Advertising with Digital
Signage
Driving home the message with screens
A guide from Digital Signage Today
INSIDE: People pay attention to dynamic digital signage. Find out how to maximize
advertising placement through the use of digital screens and captivating content.
Developed and Published by:
Sponsored by:
Contents:
Page 4
Introduction
Page 5
Chapter 1
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The digital signage advertising model
Case study: Concourse leads the PATH to success
Expert advice: What do ad agencies want?
Page 10
Chapter 2
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Measuring the audience
New technology on the horizon
Making a good impression
Of playlists, loops and layers
Expert advice: Things ad buyers want
Page 16
Chapter 3
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Building an advertising network
Aggregate networks
Expert advice: Most effective ad types
Page 21
Chapter 4
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Selling the space
What screen owners need to reach ad buyers — a checklist
The case for small networks
Expert advice: How to deal with media buyers
Page 25
Chapter 5
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Research and results: The psychology of in-store media
Perception
Attention
Memory
Emotion, preference and liking
Page 35
Appendix
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Further reading
Sponsors:
About the sponsor
Advertising with Digital Signage
ADFLOW Networks offers a Web-hosted solution for the
deployment and operation of your digital signage and kiosk
networks and for online management of your digital media
supply chain. The ADFLOW Dynamic Messaging System is
perfect for private retail networks and public advertiser-paid
networks alike. Browser-based, it is secure, inexpensive,
highly scalable and quick and easy to deploy.
Digital Signage Today, operated by Louisville, Ky.-based
NetWorld Alliance, is the leading online publisher of
news and information on the emerging world of digital
signage, dynamic messaging and cutting-edge business
communication technologies. The content, which is
updated every business day and read by professionals
around the world, is provided free of charge to readers.
Published by NetWorld Alliance
© 2008 www.networldalliance.com
Written and edited by James Bickers, Digital Signage Today
Dick Good, CEO
Tom Harper, president and publisher
Bob Fincher, executive vice president and general manager, Technology Division
Joseph Grove, vice president and associate publisher
Introduction:
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
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Advertising with Digital Signage
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.
James Bickers,
contributing editor,
Digital Signage Today
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.
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Chapter 1:
The digital signage advertising model
A
s digital signage becomes
more and more of a powerful
force in the modern business
environment, companies continue to
look for ways to justify the cost. In
most cases, the advertising subsidy
solution is proposed often and early.
Some businesses are a better ﬁt for
this than others, and some are not
a good ﬁt at all. Luxury retailers, for
instance, usually will want to retain
complete control over the collateral
material used in their stores — that
means the only thing on their screens
will be their own content.
The use of ad space to pay some
or all of the cost of a given project
“With more interesting and relevant
is certainly nothing new; for as long
content, the customer is more
as there have been restaurants,
engaged with the content, which gives
there have been entrepreneurs
offering to print free menus in
the advertiser a unique opportunity to
exchange for a piece of real estate
develop loyalty surrounding their brand.
on the page in which to sell ads.
Ultimately, that means more sales.”
Sponsorship is a way of life, from
football stadiums to ATMs. So it is
— David Roscoe, ADFLOW Networks
no surprise that when a business
thinks about putting large, expenBut by and large, most retailers have
sive LCD or plasma displays in its
environment, it at least gives a cursoa lot to gain by exploring the adry thought to the notion of subletting
based digital signage model, as long
some of that precious screen space.
as their strategy is executed correctly.
Advertising can do more than subsidize costs. According to David
Roscoe, president of ADFLOW
Networks, advertisers can provide
entertainment and information for
customers. “With more interesting
and relevant content, the customer
is more engaged with the content,
which gives the advertiser a unique
opportunity to develop loyalty surrounding their brand. Ultimately, that
means more sales.”
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“The advertising-based model seems
to be a most natural ﬁt for retail,
where you can potentially track your
campaign performance from the
amount of dollars invested to the
sales volumes of the advertised product,” said Nurlan Urazbaev, director of
marketing for digital signage software
company BroadSign International.
“This potential is one of the reasons
why retail is the main driver of growth
in digital signage.”
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Chapter 1: The digital signage advertising model
Concourse leads the PATH to success
Located in Toronto, the PATH is considered to be
the world’s largest underground commuter shopping
complex. Every day, more than 100,000 people trek
through these halls.
The high trafﬁc volume provides a big opportunity
for the 1,200 shops and services located here. The
challenge is equally big — how does a retailer get a
customer’s attention as he hurries by on the way to
work or home?
ADFLOW Networks provided the answer. Working in
partnership with Concourse Media, digital screens
were placed in key locations throughout the complex.
Customized messages provided relevant, interesting
and engaging messages to potential customers while
they commuted, dined and browsed.
The reaction from both retailers and customers has
been overwhelmingly positive. According to Kevin
O’Shaughnessy, Concourse Media president, “ADFLOW provided us with an effective communication
tool that delivers for our advertisers, without a large
capital investment or heavy IT requirement.”
Case Study
One common concern raised is the possibility of
cannibalizing existing co-op funds — in other words,
will convincing brands to advertise on digital screens
just cause them to reduce the money they spend
elsewhere in the store?
According to June Eva Peoples, vice president of
business development for measurement software
company DS-IQ, the answer is “No.”
“Most of the CPG advertisers we work with bring new
dollars to the medium, often from a separate bucket
dedicated to experimentation with new media offerings,” she said. “P&G, Unilever, Hershey and others
have said publicly that they intend to expand the promotional money they spend in-store, reducing general
broadcast dollars. We expect that manufacturers will
bring a more rigorous cost-beneﬁt analysis to many areas of marketing, including media spend. This should
beneﬁt in-store networks, which are measurable and
have very attractive rate cards.”
The growth of in-store media comes at a time
when ad buyers are at a crossroads. Brands
are experimenting with new media of every
sort, looking for ways to staunch the bleeding
caused by PVRs, ad blockers and a general
consumer “tuning out” of traditional advertising.
