Digital display networks are only beginning to show their true potential, and companies are hard at work building the infrastructure to deliver and manage content across those networks. A new white paper from aka.tv, titled "Tomorrow the World," puts forth the notion that a global approach might be the best approach in these early days of construction.

"There are few CAN (captive-audience network) operators operating globally today," the paper says in its introductory chapter. "Even among worldwide retail and other brands operating their own networks, the tendency until recently has been to develop country-specific media.

"But this is changing, and more truly international CANs are to be expected in the next two years. As the industry matures the scope of individual companies' internationalization is likely to increase, too. … CAN operators which begin by dipping a cautious toe into international waters will find them accounting for a greater and greater share of revenue, and be encouraged into further expansion overseas."

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Barnaby Page, editor of aka.tv and one of the authors of the paper, said in an interview that international expansion of a network would be a natural and organic process in specific, highly targeted segments.

"For example, it's easy enough to imagine a network targeted at long-haul air passengers," he said. "In most countries that network would only need to be present in a small number of airports, so international expansion could happen almost immediately."

In retail, he gives the example of big-boxes and superstores. Those chains could begin by placing digital signage in their largest and most heavily trafficked locations, regardless of country. Such a "top-down" approach would inevitably result in an international presence.

And the paper makes the point that the emergence of a "world culture" opens the door for highly specific CANs - a doctor's surgery channel, pharmacy channel, taxi channel, gym channel, etc. "If the experience of going to the shops or to the doctor were greatly different in every country, such super-sector-CANs would not be viable. But increasing cross-border resemblances between the vertical markets, even where there is not actually international ownership, opens potential for specialist CANs."

Advertisers that make the move beyond native borders have always grappled with the inevitable cultural gaps, from the small details that get lost in translation to the major differences in perception and awareness. Take the Gerber baby food company, for instance, known for its signature labels featuring a picture of a smiling baby. When the company moved into Africa, it neglected to notice that most of that continent's food manufacturers, in order to communicate with customers that could not read, would use their labels to show what was inside the container.

Freefone, which shows advertisements to customers using its handsets to make free telephone calls, is one of surprisingly few networks to operate in both the United States and Canada.

The aka.tv paper notes that such problems are very real with digital content, too. For instance, different types of visual media are viewed differently around the world - animation is taken more seriously in Japan than, say, Britain, where it is seen as childish. "Similarly, black-and-white footage does not necessarily immediately indicate `old' everywhere," the paper notes.

"Content varies tremendously from country to country in all forms of media and always will," said Bill Collins, principal, WBC Narrowcasting Group. "If, for example, one listens to short-wave radio stations around the world or reads newspapers that are published in different countries, the national differences are very clear."

Such cultural differences might represent more of an opportunity than a problem, as the aka.tv paper suggests in its glass-half-full view:

"Similar cultures and economies mean similar products and similar product types. To take some obvious examples, even if the exact same brands are not always advertised in both the U.S. and Canada, or Sweden and Norway, or Singapore and Hong Kong, close equivalents will exist. Less commonality exists between Ireland and India. … An extension of this principle suggests that there are natural `groupings' of nations, defined by a combination of culture, language, geography, economic and technological development, currency, and free-trade agreements."

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Although content moving across international CANs will vary based on the point of delivery, the networks themselves cry out for standards. The promise of smart delivery of content and highly focused targeting of the audience requires a technical platform that is consistent from country to country.

"Global technical standards are completely appropriate," Collins said. "Even though this new media is operating in a number of distinct national markets that don't usually overlap with other national markets in terms of content, technology standards are still useful. If international technical standards are developed, this will create a bigger market, allow economies of scale to develop for design/manufacturing, and thus lower the cost of rolling out these networks."

Page said that he doesn't foresee many problems with network compatibility, thanks to the open nature of existing networking standards.

"The impression we've got from networks operating cross-border is that technical problems are generally trivial," he said. "Computing equipment and displays are pretty much standard the world over, and of course networking standards like TCP/IP are universal in their nature.

"As one executive put it to us, any country with such poor infrastructure that you can't set up a CAN is probably not one where there's much commercial scope for it anyway."