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The Technology Manager’s guide to SMARTER DIGITAL SIGNAGE  By Cindy Davis

Digital signage is nothing new; it has been in use in commercial markets for more than twenty years. What’s notable in 2015 is the increased adoption of the technology. Nobody knows that better than the person who, since 1994, has helped pave the path at the digital signage behemoth Scala. Jeff Porter, former executive vice president of Scala and founder of Porter Digital Signage, said, “We’re a year closer to people accepting digital signage in lots of different places.”

The total cost of ownership of digital signage continues to decrease, making deployment more feasible within various markets. The availability of larger panels with near-zero bezels, higher resolution and lower power consumption, increased bandwidth, more advanced signal processing and distribution, as well as easier to use content management systems, are contributing to the adoption of digital signage. So, what’s next?

“The whole mobile engagement, based on proximity, is going to be huge,” Porter said. He sees companies as “eager to have digital signage be responsive to different conditions, and for the databases to be dynamic and interactive.” Retail and sports venues are among the markets already embracing mobile, Porter explained.

Adspace Digital Mall Network, the largest Nielsen-measured digital place-based video network in the U.S., is banking on it. In November 2014, the company introduced its partnership with Shazam, the mobile app company that pioneered audio recognition technology enabling smartphones to “listen” and identify music, delivering the meta information directly to users. “The marriage of mobile and location-based video just makes sense,” said Dominick Porco, CEO, Adspace Networks Inc. in the announcement. “Now, through our partnership with Shazam, we are able to offer our advertisers a seamless way to retarget their ads and extend their content to consumers’ smartphones.” The alliance extends the reach of both companies: Adspace Networks reaches 58 million unique shoppers each month through video advertising on 2,800 screens nationwide; Shazam has more than 100 million monthly active users.

“To have your mobile device figure out where you are, what you are standing in front of, to really triangulate all of that information and give you information that is relevant, pertinent, and timely,” Porter added. “It’s the holy grail of digital signage: the right information for the right people at the right time.”

With the help of content creators thinking outside the “wow factor” of 4K displays, real applications are emerging that take digital signage to the next level, and we will be seeing more in 2015. Reminiscent to the “lean-in” movement that ushered-in content on the Web, 4K displays and videowalls are providing the pixel density that enables close-up user interaction and engagement. While 1080p is adequate for Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) menu boards seen from a distance, the pixel density needs to be increased in order to read fine-point text and other detailed content.

Jennifer Davis, vice president, Marketing at Planar Systems, cites a 4K installation at The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) that has recently reimagined their retail space. “They put in a 4K display that switches from showing beautiful high-resolution video of what’s playing at the iMax theater down the hall to messaging about the space.”

Understanding the full capability and versatility of a 4K display can add significant value to a display and help deliver ROI. “What they use that resolution for is not only to create the most amazing 4K imagery and video on the [full] screen, but, because of the capabilities of the product, they can actually run four [HD] sources into each in a quadrant,” Davis said. Given that 4K is four-times the resolution of HD, OMSI is maximizing its investment. At times, it is dividing the display into quadrants from up to eight different sources to four HD content areas, each with its own message. Taking any digital signage deployment one step at a time is a good idea, but looking towards future uses protects an investment. When OMSI is ready to engage visitors with interactive content, the displays are enabled to deliver 32 touch points.

In the higher education space, Sean Matthews, president and CEO of Visix said that providers have graduated from delivering just event data and messages on displays, to “interactive wayfinding being a component and integrating social media up on those displays.” As Matthews opined, “It’s not just ‘Content that is King,’ but content that engages people, whether it be responding via social media or SMS, interacting with the display itself, or responding to surveys or polls and delivering that data back to the display.” Even though prices have come down, digital signage is still a significant investment.

About his clients, Matthews observed, “They want to be able to prove that this platform and these technologies are actually doing something.” Indeed, many start the discussion with wanting to know digital signage analytics. “It’s moving beyond that ‘me too’ kind of thing,” he added.

“There are a few guys like Samsung that have embraced the IP-addressable displays and have put the digital signage player in the screen so you don’t have to have a separate player,” said Porter, suggesting that this is a good idea for deployments that aren’t over complicated. Samsung brings integrators, end-users, and software partners into their Executive Briefing Center in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey, to gather feedback and future needs. “A common theme has been the need to simplified, but also want their digital signage products dynamic, and Samsung is addressing this by making the display smarter,” said Kevin Schroll, Senior Manager, Smart Signage for Samsung.