“Media buyers are between a rock and a hard
place today,” said Brian Dusho of BroadSign
International. “They are increasingly pressured
by advertisers to research and buy new media,
but doing so means spending much more time
and effort for less revenue than buying TV, radio or print, which is fast and easy for them.”
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Digital signs are used to advertise on the PATH,
Toronto’s large underground mall.
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Chapter 1: The digital signage advertising model
Retailers are already in the business
of putting up signage, and changing
that signage regularly. Untold manhours are spent every week, worldwide, swapping out point-of-purchase
(POP) display ads and placards.
Much of the content on this static signage is advertising for products available in the store. Taking this signage
to the digital platform brings two new
beneﬁts: It removes the manual work
involved in swapping out content, and
it allows the retailer to get strategic
about how, where and when ad content is displayed.
“Ad-sponsored models work best for
businesses where advertising delivers an additional component of an
integrated customer experience,”
said Scott Hines, vice president of
SeeSaw Networks, which aggregates
in-store digital signs to make them
more attractive to media and ad buyers. “Let’s take video rental stores as
an example. As entertainment lovers
wait in line to rent their videos, digital
signage delivers trailers for movies
that are now available to rent, but
also movie trailer advertisements for
new movies. Contextually relevant
content and advertising improves the
experience of the waiting line, and
reinforces the overall experience of
watching movies.”
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Expert advice:
What do ad agencies want from
this buying experience — data
from previous campaigns?
Largest number of screens?
Speed of the buying process?
Most targeted nature of screens?
Wayne Ruttle, vice president of
sales for ADFLOW Networks:
Considering any new media is a risk
for most ad agencies. While many are
excited about trying something new,
they need reliable audience measurement to rationalize their recommendations. If you can provide solid
audience data, combined with the
unique creative opportunities digital
advertising provides, you’re well on
the way to making a sell. But remember — make it easy for them. Many
of the people working in agencies are
stretched to the limit. The process
has to be simple.
Bill Gerba, president, WireSpring
Technologies: No. 1, CPM (cost per
thousand). No. 2, CPM. As much as
it drives me crazy, there’s no talking
to these people in any language other
than CPM. Even buyers who have
been in the business for decades recognize that new measurement techniques offer the ability to micro-target
and determine ad efﬁcacy better than
ever before, but the simple fact is that
so-called “full-service” media planning/buying agencies simply aren’t
able to make media buys on digital
signs without jumping through a lot of
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What do ad agencies want?
corporate, legal and technical hoops.
Consequently, they’re still on the
sidelines watching the game most of
the time.
Rob Gorrie, president and founder,
AdCentricity: This is a simple one
— agencies want to know that when
they place a buy, it’s effective, efﬁcient and reaches the people that
they need to achieve for their campaign requirements. “Effectiveness” is
a medium decision. It relies on research in knowing that, if the medium
exists, the content is relevant and the
creative/advertising is well done, it
will impact those that consume it and
help to support the campaign objectives. “Efﬁcient” is a value decision.
It is an understanding that I’m going
to get bang for my buck by placing
my advertising in this medium over
another medium. “Reach” is an effort
decision. It’s an evaluation of how
much effort do I have to put into this
medium to get enough advertising
market penetration that it will actually
support my objectives and also, will
I really be speaking to the people I
want to be speaking to through these
venues.
After that, their main bone of contention is “stop making my life difﬁcult.”
Make their lives incredibly easy and
know what their objections are going
to be and have the answers. Understand their points of pain in having to
buy in this space.
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Expert advice: What do ad agencies want?
On the other hand, what are the
things their brand managers are
most often looking for?
Gerba: When presented with a potentially viable medium for presenting
their message, brand managers are
generally more pragmatic about making use of it than media buyers. Most
important to them is ensuring that
their brand will be presented in the
best possible light, closely followed
by cost-effectiveness and the practicality/logistics of making the project
happen.
media agencies in particular and the
brands need to learn how to buy “media” in a new way. There’s a learning
curve for them to catch up and adapt
to the new needs and strategies
required by the brands and it will take
some time for the pendulum to swing.
This is fairly true of all new media,
however.
Gorrie: As we all know, retail is
becoming more and more of a focus
for the large brand marketers. P&G
shifted $2 billion into the retail channel in general a few months ago,
which is a very large indication of
things to come. More impressive is
that both P&G and Coca-Cola have
realigned where retail media sits
within their organizations. In the past,
retail marketing was an afterthought
to be addressed after all of the “real”
media was bought and paid for and
which sat outside of the brand manager stable of tactics. Having worked
in the POP industry, it was always a
knee-jerk, reactionary buy.
The fundamental disconnect between
brands and media agencies with
regards to in-store media is a learning
curve. While brand managers have
been somewhat involved in retail
executions, the space is not core to
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Chapter 2:
Measuring the audience
R
etailers, banks, restaurants
and any other business that
deals with human beings in
person, at their location, always must
be aware of trafﬁc. Declining foot
trafﬁc is a harbinger of things to come
— ShopperTrak, which provides technology tools for measuring footfalls,
estimates that a steady decline in foot
trafﬁc over a given period will result in
decreased sales in about 13 months.
And being aware of decreases as
they happen allows the business to
move dynamically, enacting campaigns to bring more people into the
space.
Laura Davis-Taylor, president of
Retail Media Consulting, said three
primary types of tools do the actual
measuring of customer activity:
 Simple trafﬁc counters, such as
laser beams across the entrance
to a store
 Video recognition systems, camera-based technology that counts
the number of people that walk by
a certain space, if they stopped
and for how long, etc.
 Trafﬁc-tracking tools, ceiling-based
cameras that assign a unique
numerical ID to each customer that
enters the space, creating a log of
that customer’s activity in the store
(movement, dwell time, patterns).
That information can be turned into
“heat maps” that are accessible in
real time.
