If you spend much time researching the world of digital signage, you’ll come across this phrase, and likely more than once: “Digital signage is not television.”
A lot of people in the industry have adopted this as a sort of mantra, a reaction to what they see as a dangerous habit first-time digital signage deployers are tempted to develop: the repurposing of television advertisements for use on digital signs. After all, you’ve already paid good money to have that fine-looking 30-second spot created, right? So why shouldn’t you use it on your new screens?
The answers are many, but they mostly boil down to the fact that people watching television are in a very different frame of mind than people in a retail environment or a bank or a restaurant. Commercials seen while on the couch are par for the course; commercials seen while in a place of business, getting ready to hand over some money to the proprietor, usually are seen as an annoyance.
All that being said, there is great potential for digital signage as an advertising medium — it just requires a different approach than television. It requires an approach different from all other media, because it is a new beast, and it has its own unique set of needs and strengths.
For some businesses, selling ad space on digital signs will never make sense. These are companies where the signage technology is all about branding, or all about store design, or all about customer experience. Selling a sliver of the screen to a third-party flies in the face of those goals.
But for others, advertising is a natural fit. Take the grocery business, which has long been in the habit of accepting co-op advertising dollars from brands carried within the store. Adding digital ads to the mix allows those retailers to go after bigger ad buys and deeper budgets.
I’d like to thank ADFLOW Networks, whose generous sponsorship of this guide allows us to provide it to you at no cost.
James Bickers, contributing editor, Digital Signage Today
