A typical digital signage solution is generally expensive and from experience, one of the most critical factors as to whether a client purchases the equipment or not is the final cost (basically the number of zeros in the figure). Even calculating and presenting the ROI may not persuade the client to make that final purchasing decision.

A financial strategy which we believe will help in landing any project, is to also include rental and leased financial options with every quote you submit to your client.

In summary, some of the advantages of rental and leased plans over outright purchases are :

• preservation of cash flow. The cost of the equipment can be spread over the term of the agreement. This means a full upfront payment is not required enabling the client to spend money running the business.
• there are many tax advantages. For rental and lease options, both payments are 100% tax deductible. If the equipment was to be purchased outright, only the value of the equipment depreciation is tax deductible. GST can be claimed on monthly payments through BAS claims whereas for outright purchases, GST is only claimed at the time when the equipment purchased.
• For the rental option, there is a flexibility to upgrade, add or delete the equipment during the term of the agreement. For the leased option, the client may be required to payout the remaining payments and residual value before upgrading to new equipment. For outright purchases, any upgrades or add-ons will need to be required to be purchased by the customer.
• With the rental option, the client will not be stuck with outdated technology. The equipment can be returned to the Finance company. For the leased and outright purchase options, , the equipment needs to be disposed of by the customer which may prove to be costly.

Visit the digital signage forum to further discuss some of these advantages in detail.
At Advertise Me, they are able to provide their clients with outright, leased and rental options for all of their digital signage solutions.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News

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.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info

I recently returned back to Australia after a two week business trip in Washington DC, USA and I thought I’d share and comment on some of the digital signage implementations I saw.

Firstly, when I arrived in LA Airport for a stop over, I was welcomed by these screen – digital signage is pretty much everywhere you go in the airports:

If you look closely, there a four smaller screens at the bottom of the two larger screens. The smaller screens are in fact touch screens which can be used to find more information about hotels, restaurants etc within LA – there are also phones that can be used to contact businesses listed in the directory. I like the idea of using the bigger screens to attract the visitor’s attention and then direct them to the touch screens – a very clever “call to action” method.

Next stop was Washington DC Airport. Once again I was not surprised to see digital signage in this airport. I noticed that most of the screens were manufactured by NEC which showed Airline/passenger information. There were also LG screens which were displaying CNN News.

The colour themes on the screens at both airports were very similar. The text was white and the background was a light blue. The screens constantly kept passengers informed about flight information – the digital signage solution was also being used as a “visual announcement board” (this was used in conjunction with an audio message on the PA system) e.g Mr XXX please contact the United airlines customer service desk.

The next place with a strong presence of digital signage was Pentagon City Shopping Mall. Like in many shopping malls around the world, digital signage was used to advertise products and businesses. In this example, a product video from Consumerwatch was playing.

In the same shopping mall I encountered an innovative digital signage implementation. I have read about this type of interactive display on the Internet, but this is the very first time I have actually seen it with my own eyes. I don’t know who are the manufacturers of this solution but the one I’ve seen on the Internet is Catchyoo. From what I could tell, the solution is using a very large (the biggest projector I’ve ever seen), a mirror, a small form factor PC and some sort of motion detection camera. The solution works by displaying an image on the ground, the customers can walk on the image and interact with the display. During the short period I was watching the display, I noticed that only kids were interacting (more like playing) with the projected image. Now don’t get me wrong, the solution is very innovative but is this solution targeted to kids or potential customers? .

The next location that I found a digital signage solution was Borders – the book store. An LCD screen with a computer attached to it displayed a template with a zoning configuration (you can literally see the PC stick out above the screen) . The zones were setup to show the following:

a News scrolling ticketer at the bottom of the screen

• an Advertising Banner on the left hand side column which displayed internal products (CD’s, DVD’s, Books, and products from their cafe)
• the largest area on the screen was used to display videos (interviews, Film/Book previews) and the weather

My last stop was at Washington DC Chinatown. Walking through the busy streets of Chinatown, I noticed that the two large Telecomunications giants (Verizon and AT&T) both had external LED screens placed in front of their building. The Verizon Centre has the largest LED screen in town – very hard to miss.

At the time I took this photo, they were displaying stock information – I’m not too sure how many people are interested in this kind of information but it must be a reason why they were displaying this.

Although AT&T didn’t have the largest screens in town, they did however stand out from the crowd when it came to being noticed. Outside of their AT&T building (nicely located at the corner of the main street in Georgetown), there are 3 LED screens which display independent content from each other.

What took me by surprise was AT&T’s shop window front – they were using the whole of the glass window as a screen. If you look closely in this photo, there is a projected image on the glass window.

Well that’s the end of my trip. Hopefully I’ll get to see other digital signage implementations in the different parts of the world.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News

With the increasing popularity of digital signage and the Internet, the likelihood of your digital signage system being hacked or compromised is increasingly high.

To minimise and mitigate this risk, there are several technical security points to consider when implementing your digital signage solution:

• Avoid using the default ports for common application protocols such as FTP (port 21) or web (80).
• Don’t use common passwords such as “password” and “test”. Instead use passwords with numbers, and case sensitive characters which are harder for Brute Force password software tools to break and hack.
• Rename or disable common login accounts. For example, in the Windows environment rename the “administrator” and “guest” accounts. For Unix, rename the “root” account.
• Install Antivirus and Firewall software such as Trend Micro on your digital signage solution. This will prevent viruses and Trojans from getting into your digital signage network.
• Ensure your Operating System, whether it’s Unix or Microsoft Windows has the latest software updates. There is a considerable amount of security vulnerabilities out there.
• Physically locate your devices in a secure environment e.g. in a rack or a communications cabinet.
• For wireless connectivity to your network, disable the wireless SSID and use the latest encryption methods such as WPA.
• Don’t just use HTTP to manage or transmit files – this is an unsecured protocol and the login and password is transmitted using clear text. Use HTTPS, with at least 128 bit encryption.
• If you have to manage multiple sites, don’t purely connect the digital signage players to the Internet, but instead setup VPNs (Virtual Private Network).

As more businesses are connecting their digital signage players to the Internet, these units will eventually be faced with many security issues and it will be up to the IT department to control, monitor and ensure their clients investment is secure.
As a final note, just remember that any device that is networked is hackable to some extent or another.

We would love to hear whether your digital signage solution has ever been hacked into or what security measures you are implementing in your digital signage solution.

To discuss this topic further, visit our digital signage forum entry.

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Category: Digital Signage Blog Info, Digital Signage Blog News