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While the basic trafﬁc counter is
limited to some very rudimentary
numbers, the other two options can
be extended to provide data on the
effectiveness of digital signage. Trafﬁc data from zones within a store featuring screens can be correlated with
POS data, to establish relationships.
If the tool is sophisticated enough, it
can track the effectiveness of individual campaigns on the screens — for
instance, did that video promo for
Oreos result in an increase in sales?
That POS data also can be analyzed
alongside play logs, allowing operators to see which digital assets had
the most effect on sales.
New technology on the horizon
Two new technologies are on the way
that promise an even greater focus
on speciﬁc customer data.
The two largest companies that track
consumer exposure to media and
marketing, Nielsen Media Research
and Arbitron, both have announced
services for measuring in-store
media, in addition to their traditional
radio and television ratings. In December 2006, Nielsen announced
its “follow the consumer” service
Nielsen In-Store, a joint venture with
the In-Store Marketing Institute. The
forthcoming service is built around a
measurement model called Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric
(PRISM), which aims to allow in-store
marketing effectiveness to be compared alongside traditional media.
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Chapter 2: Measuring the audience
Arbitron has scheduled rollout of its
Portable People Meter over the next
three years. The PPM is a pager-like
device that a program participant
wears throughout the day. The device, which will take the place of the
handwritten diaries that participants
usually ﬁll out and mail in, listens for
special identiﬁcation codes within
the audio portion of any given media
(a radio broadcast, for instance, or
a television commercial or in-store
promo). At the end of the day, the
participant places the device in a recharger/docking station, which sends
back to Arbitron complete data on
what media that person was exposed
to that day, and at what times.
or more people were within viewing
range) and a net impression (any
time a person demonstrates recall
of a message). Complicating matters further are alternate terms — “ad
view,” for instance, or “opportunity
to see,” commonly used in the U.K.,
both of which are synonymous with
“impression.”
Both companies continue to offer
more traditional, low-tech solutions
for trafﬁc measurement, such as exit
interviews and manual counting.
Making a good impression
Arguably the most important metric
for companies honing their in-store
media is the impression. Unfortunately, not everybody uses this term in the
same way.
In the simplest usage, an impression
occurs any time a message is displayed. Some companies require a
person to view the message in order
for it to count as an impression; and
some companies will make a distinction between a gross impression (any
time a message is displayed and one
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Other numbers that need to be
tracked include reach, or the number
of unique people who are exposed
to the message; and frequency, the
number of times each of those unique
people was exposed to the message
over a given period of time.
New advancements
in audience tracking
technology allow digital
signage providers to get
information about those
who look at screens.
Multiplying reach by frequency
creates a ﬁgure called the gross rating point, or GRP. “A GRP, as deﬁned
by Nielsen Media, is a percentage
point of the total audience size,” said
Bill Gerba, president of WireSpring
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Chapter 2: Measuring the audience
Technologies. “So, for example, in
most Nielsen research, which revolves around television advertising,
one GRP equals 1 percent of the total
number of TV-viewing households.”
Finally, there are proof-of-play statistics, which are created and managed
by the software running the digital
signage network. Nurlan Urazbaev
of BroadSign International called
proof-of-play numbers “the basis for
accountability in digital signage” and
a crucial component of an in-store
marketing program.
“In contrast to broadcast TV, a modern digital signage system should be
able to record every instance of an
ad displayed on each screen — the
player level is not enough,” he said.
“At the end of a campaign, a proof-ofplay report compares the number of
planned ‘ad plays’ — we call them ‘ad
repetitions’ — with the achieved ones.
Having these statistics, it is easy for
the ad sales department to show what
exactly advertisers paid for, reconcile
invoices, etc. Solid proof-of-play also
facilitates creating rate cards and
campaign planning and budgeting.”
“Providing proof-of-play is the price
of entry,” said David Roscoe, president of ADFLOW Networks. “Every
advertiser needs to know where their
message ran, when and how often
— and if there were variances according to planned. With the right
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content management solution, that
information is easily accessible. Most
agencies will ask to see reach and
frequency estimates, often broken
out by speciﬁc demographics, so you
should be prepared to provide those
as well.”
The beneﬁt to advertisers is that they
have a clear picture of when and
where their content was played. They
can analyze the data to determine the
effectiveness of the campaign and
ﬁne-tune the messaging, timing and
location to ensure the right message
is being delivered to the right audience at the right time.
“In contrast to broadcast TV,
a modern digital signage system
should be able to record every
instance of an ad displayed on
each screen — the player
level is not enough.”
— Nurlan Urazbaev, BroadSign International
The level of speciﬁcity provided by a
proof-of-play report (also referred to
as play log, billing log or performance
log) varies from one software package to another. Perhaps the most important distinction to note is whether
the software measures proof-of-play
at the player level or the screen level
— in other words, if the message
was sent to ﬁve screens, but one of
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Chapter 2: Measuring the audience
them was not functioning correctly, is
that counted as ﬁve ad plays or four?
Being able to measure proof-of-play
at the screen level — knowing, in this
example, that the screen was off, and
only four ad plays should be recorded
— is an attractive capability, and one
that will be especially important if the
screen deployer wants to court advertisers.
be programmed with a loop of ads for
seven or eight different brands. Some
software applications replace playlists
with a dynamic programmable loop,
where at the scheduling stage trafﬁc
managers enter instructions on how
to play each ad, and the software automatically generates a loop for every
screen, for every daypart at every
location.
Of playlists, loops and layers
Loop length is the amount of time
is takes for the loop to repeat — or,
put another way, the amount of time
it would take a customer to see the
same spot twice. Planning a loop
length requires knowledge of customer trafﬁc patterns and dwell times.
The length of the loop should be
proportionate to viewer dwell time,
in order to optimize the “opportunity
to see” each ad. The ﬁxed length of
the loop is maintained by insertions
of various default ﬁller content in the
slots that are not occupied by paid
ads.
One of the legacies of television and
radio broadcasting is the concept
of the playlist — a scheduled list of
media assets that are to be delivered
either at a certain date/time or in a
certain order.
