have more than others. The trend of using digital signage has become so rampant these days that many businesses and institutions, in my opinion, are getting them before even considering why they need them. Digital signs are awesome. But there’s nothing more cringe-inducing or face-palming than seeing a digital sign that offers no more variation or usability than a sign composed of a piece of paper and a Sharpee.

Schedules, Updates, and More Schedules

This should go without saying, but any sign or outpost that contains many schedules that are updated daily would be a perfect use of digital signage. Buildings with good numbers of conferences and institutions that hold a lot of meetings (such as universities) are prime candidates for digital signage. For conferences and lectures in particular, these digital signs can be helpful not only in updating time and locations of events, but also in providing descriptions and advertising for these types of events.

Of course any public transportation company or service should and probably is using digital signs; not using this technology in a field or situation that relies on relaying constant updates to customers is simply inexcusable. Maybe five years ago that sort of thing would be ok, but not this decade.

Pretty Pictures, Even videos!

If you feel like your signs could have a lot of digital media to offer, be them pictures or especially video, digital signage would work absolutely perfectly for your needs. For pictures and graphics, digital signage works great because it gives you an excellent quality image that you can then reuse or change without having to pay extra printing fees like you would for physical prints. Dollar for dollar, when you take into account long term costs of high quality prints, digital signage will always be cheaper and usually look better too.

For video, the need for digital signage is obvious. Frankly put, there is simply no other way to convey video through a sign without digital signage. Now, audio can get a bit more complicated, but it all depends on what you’re using to host the media for the sign.

Touch Media, Oh My!

While this technology is still pretty new and therefore expensive, touch signs can be a godsend for your digital signage needs. Particularly if you intend the sign to be used for information-getting and navigational purposes, having a touch-screen sign makes it so that you can offer a lot of information in one place without having it all cluttered and bunched together. Touch screen is definitely the future of digital signage.

About the Guest Blogger:

This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics.

© AdvertiseMe.com.au for Digital Signage Blog, 2011. | Permalink | 6 comments |
Post tags: Conferences, Decade, digital signage, Digital Signs, High Quality, Institutions, Nadia, Outpost, Physical Prints, Piece Of Paper, Pretty Pictures, Prime Candidates, Printing Fees, Public Transportation, Quality Image, Quality Prints, Transportation Company, usability, Variation, Video Digital

In recent years, large-scale digital signs have become one of most popular forms of advertising and communication. This is largely due to the fact that these signs seem to be an incredibly effective way of reaching consumers. By using large electronic screens, advertisers and businesses are able to quickly and efficiently send messages to passersby walking on the street or driving in the cars. Not only that, but these signs also allow businesses to send targeted messages to consumers at specific locations and times. Clearly, the benefits of large-scale digital signs are endless. Yet, their seemingly complicated nature may cause you to be hesitant about constructing one of your own. However, the truth is creating such a sign is far less complicated than you might think. In fact, you don’t even need construction management experience to get a sign up and running and start attracting more customers to your store.

What is large-scale digital signage?

Large-scale digital signage is a form of large electronic display (usually a LCD, LED or plasma screen) that shows information and other messages to those in the general vicinity. The signs can be used in various environments, from retail stores to corporate offices, and are used to send messages to certain audiences at specific times.

According to Sensagent, what makes digital signs better than static signs is that “the content can be exchanged more easily, animations can be shown and the signs can adapt to the context and audience, even interactively.” As a result, those whose digital signs are often able to effectively reach their target audience as well as many others, allowing them to often wind with a considerable return on their investment.

The history of large-scale digital signage

Large-scale digital signage was created first by a company called Scala back in 1987. The software used to create these signs was originally developed for cable TV, and was called Commodore Amigas. By 1997 Scala multimedia had gained quite a bit of notoriety, and won the “ Gold Award” for their cutting-edge technology. Over the next few years, an increasing number of businesses and advertisers began demanding digital signs.

As a result, the company began to look to the future, by creating a platform that could process high definition quality graphics and videos and focusing their attention on the global market place. The success experienced by Scala lead them to celebrate their 20th anniversary in 2007. Ironically, at this time much of the industry was just beginning to adopt the technology to Scala had been using to create large-scale digital signage for years.