The idea that digital signage is a large panel or videowall is so 2014. Samsung sees that people have
digital signage needs across multiple form-factors. As Schroll explained, “We’re going to launch a 10-inch and a 22-inch with all of the same digital signage attributes: the imbedded processor, the software, all of those capabilities that you’d typically see in a large screen will now be available in a small form-factor that a lot of end-customers couldn’t get with a tablet or a desktop monitor.” On the other end of the size spectrum, Alan Robles, associate experience designer for Gensler, said, “I am looking a future where I can take an entire wall and make it a display versus it being a postage stamp on it, that’s where I want to get.”

Robles is also thinking about massive panels. “If I can turn an entire architectural surface into a display, that display can become a view into another room that doesn’t exist,” he said.

Cindy Davis has covered the AV industry since 2000, when she served as the publisher and editor-in-chief of Electronic House magazine. In 2011, she was the founding editor and brand manager of the six TechDecisions Media B2B websites. She specializes in providing content and content marketing for audiences that need information and want to be inspired.

For more information, visit: http://www.porterdigitalsignage.com

Nice article in Digital Signage Magazine this month on Content Management Software for 2015

I wrote a nice little article for this month's Digital Signage Magazine (December 2014 issue).

Here's the text.  Enjoy!

Digital Signage Content Management Software – A look to new features in 2015 and beyond

By Jeff Porter of Porter Digital Signage Consulting  (http://www.porterdigitalsignage.com)

New software for digital signage is being developed at a blazingly fast pace these days, fueled by innovations in hardware, display, servers, operating systems and “the Internet of things”.  It’s sometimes tough to keep up with everyone and everything, but as 2015 begins we wanted to give you some of the top highlights from some of the major players in the digital signage content management software space to watch for this year.

Scala is readying a new release in February, just in time for ISE and DSE announcements, of their next generation Enterprise Content Manager.  Major performance enhancements, simplified menus, a significantly improved search engine and better monitoring are in the offering for this release.  That means the web based GUI will be a lot quicker and more responsive, which is always a welcome improvement for productivity.  Scala’s Designer software is also getting some new graphical effects like alpha masks which will enable a much more creative control over multizone screen layouts (they don’t have to be just rectangular any more!).  Designer will also be able to connect more easily with various data sources and format the data more easily for an attractive dynamic experience. 

According to Clive Fort from Scala, there are five pillars of focus for their platform going forward: 

1.    1.      Data Integration: This is the key to dynamic digital signage.  Link that with real-time analysis and you’ve got the most relevant and timely information on your screens at all times.
2.      .      Interactive:  Engaging the viewer with an interactive experience (with relevant dynamic data) is key taking engagement and user experiences to the next level.
3.     .      Scale:  Every large network begins with a pilot.  And while it’s important to test your content strategy in pilot, it’s equally important to prove out all the technical pieces.  Scala’s platform is the same for both large and small networks. 
4.     .      Devices: There is an explosion of network connected devices these days.  Your platform needs to embrace a variety of different devices to engage the user at various touch points.
5.     .      Applications:  Not everything you need to do in digital signage is going to be turn key, so Scala believes that having a third party SDK and APIs is key to enabling new vertical markets with amazing applications.  Scala has a full website devoted to third party developers.

Existing customers on Scala Advantage will get all of these upgrades for free.  So it appears that the boys at Scala have been very busy.  A new release of their Android player is also expected, supporting some of the newest KitKat based Android players in Q1.

SignageLive has been working closely with the display manufacturers and media player companies to take full advantage of their roadmap.  Samsung and LG are both rolling out new “System on a Chip” (SOC) players that are built into the commercial LCD screens.  That means every screen can be IP addressable without the need for a separate media player, at least for basic digital signage content needs.  This will mark the third generation of embedded players with lower costs and higher performance for Samsung.  LG’s newly acquired WebOS platform (from Palm-Pre and HP Slate) is extending their Smart TV platform for digital signage.  Of course these standard screens can also be connected to a small “hang on the back” (or “stick”) media player.  