The term playlist has migrated to the
world of digital signage, but different companies deﬁne it in different
ways. In some instances, it refers to
a full schedule of every ﬁle that will
be played at speciﬁed times; in other
usages, it refers to a dynamic set
of rules that chooses assets based
on criteria such as time of day (also
called “dayparts”), seasonal changes,
events and in-store promotions.
While classic broadcast playlists may
be used for digital signage programming, more and more often they
morph into the concept of a loop, or
the repetition of one or more media
assets in a systematic fashion. For
instance, a display in the clothing
section of a department store might
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Digital signage software also allows
for segmentation of the screen into
various regions — analogous, for
instance, to the crawling text across
CNN. Screens can be broken into
multiple segments for various purposes — for instance, it is common
to see a sliver of screen real estate
devoted to local weather conditions,
while the larger window runs promotional content and special offers crawl
across the bottom.
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Chapter 2: Measuring the audience
Expert advice
David Roscoe, president of ADFLOW Networks, on creating and managing content.
One of the biggest hurdles to overcome when you’re
selling to agencies is the challenge of creating and
managing content. It’s not enough to keep running the
same 30-second ads in a loop. And yet, most agencies and their partners don’t have the time to develop
customized digital content. The answer is to manage
everything for them by including content development
and management in your recommendation.
“Split-screen technology opens up opportunities to grab and hold the customers interest,” Roscoe said. “You
can feature news, entertainment and
promotions all on the same screen.
There’s always something new going
on to keep them engaged.
“The downside to this strategy is that
the message is diluted and the screen
becomes an information screen, not
an advertising screen,” he added.
“People can become trained to just
look at the time or the weather, not
the advertising. The trick to overcoming this in a zoned screen environment is to mix it up. Have the zoned
parts of the screen play advertising
as well as the news headlines. My
personal opinion is that it’s better
to have a full screen for all content.
Entertainment, weather and news
should be added as part of the playlist — full screen so the audience will
be watching a promotion while waiting
for the sports and news headlines.”
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You’re not just selling the technology behind digital
signage. You’re selling an idea — and that includes
content. Come up with creative ideas on programming, so it’s always fresh, interesting and addresses
their marketing objectives. And ﬁnd a way to manage
it for them, so they don’t have to worry about digging
around for new content on an ongoing basis.
“Many advertisers, however, insist
that their ads should always be
played on full screen, so the system should be capable of switching
from split screen to full screen when
required, if you want to satisfy those
clients,” said Brian Dusho, executive
vice president of BroadSign International.
One of the more sophisticated applications of digital signage involves
layering, in which bits of content can
be stacked on top of one another,
with speciﬁed degrees of transparency. For instance, if the same ad is
running in several markets but with
minor text differences, it could be built
with two layers — a text layer and
a graphics layer. The graphics layer
could stay the same in all markets,
with just the text changing locally,
reducing the amount of rendering
needed.
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Expert advice:
Scott Hines, vice president of
SeeSaw Networks, on the three
things ad buyers want from
out-of-home digital signage.
1. Extensive inventory. When media planners create digital signage campaigns on behalf of their
clients, they need to demonstrate
the efﬁcacy of the media buy in
terms of reaching the target audience. For example, if an advertiser
wants to reach college students,
the size of the on-campus network
is the starting point. However, it
only starts there. To effectively
reach this audience, advertisers
want the ability to create brand
ubiquity by reaching them offcampus as well, in venues like
bookstores, retail locations, coffee
shops, gas stations, restaurants
and others. And the extensiveness
of a network speaks to multiple
questions, including targeting, the
number of screens and the speed
of the buying process. The greater
the number of screens, the more
important targeting capabilities
are. The greater the number of
screens, the easier it is to create a
national advertising campaign with
impact. The greater the number of
screens and the different types of
screens within a single network,
the more streamlined the buying
process can be if provided by a
single provider.
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Things ad buyers want
2. Ease of planning, buying, measuring and optimization. With
the fragmentation that exists in the
marketplace today, media planners have more and more of a
difﬁcult time sorting through all of
the options to their clients. With an
estimated 700-plus ad-supported
digital signage networks, it is costprohibitive for a media agency to
understand the entire scope of
what is possible. In order for media
agencies to cost-effectively adopt
digital signage as a national media
platform, there is absolutely the
need for planning tools that make
the process fast and easy. Critical
to this is the need for a consistent
set of metrics across an extensive
inventory.
3. Engagement. The quality of the
digital signage network customer
experience is top of mind for media
planners when considering adding
digital signage as part of the media
mix. This means that the media
planner needs to be intimately
familiar with the attributes of the
network, the type of content, the
placement of screens and other
advertisers that might be running
on the network.
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Chapter 3:
Building an advertising network
O
nce a company has arrived
at the conclusion that it wants
to offer up advertising space
on its digital signs, step two becomes
forming a plan for where those screens
will reside, and how they will be connected to the ad-buying audience.
For most retailers, placement of
screens will be self-evident, but digital
signage offers advertising possibilities
far outside the retail walls. Virtually
any place people are asked to make
purchasing decisions — or any place
where later decisions might be psychologically inﬂuenced — can become a valuable media outlet.
In the case of Sitour USA, one of
those places is at ski resorts. The
three-year-old company has 110
screens in 45 resorts, at various locations throughout. President and CEO
Monte Rios said his value proposition
is that the screens are placed in locations that make strategic sense to the
advertiser.
“They present products and services
in a completely relevant environment,”
he said. “If you’re selling a coughand-cold remedy, wouldn’t you rather
put it before skiers who are right there
in the cold, getting the snifﬂes, than
when they’re home, comfortably in
front of the ﬁre?”
That line of reasoning hints at two
different kinds of in-store advertising
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content, product-driven and entertainment-driven. The former is trying to
get customers to purchase a speciﬁc
product while they’re in the environment, or buy more of a product; the
latter is trying to make the customer
happy, build a positive customer experience or deliver brand messaging
as part of a larger branding strategy.
