Digital Signage – Build Your Brand With In-store Advertising

The recent advent of new technologies is transforming the way retailers communicate with their customers. These customers are bombarded daily with thousands of images and messages. The need to promote, inform, educate and receive feedback is being transformed. This is all clearly seen and made use of by digital signage networks (DSN). Banks, airports, movie theaters, casinos, sports stadiums, and other public spaces are all using this exciting technology.

There is a huge amount of overlap between terms such as digital signage, narrowcasting, captive audience networks, interactive kiosks, self-service terminals, and many others closely related terms. Slightly different connotations given to these terms by different companies makes it difficult to figure out what to look for when doing online research or talking to an expert in the field. These articles serve to differentiate or more succinctly describe specific terms. There will, quite naturally, be degrees of overlap.

Digital signage is a broad term that encompasses a wide variety of different applications and technologies. In a general sense, the term refers to electronically controlled signs that can be updated without changing the physical sign itself. No more climbing up on a ladder and putting individual letters into place. Changes can be made quickly and cost-effectively. Digital signage is usually seen as a form of digital advertising that is displayed on an electronic or digital screen. Digital signage delivers targeted messages to specific locations at specific times. Messages can be remotely changed and controlled. The digital sign itself could be a scrolling message board, LCD or plasma display panel, electronic billboards, projection screens or other displays such as an Organic LED screen.

The term, “digital signage” is used throughout North America and most of Europe but the terms “narrowcasting,” digital merchandising, screen-media, place-based media, digital media network, or captive audience network are also used.

Digital signage content can range from simple text and still images to full-motion video. Some retailers treat their digital signage almost like a television station that displays entertaining or informational content interspersed with targeted advertising.

With rapidly dropping prices for large plasma or LED screens, digital signage is increasing in popularity. You will now see digital signage everywhere– from retail outlets to doctors’ offices. With the recent introduction of free digital signage software, this technology or tool is becoming attractive to smaller businesses and nonprofits such as schools and churches. The creative use of display technologies even allows for high-contrast images to be projected directly onto store windows or displays that appear to hang in mid-air.

Digital Signage Usage

* Information such as flight information in airports.
* Advertising.
* Advertising for third parties: retailers sell commercial space on their digital signage.
* Enhanced customer experience– such as recipe demonstrations in food stores.
* Influencing customer behavior– directing customers to different parts of a store to increase “dwell time.”
* Brand building– digital signage in video form could be used as part of the décor.

Electronic signs and dynamic digital signage can also up-sell customers and encourage them to purchase high margin products.

For more information on digital signage and creative digital media contact EK3

Digital Signage Made Simple for Retailers: How to Increase Sales, Build Your Brand, and Keep Your Customers Informed and Entertained

Digital Signage Made Simple for Retailers: How to Increase Sales, Build Your Brand, and Keep Your Customers Informed and Entertained

Digital Signage Made Simple for Retailers: How to Increase Sales, Build Your Brand, and Keep Your Customers Informed and Entertained

The Complete “How-to” Book for Retailers Seeking to Incorporate Digital Signage to Increase Sales, Build Your Brand, and Keep Your Customers Informed and Entertained

Gain the knowledge of this new and exciting digital technology to grow any retail business. All elements of digital signage are covered in simple terms, including displays, signage players, software, content, installation, and management of your signage network. Learn how to find competent installers, content developers

List Price: $ 54.95

Price:

How To: Build a Cheap Alternative to Digital Signage. Mount an LCD TV in Portrait Mode.

This video displays a brief overview of our current digital signage set-up. I was looking to find an alternative to expensive “all in one” digital signs. The products used to achieve this alternative are listed below…

– Samsung LN40B500P3F 40″ LCD TV
– AVF LCD554PB LCD Mount
– Mediasonic HM5 media player

Many 40″ LCD TVs have a 400mm x 400mm square VESA pattern. Thus the pattern supports mounting in portrait mode. I have used a universal articulating mount and simply flipped the TV.

The video that we display is simply a video file constructed on its side. It is being played by a Mediasonic HM5 media player. This media player plays many popular video formats. It is a low power alternative to running a computer alongside our LCD. It simply loops the video file 24 hours a day.