Folks like Seneca Data and iBase have wonderful little PC based players that most software platforms can work with.  But there is a new generation of Android based players coming out in Q1 2015 from folks like IAdea that is going to raise the bar significantly.  Quad core processors mean the performance is dramatically better than last year’s devices, and sometimes even come in a much smaller form factor, which can be much more cost effective than a PC based player.  SignageLive is also planning to release a new version of their software in 2015 with much improved monitoring and alerts.   They also see 2015 as the tipping point year for transition from Flash to HTML5.

Broadsign is keeping their 2015 plans under wraps, so you’ll need to sign up for their partner conference at DSE to find out the latest and greatest from them.  But in 2014, they did release version of Broadsign X 10.4 just in November 2014, so there’s quite a few nice things there that they recently added.  Users of their system will know they have two tools: Broadsign Administrator and Broadsign Creator.  Creator is for creating simple, quick and easy content for an end user with little to no training, as opposed to the Administrator product, which is more aimed at a network operator with technical skills and training.  With 10.4 you can easily view Creator content in Administrator without jumping between systems.  10.4 also includes a newly designed Calendar view for campaign management.  And a nice feature added is the ability to clone configurations.  Just copy something similar, and make a small tweak, instead of having to start over from scratch.  And for Creator, complex schedules are more easily managed from that interface without needing to jump into Administrator.  So there are enhancements to both software products to make each users’ experience better.

With Omnivex it’s all about the data.  That has been their strength for many years.  According to Omnivex’s Jeff Collard, he’s been noticing a shift in the attitudes of the CIO’s in large companies.  Today’s modern CIO is embracing technology innovations and bringing those solutions to their internal clients proactively (instead of trying to keep them at bay).  And it seems that hosting in the “cloud” is no longer a dirty word for many CIO’s.  Companies like Salesforce.com and Amazon (with their Amazon Web Services) have blazed the trail for acceptance within the corporate IT world.  And hosting in the cloud is amazingly cost effective these days, versus big iron servers that a company may need to own and maintain.  But Collard sees that there is a still a need for digital signage to be a “job” at a company.  “When you can get a degree in digital signage, and when that is viewed as a valid career choice (like being a webmaster), you’ll see a faster adoption rate in our industry.” Collard said.  He’s also seeing the opportunity for network consolidation in 2015, especially among larger advertising networks absorbing smaller “mom and pop” networks.  Collard was fairly optimistic for 2015 overall.  He did think that the economy in North America was much more receptive to digital signage solutions these days.

Stratacache’s new focus is to make it easier to plug into other systems.  Digital Signage is just one piece of the overall media mix is a company, and it’s important to be able to synchronize campaigns and allow for dynamic input from other system to drive the digital signage content.  Russ Young from Stratecache believes that the days of the “simple slide show digital signage” content are fading fast.  Clients are expecting data integration with their digital signage.   There have been a few deployments with gesture based digital signage, but it seems that touch is still the preferred method of interactivity.  

However, Young is bullish on a new beacon technology from SonicPing.net.  Stratecache have tested a lot of BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) devices, and the inaudible sonic beacons seem to work the best.  As soon as your sonic enabled mobile device gets within a close proximity and a specific dwell time of a beacon, content is triggered your smart phone based on your profile.  SonicPing’s platform is easily integrated with digital signage content management systems such as Stratecache’s ActiVia software.  You can expect to see a lot more mobile integration with digital signage in 2015.  

Young also posed the question, “Why don’t we see more voice recognition systems for interactive digital signage these days?”  That’s a very good question.  We have Siri on our iPhones, Microsoft Sync in Ford cars,  even Garmin GPS have voice recognition these days.  Perhaps that’s one more technology from Star Trek that we need to bring to life in digital signage, right after transparent aluminum and the transporter!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Porter is one of the industry’s leading experts in digital signage and is the founder of Porter Digital Signage Consulting.  From business planning, to sales and marketing and technology choices, Porter has been helping his clients get all the moving parts of digital signage in alignment for success.  Prior to heading his own consulting business, Mr. Porter was employed by Scala, Commodore, Bell Labs and Eastman Kodak.  Mr. Porter holds a BSEE from Purdue University and a MS from the University of Illinois.  He can be contacted at jeff@porterdigitalsignage.com or by phone 610-202-7676.