“Consumers need to be engaged.
That means providing relevant,
interesting and fresh content. With
the proper software in place, you
can customize your messages on an
ongoing basis, so they’ll have more
impact and better results.”
— Wayne Ruttle, ADFLOW Networks
Whether it’s product- or entertainment-driven, content is everything.
Wayne Ruttle, vice president of sales
for ADFLOW Networks, knows how
important it is to get the message
right. “Consumers need to be engaged. That means providing relevant, interesting and fresh content.
With the proper software in place, you
can customize your messages on an
ongoing basis, so they’ll have more
impact and better results.”
When planning screen layout, a good
rule of thumb is to plan for productdriven content within the store, where
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Chapter 3: Building an advertising network
purchasing decisions are still being
made, and entertainment-driven content in places where there are fewer
decisions to be made (in line at the
check-out counter, for instance, or on
the way in or out of the store).
Software is an important consideration, as it is the backbone of
digital signage. Most digital signage
software has at least some basic
functionality for delivering third-party
advertising, but beyond the basics,
the functionality offered can differ
greatly. When researching software,
ﬁnd out if it can interface directly with
the ad buyer. Does it offer a Webbased interface where advertising
clients can schedule ads themselves?
Does it allow for robust scheduling
plans, based on a variety of factors
such as time of day, day of week and
even weather conditions? (Manufacturers of snow tires and 4x4 SUVs
might be willing to pay a premium to
run their ads during adverse weather,
for instance.)
Be sure to investigate the software’s
reporting capabilities. Proof-of-play
logs are essential tools for any network trying to sell ad space. Find out
whether the software records proof of
play at the server or at the screen —
if the central server delivered an ad
to the network but a certain number
of screens were disabled, how many
ad plays were counted? Have a plan
in mind for your needs and demands
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when shopping for software to ensure
you don’t run into major issues several months after deployment.
The bottom line? Do your homework.
Take the time up front to ensure that
the capabilities of your digital signage
network meet your needs. According
to Ruttle, a wide range of services are
available.
“Some networks just put your sign up
and disappear,” he said. “Others provide a complete range of services, so
it’s basically a plug-and-play operation — one that includes everything
from developing initial strategies to
monitoring content to supplying proof
of play. Understand what you’re getting before you commit.”
Content is king. But
the screen has to be
strategically placed to
maximize the content’s
effectiveness.
Aggregate networks
When the popularity of the Web ﬁrst
exploded, it was manageable for
advertisers to enter into deals with
individual sites to place banner ads.
But it wasn’t long before the proliferation of sites meant that some sort
of planning tool was needed, if Web
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Chapter 3: Building an advertising network
sites were going to make any money
from advertising.
Enter banner networks; later, enter
Google AdWords, which revolutionized the online advertising model.
It can be argued that the digital signage advertising model is at the place
the Web was, just prior to the arrival
of AdWords — a lot of separate networks, and a lot of buyers who would
purchase more ads if there was a
single source from which to do so.
As a result, a number of companies
are jockeying to be the leader in the
out-of-home (OOH) ad aggregation
business, tying together large numbers of screens and screen networks
and giving ad buyers a single interface to place ads across them all.
said Scott Hines, vice president of
SeeSaw. “The key is context — the
psychological impact on a consumer
getting the brand message in many
different contextual settings permeates the noise and builds awareness
and retention.”
Other companies are pulling together screen networks in an effort to
make them attractive to advertisers.
AdCentricity works with media buyers in a consultative fashion to help
them locate the screens that would
suit them best. Both NBC and CBS
have recently ventured into the OOH
advertising business, and there are
any number of small-to-medium “ad
rep” companies that build relationships with a certain range of networks
and resell space on those networks to
their clients.
The leader at the moment is SeeSaw
Networks, which aggregates screens
in 16,000 venues across the United
States. Ad buyers can log in through
a Web-based interface and plan a
campaign, one that stretches across
multiple locations with strategic focus.
So when should a retailer sign up
with an aggregator, and when should
he try to build up the company’s own
network and rep it directly to media
buyers? The answer is generally tied
to scale.
“Digital screens are popping up in all
the right places to reach people, carrying short, punchy brand messages
that reach potential customers while
they pump gasoline in the morning,
while they shop for groceries in the
afternoon and while they withdraw
money from an ATM in the evening,”
“For the majority of digital signage
network owners, it is only worthwhile to aggregate screens on your
own when you’ve already had some
success monetizing your existing
screens, and you want to use your
expertise to get to the next level
without spending a fortune to keep
building out your own network,” said
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Bill Gerba, president of WireSpring
Networks.
Rob Gorrie, president and founder
of AdCentricity, cautions against DIY
aggregation, simply because there’s
a lot more to it than meets the eye
— chieﬂy, the people who would be
buying the ads need more information
to make a buy.
buy, however, the better question is,
‘Is it the right buy for my organization and this particular campaign?’”
he asked. “Simply buying or selling
network media based on the type
of network it is, is not accountable
spending at the brand manager level.
You would never buy TV, Internet or
national magazine media in that
manner.”
“It would be relatively easy to call up
a number of networks and do a mass
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Expert advice:
What are the most effective types
of ads to attempt to sell?
Jason Cremins, chief executive,
remotemedia: Ad revenue for digital signage can be derived from two
main budgets, TV and outdoor/ambient. The biggest issue when trying to
tap into the larger TV budgets is that
digital signage is not TV — in most
cases, no one stops long enough to
watch a traditional TV advert. The
golden rule is “Moving images for still
people, and still images for moving
people.”
What’s the best way to go after
national ad buys, while still remaining friendly to local advertisers?
Bill Gerba, president, WireSpring
Technologies: If you have a big
enough network, go to one of the
few media buying agencies that have
some experience placing spots in
outdoor/out-of-home digital media.