Today large-scale digital signage is part of modern society. It is how the media, public works and many other businesses involved in communications get the attention of the public. In fact, major companies such as McDonald’s, T-Mobile, Virgin Mega Store, Burger King, Shell and Warner Bros all utilize large-scale digital signage to reach out to their customers.

Construction of large-scale digital signage

Creating large-scale digital signage having an LED display (or some other type of large screen), a media player and a server that sends out the communication and Internet access. The most important part of constructing a large-scale digital sign is making sure that the media player you are using and the content you wish to display are connected or are all part of one device.

If these three things are located separately, then it is likely that you will have to run A/V wiring between the display, media player and the server. You will also need DVI, HDMI or VGA component cords to make this connection. However, if you already have these supplies, then you can begin construction on your large-scale digital signage. Ideally, you should consult with a professional when setting your sign up, but it is not essential. If you think you are capable of setting up your sign on your own, you certainly will be able to save yourself a lot of money.

Clearly, large-scale digital signage will continue to be a large part of the future of consumer communication. Not only do these signs reach a variety of audiences with ease, but they also have the capability of sending targeted messages to consumers, which is an important marketing strategy for any business.

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Post tags: advertisers, Audiences, Cars, Construction Management Experience, Consumers, Dictionary, digital signage, Digital Signs, Drake, Electronic Display, Electronic Screens, Environments, Large Scale, Lt, Macdonald, Nbsp, plasma screen, retail stores, Scala, Target Audience, Truth, Vicinity

One of the most noticeable places you will find digital signage is in a baseball stadium. The stadiums of Major League Baseball teams feature some of the most creative uses of digital signage. From LED boards and ribbons to large, elaborate scoreboards, Major League ballparks are the ideal application for a digital sign. In ball parks all across the nation, digital signs cover the ballpark facades and even take over the scoreboard and outfield walls. The scoreboards of all Major League facilities and even some Minor League facilities have undergone upgrades to feature digital signs. Using the focal point of the stadium is one of the most effective ways for sponsorships to advertise. One of the most cutting edge ballparks is Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. One of the truly unique places to see Arlington signs is at the Ballpark.

For Opening Day 2011, the Rangers Ballpark will feature a full LED ribbon around the second deck to add to the already state of the art digital signage in the ballpark. In 2009, the manual scoreboard in left field was replaced with a magnificent LED scoreboard.

© AdvertiseMe.com.au for Digital Signage Blog, 2011. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Ballpark In Arlington, Baseball Stadium, Baseball Stadiums, Creative Uses, digital signage, Digital Signs, Facades, Focal Point, Kyle Michael, League Baseball Teams, Major League Ballparks, Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball Teams, Minor League, Opening Day, Outfield, Rangers Ballpark In Arlington, Ribbons, Scoreboards, Second Deck, Sponsorships

Bill Gerba: Hi Marco, thanks for the chat. Well, for those who don’t know me, I’m the CEO and co-founder of WireSpring Technologies, a digital signage software and services company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. On top of our software development operations, we also do a lot of industry research, which we publish on the WireSpring blog (which was recently renamed the “Digital Signage Insiders” blog). It’s the oldest digital signage blog out there, started in 2004, and has about 18,000 readers

Advertise Me: When and how did the company Wirespring start? How did the company derive it’s name?

Bill Gerba: We started out in May of 2000. At the time, wireless (cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth) were the “next big thing,” so the name tried to incorporate some of that. Our original product was a system that used the Bluetooth signal from your phone to triangulate your position in a retail space and then make promotional offers or provide wayfinding services based on that. Needless to say, with the very dumb cellular devices, low penetration of Bluetooth, and high equipment costs of the time, we met some resistance with that early product. We refocused our efforts on more traditional self-service kiosk and digital signage products soon after that.

Advertise Me: We recently read in your blog that you have been busy releasing a new product. Tell us more about this.

Bill Gerba: Up until very recently, our products were designed for large enterprises people who wanted to manage networks of hundreds or thousands of digital signs or kiosk terminals. While that business has served us well over the years, and we certainly continue to see good growth there, we also wanted to be able to pursue the many, many smaller opportunities that we had to pass on because our enterprise software was too complex. Hence, we decided to take all that we had learned from our enterprise FireCast and ClientCenter products and distill them down to a new, simplified product, and so Digital Signage EasyStart was born.