I will have a video review of the Mediasonic HM5 in the near future.
Video Rating: / 5

Digital Signage Content: Integrating Social Media Can Garner Attention and Build Interest

Here is a remarkable statistic published online by USA Today’s Technology Live website in October 2010. As of that date, there were 6.8 billion people in the world, 1.96 billion Internet users and 517 million Facebook users.

As Byron Acohido, author of the piece noted: “Put another way: about 7 percent of the world’s humans are on Facebook.” Just over a year later, Facebook notes on its statistics page that there are now 800 million active users of the social media network.

How many of those Facebook users carrying smartphones will visit somewhere that relies on a digital sign? One can only imagine the number for a particular venue. But consider this: Facebook’s statistics page says there are 350 million users who actively interact with Facebook via their smartphones. So it’s a pretty safe bet that the closer the demographics of the audience for a digital sign match those of typical mobile Facebook users, the more likely there’s a vast opportunity to be realized.

The likely proximity of a smartphone to a digital sign creates an important opportunity for anyone communicating via a digital sign who possesses a bit of an imagination and a willingness to experiment. Consider a noisy environment, such as a popular bar, dance club or even certain restaurants. Could designating on-screen real estate of a digital sign to a special Facebook page, give a business owner a way to help patrons connect with one another on screen and in so doing cut through the noise, attract the attention of customers and promote goods or services in other zones on the sign?

Leveraging social media in this way could be as simple as giving patrons a virtual bulletin board on which to post vetted observations and pictures or as complex as giving them a way to play bar games, like trivia, with one another. Imagination, budget and creativity would seem to be the only limitations.

The good news for small businesses looking to take advantage of this opportunity is many are already quite familiar and fluent with Facebook. According to the quarterly Merchant Confidence Index released in February 2011 by MerchantCircle, 70 percent of local merchants are using Facebook for marketing -up from 50 percent the preceding year. In fact, MerchantCircle, among largest social network of local business owners in the United States with more than 1.6 million members, found Facebook has passed Google as the most widely used marketing method for local merchants.

In addition to its wide use by local merchants, the rapid growth Facebook saw over the past year saw among merchants is positive. It appears to indicate local merchants have proven themselves to be quite willing to explore the potential of this social network. Thus taking the next step to integrate a Facebook page as digital signage content doesn’t seem to be too far of a stretch for merchants with a knack for the platform.

It’s also important to note that Facebook isn’t the only social media platform that can be leveraged for digital signage content. Twitter, too, easily fits into the same mold as a convenient way to let patrons publicly interact with one another on a digital sign via their smartphones. Like Facebook, Twitter also is familiar to local merchants. The Merchant Confidence Index found about 40 percent currently use the platform, which is up from 32 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.

As business owners, outside creative agencies and internal graphics departments consider what digital signage content to present to the public, they would do well to remember that adding engaging, attention-grabbing element to their digital sign may be no further away than a Facebook page or Twitter account.

David Little is a charter member of the Digital Screenmedia Association with 20 years of experience helping professionals use technology to effectively communicate. For further digital signage insight from Keywest Technology, visit our website for many helpful tips and examples. For more in-depth research from Keywest Technology, download our free digital signage white papers and case studies.

How to Build a Dynamic Digital Signage Business

Mike Ohren and Jeff Grandell, owners of MacMan Inc. and LPS Output Technologies have built successful digital signage divisions within their companies and now they are offering to teach others how to do the same. This hour long webcast, moderated by Ryan Cahoy of Rise Vision, will give you some basic guidance on the following key areas:
4 Different Models For Profit
Staff needed to create a DS Division
Compensating employees
Go-To-Market strategies
Financing and payment options for customers
Do’s and Don’ts

This session is designed to help those that have seen the excitement of digital signage but are stuck asking themselves, “What’s Next?”. In addition to the above points, there will be a Q&A session. Registrants are invited to submit questions prior to the webcast to Lauren Taggart at ltaggart@digitalsignagefederation.org.

For those looking to roll up their sleeves and dig into a 2 1/2 day “hands-on” training session, check out the event on April 28-30th at the NEC headquarters in Chicago.  

http://www.digitalsignagefederation.org/industryevents?eventId=856695&EventViewMode=EventDetails
Video Rating: / 5

JewishGen and MyHeritage.com collaborate to build the Family Tree of the Jewish People

Tel Aviv, Israel; London, UK and Los Angeles, US (PRWEB) July 14, 2010

MyHeritage.com and JewishGen.org are now working together to invigorate the Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP) project.