If you have a smaller network, your
best bet right now is probably to join
one of the aggregators. If you already
have an in-house sales staff, they’re
best suited to handle venue-speciﬁc
placements, co-op style placements
and local ads. I still see far too many
ad-driven signage models that pay no
heed to local advertisers, and it just
doesn’t make sense. While a deal
with a major national might produce
more top-line revenue, it’s going to be
much harder to get, take much longer
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Most effective ad types
to close and probably generate less
on the bottom line than ads from local
or regional vendors.
Rob Gorrie, president and founder,
AdCentricity: I’m a ﬁrm believer in
the idea that 30 percent of the media
sold in this space will always be local. While I understand the concern
surrounding potentially cannibalizing
your own sales, I don’t believe it is
that difﬁcult to effect strategies to
maintain a good balance. National
and local require two very different
approaches and have fundamentally different needs. Identifying what
those needs are is the trick. Your
local Mazda dealer is going to have
very different hot buttons than your
national Mazda marketer or their
agency. It’s different for each industry, but if you can spend some time
understanding what those differences
are, you can develop approaches and
pricing strategies to support those
needs.
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Chapter 4:
Selling the space
T
he ad-buying business is very
different now than it was just a
few years ago. While this obviously has much to do with new media,
it is largely affected by one particular
innovation by one particular company:
Google’s search marketing.
“Media buyers have lately been under
pressure from advertisers to buy
media that provides more accountability and higher ROI than traditional
media,” Dusho said. “When Google
made their paid search marketing
model transparent and accountable
— you only pay for click-throughs to
your ad, not for impressions — both
media buyers and advertisers became
excited and comfortable with it and
started spending more money on it.”
“The No. 1 thing is audience,” said Bill
Gerba, president of WireSpring Technologies. “The ability to hit a certain
target demographic, and more importantly, a large number of individuals
in that demographic, is what media
planning and buying is all about.”
“The No. 1 thing is audience. The
ability to hit a certain target demographic, and more importantly, a
large number of individuals in that
demographic, is what media planning and buying is all about.”
— Bill Gerba, WireSpring Technologies
To that end, screen deployers that
want to court media buyers need to
spend some time and money doing
audience research, building a comprehensive proﬁle of who exactly will
be seeing the screens. That information needs to be distilled into a
compelling media kit that describes
the entire value proposition of the
screens at a glance. (See sidebar for
more on being prepared for dealing
with media buyers.)
What screen owners need to reach ad buyers — a checklist
 A compelling media kit, fully describing the audience
 Third-party audience measurement studies
 Campaign success stories
 A list of repeat advertisers
 A competitive rate card
 Accurate proof-of-play and proof-of-performance reports
— Nurlan Urazbaev, BroadSign
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Chapter 4: Selling the space
David Roscoe, president of ADFLOW
Networks, recommends doing as
much research up front as possible.
“Media buyers have enough challenges in understanding this new media
offering. What they need is enough
information for them to make an intelligent media-purchasing decision.
Make it easy for them. Demographics, target audience, type of locations,
trafﬁc, etc., are all part of the value
proposition media buyers use when
making media-purchasing decisions.”
some brand authority to the store,
and also primes customers to notice
Nabisco’s other products, which might
translate into incremental sales,” he
said.
For retailers, the potential client list is
obvious: brands that are already sold
in the store. However, this can create
an interesting dynamic when the retailer sells competing products — for
instance, a grocery store with its own
private label foods.
For instance, if a given chain sells
Nabisco cookies for a net margin of
ﬁve cents, but sells an equivalent
house-brand cookie with net margins
of 25 cents, it is in the chain’s best interest to emphasize the house brand.
On the surface, this would seem to
imply that courting Nabisco as an
advertiser would be a bad idea.
Not so, says Gerba.
“When you look at the Nabisco brand
as a whole and take into consideration all of the products under its umbrella, letting them advertise in store
makes more sense, since it lends
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Gerba said his company is seeing
retailers experiment with advertising packages — for instance, selling
a distributor space on an entire end
cap, which includes a screen, for a
period of time. That package might
include other types of in-store marketing — ﬂiers, for instance, or a display
at the store entrance — with one or
more screens included in the mix.
Screen owners need
to have an audience
identiﬁed in order to sell
ads to media buyers.
“Think about how you communicate
the total value delivered to advertisers when they place content on your
network,” said June Eva Peoples of
DS-IQ. “The audience, who are they?
What is relevant to them? How does
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Chapter 4: Selling the space
your audience reﬂect demographics
and behavior that might be valuable
to speciﬁc advertisers? Think about
how to include measurement services
that develop ongoing insight about
how your customers respond to
the network and speciﬁc kinds of
campaigns, so that advertisers are
buying more than eyeballs — they
are getting intelligent, behavior-based
targeting.”
The case for small networks
Hundreds of companies currently
are operating small-to-medium digital signage networks, many of them
focused around a particular niche
— health-care waiting rooms, for
instance, or elevators. These networks are often effective particularly
because of their focused nature, although they have a tougher time making in-roads with large advertisers.
But smaller networks can be a tough
sell for big advertising clients, who
are used to buying large numbers of
impressions.
“You have to understand that media
buyers spend the same amount of
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time to plan and place a buy with a
small group as a large group,” said
Laura Davis-Taylor of Retail Media
Consulting. “You must also understand that they’re working on very
small margins and are often stressed
and pressed for time. Yes, they want
to get to the right people, but sometimes they also want the most exposure that they can get.”
Even so, small networks are very attractive to brands trying to reach speciﬁc customers — for instance, the
manufacturer of ﬁshing gear would be
a natural ﬁt for an in-store network at
a sporting goods or outdoors store.
Smaller networks also can serve as
“test labs” for large brands. Peoples
said the regional Meijer grocery
chain, for instance, provides very
deep analytical research to its advertisers. The network consists of 176
stores, making it small compared to
nationwide chains such as Wal-Mart
and SuperValu, but that’s precisely
what makes it such a great place to
try out new campaigns, messages
and content.