Advertise Me: What are some of the features that makes this new product stand out from other digital signage products?

Bill Gerba: Well for one, we’re selling the hardware and software as an integrated solution. If you buy EasyStart from us, it comes pre-loaded on a box that we’ve certified to work in every arrangement we can think of. If you’re buying from one of our distributors or resellers with their own hardware platform, we’ve certified that to work as well. For another, we’ve simplified the user interface by making a lot of decisions behind-the-scenes for the user. They want a 4-zone layout with certain aspect ratio? Ok, we’ll figure out the dimensions for each area and tell them. Want to switch between multi-zone and full-screen content? No problem, just check one checkbox. We’ve gone through and made hundreds of tweaks to our system to make it so easy that anyone can be up and running in minutes. We also made sure that it was easy to get in touch with support right from our user interface (over the web), and we bundle in video tutorials for all of the most commonly-used features.

Advertise Me: What are your thoughts on digital signage SaaS? Is Wirespring heading towards this path?

Bill Gerba: By my reckoning, WireSpring was the very first digital signage SaaS company — our ClientCenter web portal went online in August of 2001. Today, about 2/3 of our revenues are from our SaaS products. EasyStart is actually a break from that — there are no recurring fees — because while SaaS tends to work well for mid- to large enterprises, the small guys don’t want to be burdened with another monthly charge.

Advertise Me: Now, you’ve been in the digital signage business for a while, so what challenges and setbacks have you faced thus far?

Bill Gerba: Well, we certainly overestimated the demand in the early years. It was very, *VERY* hard to sell networks back when plasma screens cost $8-9000 each. Likewise, because the SaaS model was so new at the time (it was still called “application service provider” or ASP back then), we had to jump over some hurdles to get customers to understand the benefits of the approach. Thankfully, that has gotten a lot easier.

Advertise Me: Do you have any advice for people who are planning to start a business in the digital signage industry?

Bill Gerba: Two rules cover 90% of what I have seen gone wrong:

Rule #1: If you’re going to start an ad-funded network, you had better have a team of people who are *already* experienced with selling ads.

Rule #2: Everything takes 3x as long as you think it should. Plan out your time and budget accordingly.

Advertise Me: This is our final question. What do you see as the next “BIG THING” in digital signage?

Bill Gerba: That’s a tough one. Certainly interactivity seems to be gaining a lot of ground, though I’ve still seen more cool tech demos than actual deployments using it. Gestural interaction, mobile interaction, anything that can get a viewer to engage with the content is becoming really important. People are also starting to think outside of the box — literally. While LCD screens still make up the majority of DS deployments today, more people are using 3D, unique bezels, or projection onto holographic film to create images that aren’t square in an attempt to be more eye catching. I think that as people get more used to the idea of big screens hanging around everywhere (including their living rooms) network owners are trying to step up their presences with interactivity and unique display formats to remain visible.

Advertise Me: Once again Bill, thanks for your time and we wish you all the best with the release of the new Wirespring product.

To read more interviews click here: http://www.digitalsignageblog.com/category/digital-signage-interview/

About Advertise Me:

Advertise Me is a privately owned Australian company specialising in all aspects of digital signage solutions.

Our team of highly skilled professionals is able to introduce innovative ways for businesses to communicate with their intended audiences for a variety of purposes including informing, educating, entertaining and selling.

You can expect us to:

• offer the most affordable and cost effective solutions tailored to your specific business needs.
• provide you with concise and accurate information and will ensure that you understand and are comfortable with our proposals.
• strive to make our clients happy and successful.

We have partnered with a number of key reputable organisations and will continue to build further partnerships to deliver the most effective solutions for our customers.

Visit our website at www.advertiseme.com.au for more information.

© AdvertiseMe.com.au for Digital Signage Blog, 2009. | Permalink | One comment |
Post tags: Bill Gerba, Bluetooth Phone, Busy Man, Cellular Devices, Co Founder, Development Operations, Digital Signage Software, Digital Signs, Fort Lauderdale, Gerba, Insiders, Kiosk Terminals, Lauderdale Florida, Penetration, Retail Space, Self Service, Signage Products, Software Development, Taking The Time, Wifi, Wirespring