Under this collaboration, family trees built with a special version of MyHeritage.com available at http://www.myheritage.com/jewishgen, with the consent of the tree creators, will be transferred periodically to the FTJP for digital safekeeping. Privacy controls, using the MyHeritage.com tools, can be set according to the wishes of the tree creator. Data of existing MyHeritage.com users will not be transferred.

JewishGen is a non-profit organization created to help researchers interested in Jewish genealogy around the world connect to each other, research their families and ancestral geographic locations, participate in research projects and store Jewish family trees safely. The mission of JewishGen is to obtain records and information that will be valuable to those with Jewish ancestry and place them on the JewishGen website, at no cost, in an easy to understand and searchable format.

The Family Tree of the Jewish People is a project of JewishGen to bring together family historians around the world who research Jewish family branches. The project offers a central resource for Jewish family trees and helps re-connect Jewish families.

MyHeritage.com is a genealogical social networking site with more than 50 million members and 590 million profiles worldwide. It currently holds some 15 million family trees. It operates in 36 languages including English and Hebrew, making it ideal for Jewish families around the world to connect, as it offers easy and fun tools to enable sharing of information, photos, documents and videos among far-flung relatives, with complete and secure privacy controls that can be set by tree creators.

“JewishGen is committed to ensuring Jewish continuity for present generations and generations yet to come,” says JewishGen managing director Warren Blatt. “Our free, easy-to-use website features thousands of databases, research tools and other resources to help those with Jewish ancestry research and find family members. The vision of JewishGen is to connect Jews throughout the world with their relatives and provide them with the ability to learn about their family history and heritage.”

“MyHeritage.com – a site used all over the world and by all religions – is among the most popular genealogy websites in the Jewish world, making it a natural partner for JewishGen”, said Blatt. “The benefit of this partnership is to offer the free website tools from MyHeritage.com to create and research family trees, with the option to share those trees with the thousands of JewishGen users via the FTJP. Under the new partnership, the FTJP will be invigorated and constantly updated, resulting in an accurate, up-to-date and constantly growing Jewish family tree database for JewishGen.”

“We are excited to join forces with JewishGen,” said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage.com, himself an avid genealogist and a member of JewishGen since August 2000. “We see it as a privilege to cooperate with JewishGen and help it preserve family trees of people who wish to discover, and be discovered by, fellow researchers and relatives,” Japhet added. “Our Smart Matching technology will provide genealogists the added benefit of discovering additional relatives through the large databases on MyHeritage.com. This will fulfill the mutual objective of MyHeritage.com and JewishGen to reunite families whose ties have been lost through time and fate.”

About MyHeritage.com:

MyHeritage.com was founded by a team of people who combine their passion for family history with the development of innovative technology. Since launching in November 2005 MyHeritage.com has become the world’s leading international online network for families and the second largest family history website. The fastest growth rates in the industry combined with the acquisitions of Pearl Street Software (2007), Kindo.com (2008) and OSN (2009) have made MyHeritage.com the home for 50 million family members and 590 million profiles. The company has offices in London, UK; Hamburg, Germany; Boulder, Colorado, USA and Tel Aviv, Israel. MyHeritage.com has received funding by Accel Partners and Index Ventures. For more information, visit http://www.myheritage.com/jewishgen

About JewishGen:

JewishGen, a non-profit organization affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, was founded in 1987 as a bulletin board with only 150 users who were interested in Jewish genealogy. Primarily driven by volunteers, there are over 700 active volunteers throughout the world who actively contribute to its ever growing collection of databases, resources and search tools. Currently, JewishGen hosts more than 14 million records, and provides a myriad of resources and search tools designed to assist those researching their Jewish ancestry. JewishGen provides its resources online as a public service.

For more information please contact:

For MyHeritage.com:    

Daniel Horowitz

Genealogy and Translation Manager

Email: Daniel(at)MyHeritage(dot)com

For JewishGen:

Warrren Blatt

Managing Director

Email: wblatt(at)jewishgen(dot)org

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