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Expert advice:
How to deal with media buyers
Rob Gorrie, president and founder
of AdCentricity, weighs in on how
to deal with media buyers.
operators really do know their venues
and can help answer the questions
buyers have.
In my experience to date, other than
dayparting, media agencies want
very little to do with the nuts and bolts
of (digital signage) networks at this
point. It’s not their core job and, quite
frankly, is not something they should
need to think about. They want to
have conﬁdence that the network
understands their audience in the
venues and has set their priorities
to ensuring that the loops match the
dwell times and the ad spot lengths
are attuned to the receptiveness of
the viewer in the environment.
Dayparting is of interest, most deﬁnitely, but for most buyers, it’s much
too early to get to this level of granularity without more understanding
or an easy way to actually execute
against it en masse. Most buyers I’ve
spoken to want to know it’s possible
so that it can be used in the future
if desired but don’t have the time to
manually get to this level yet.
I always use the magazine industry
as a comparison when I’m explaining
this. A media buyer will never ask a
magazine owner to let them change
the number of pages in their magazine. They have to trust that the magazine owners know their audience
and create valuable and relevant
content with the right mix of ads and
the right length so that people stay
engaged through the reading experience. We, as an industry, need to get
to the same point of maturation — a
level of trust needs to be placed in
the people who operate the medium.
Unfortunately, we’re not quite there
yet, but a lot of learning has been
done and more media professionals
are coming into the business, which
is adding to the comfort level that the
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Chapter 5:
Research and results:
The psychology of in-store media
Editor’s note: This chapter is excerpted from
“Digital Signage Networks: Theory, Psychology and Strategy” by Pixel Inspiration, and
reprinted by kind permission.
Part 1: Perception
W
Because of issues around photo
receptor spacing (density), sensitivity
and placement, signs that use a great
deal of blue tend to be harder to read,
particularly if the blue is on a black
background or if it is viewed at night.
hen information is presented on a display, the
most basic level at which
psychological factors will come into
play is at the level of perception. If
the information cannot be seen or
heard, then it will have no chance
whatsoever to inﬂuence behavior.
Thus, as a gatekeeper of sorts, the
human perceptual systems will ﬁlter
out certain bits of information and
highlight others. Within the area of
visual perception, some of the most
relevant aspects of a visual display
are color, form and motion.
Color
While much is known about the physics of color and light, it was not until
the middle of the 20th century that
great advances were made in our
understanding of color perception.
We now know that there is a vast array of color receptors (cones) lining
the back of the eye (the retina). Each
cone is sensitive to a relatively limited
range of wavelengths of light. In most
humans, there are three primary
sensitivity ranges — one “red” range,
one “green” range and one “blue”
range.
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A lot more goes into
Beyond these basic issues of visibilretail content than just
dynamics.
Consider the
ity, relatively little has been done in
basics of art: color, form,
the proper scientiﬁc literature about
perception, etc.
the psychological impact of colors.
Courtesy of BroadSign
International
Early studies found broad generalities
such as: Men prefer yellow and blue
colors (St. George, 1938) or women
prefer red and green (McInnis &
Shearer, 1964).
The following lists are based on a
compilation from several sources.
The ﬁrst of these summarizes the
broad psychological effects or connotations of different colors:
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Chapter 5: Research and results: The psychology of in-store media
• Blue: trust, loyalty, water, relaxing,
power, dignity, calmness, serenity
• Children prefer bright shades and
tints (particularly reds and yellows)
• Yellow: energy, joy, light, hope,
cheerfulness, warmth, novelty
• Older people have difﬁculty distinguishing colors that differ primarily
in terms of their blue-content (e.g.,
red/purple, turquoise/green, blue/
gray, blue/white)
• Pink: calming, feminine
• Green: life, growth, money, jealousy, nature, fertility, freshness,
youth
• Purple: richness, power, love,
sophistication
• Brown: credibility, stability
• White: purity, cleanliness,
innocence
• Red: heat, passion, danger, power
(most attention-grabbing)
• Bright colors: positive emotional
associations
• Dark colors: negative emotional
associations
In addition to these psychological
connotations, several generalities and
recommendations regarding colors
are presented in the following summary:
• Blue is the most widely preferred
color among all European age
groups
• Men prefer deep shades of color,
while women tend to prefer lighter
tints
• Women respond more positively to
bright colors and more negatively
to dark ones
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• Older people tend to see all colors
more dimly — thus many colors
will be seen as “dull” (for example,
a dim yellow may appear brownish)
Regarding readability:
• Avoid pure blues on black background
• Avoid pure colors on top of other
colors which have the same brightness (luminance)
• Bright backgrounds (e.g., white or
yellow) with dark letters (black or
blue) make a sign optimally readable.
Form
Information presented on a digital display device often will consist
of shapes, texts and other “forms”
(more generally put). Thus, an understanding of these issues is relevant
for digital signage content creation.
Within the scientiﬁc literature, most
research about form has been aimed
at understanding such issues as form
perception and grouping. Within the
nonacademic literature, numerous
observational data have been pre-
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Chapter 5: Research and results: The psychology of in-store media
sented. The ﬁndings most relevant for
digital sign networks are presented
below.
Font issues. Although much of the
research has been informal and not
truly scientiﬁc, the advance of the Internet and human computer interface
(HCI) work has led to a great deal of
informal recommendations around
fonts. The following tables, drawn
from numerous sources online and ofﬂine, summarize some of the relevant
ﬁndings.
Psychological impact of the fonts
themselves:
• Thin fonts: spirituality, simplicity,
honor
• Thick fonts: materialism, self-conﬁdence, strong-willed, dominant
• Even spacing: reliability, toughness
• Rounded fonts: sensual, playful,
effervescent
• Compressed fonts: exclusiveness,
reserved, intense
• Large fonts: friendliness, fun,
friendly
Psychological impact of slants in lines
of text:
• Upward slant: exuberance, enthusiasm, innovation, ambition
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• Downward slant: melancholy, intense, sadness, worry
• Backward slant: reticence, cold,
hesitant, careful
• Forward slant: ambition, speed,
emotional extremes
• Right slants: generosity,
self-sacriﬁce, nervousness
• Multiple slants: tension, conﬂict,
moodiness, unreliability
Shape issues. Unlike font research
— which has progressed rapidly via
experimentation and trial-and-error
(e.g., on the Internet), an understanding of the psychological impact of
different shapes is still almost entirely
ad hoc in nature. The list of generalities (presented below) might serve to
offer some broad guidance.
Psychological impact of the shapes:
• Circles: community, connections,
movement, safety, wholeness
• Rectangles: solid, secure, whole
• Triangle: exciting, powerful, aggressive
Motion
Motion perception is one of the most
basic features of any visual system.
For example, while it is possible to
ﬁnd creatures with visual systems
lacking color perception or depth
perception, to date no visual system
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Chapter 5: Research and results: The psychology of in-store media
lacks motion perception. This is likely
because of the valuable information
buried in motion perception. Motion
can alert us to dangers in our environment, can help distinguish a ﬁgure
from its background (camouﬂage) and
can help perceive depth. Because
of its evolutionary value, motion also
has the ability to capture attention.
Intuitively, it seems that a moving target serves to capture attention. However, recent research (Abrams and
Christ, 2003) has suggested that motion per se does not capture attention
— instead, it is the onset or appearance of motion that actually captures
attention. For example, these authors
found that moving items were no
more attended that static ones. But,
items that recently started to move
captured attention. This suggests
that content creators should be less
concerned with motion per se and
instead spend time considering how
to have a great deal of motion onsets.
In fact, this suggests that too much
motion actually can be a bad thing (in
terms of attention capture).
Part 2: Attention
Although everyone knows (intuitively)
what attention is, after 50 years of intense research its deﬁnition and properties still remain much of a mystery.
Several of the most relevant aspects
of attention are presented below.
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Capture of attention
As discussed above, the appearance
of motion can capture one’s attention.
Surprisingly, recent research (Franconeri, Hollingworth and Simons, 2005)
has suggested that the appearance of
a new object is not sufﬁcient to capture attention. Other work (Nakayama
& Mackeben, 1989; Kristjansson,
Mackeben & Nakayama, 2001) shows
that ﬂashing/ﬂickering images are not
successful at capturing attention for
extended periods — and that such
ﬂicker can be relatively well ﬁltered
out. Dozens of other studies have
revealed other aspects of attentional
capture. The following table summarizes the aspects of attentional capture most relevant for digital signage.
Attention can be captured by:
• Motion onset
• Luminance/brightness changes
• Color changes (only if dramatic)
• Faces — particularly emotional,
famous or relevant ones
• Unique things (e.g., a red thing on
a ﬁeld of green things)
• “Task-relevant” things (e.g., if looking for a teapot, silver items will
capture attention)
• “Resonant” items (emotionally,
task-wise, etc.)
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When creating content for digital signage, a company ﬁrst should decide
whether it wishes to capture attention.
In some cases, for example when
creating ambiance, it might be desirable to remain “un-attended.” If attentional capture is desired, the speciﬁc
goal of that capture also should be
considered. For example, if the goal
is to warn the viewers, then any “trick”
might sufﬁce to capture attention.
However, if the goal is to perform
a gentle soft-sell (or provide a reminder), then a subtle attentional
capture might be more appropriate.
Of course, the overall artistic/creative nature of the content also must
constrain or indeed develop from the
choice of technique.
Time perception and attention
Recent research has shown that
attention and time perception are intimately linked (Tse, Rivest, Intrilligator
and Cavanagh, 2004). For example, if
an event (e.g., an image on a display
screen) captures one’s attention, then
that event will seem to last longer. At
the same time that the visual event
“slows down,” the rest of one’s surroundings will seem to “speed up.”
This is likely related to the ﬁnding that
digital signage networks decrease
perceived wait time: the on-screen
activity makes screen-time slow down
while world-time speeds up.
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Part 3: Memory
Whether a digital signage network
is used to advertise, brand, create
moods, build loyalty or merely inform,
the ability to get information into the
memory of people who see a display device — and have information
“pulled” from memory — is critical for
success. If digital signage content
cannot create memories (or cause
memories to come to the surface),
Whether a digital signage network
is used to advertise, brand, create
moods, build loyalty or merely
inform, the ability to get information into the memory of people
who see a display device — and
have information “pulled” from
memory — is critical for success.
then the content will be merely wasted energy. Memory is one area of
psychological research where literally thousands of studies have been
done. This massive body of literature
is difﬁcult to synthesize and present.
In addition, translating the ﬁndings
into terms that make them relevant
to digital signage presents another
challenge. To organize some of this
information and present it in a way
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that can guide digital signage content
creation, we have decided to make
the primary “cut” of this space along
the lines of different types of memories.
Types of memory
Hundreds of experiments over the
past 40 years have conﬁrmed that
there are different forms of memory.
In fact, not only are these different
forms subjectively different, much research has shown that they even rely
on different brain areas.
The different forms of memory can be
classiﬁed in several ways.
Implicit vs. explicit. Some memories are “explicit” in the sense that
the content of the memory is readily
accessible to conscious awareness.
Other memories are “implicit” meaning that, although they clearly have
some inﬂuence on behaviors and
beliefs, they are not really accessible
to consciousness. This implicit/explicit
division is found in many areas of
cognition and emotion.
For example, psychologists talk about
“implicit and explicit motives,” “implicit
and explicit attitudes” and “implicit
and explicit desires.” When crafting
digital signage content, it is important
to consider all these different implicit/
explicit factors.
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Episodic vs. semantic. Some memories are retained in a more imagelike format and others are retained
in a more fact-like format. The image-like memories are called “episodic” memories, because they are
like watching an episode take place.
Fact-like memories are called “semantic” memories, because they are
often thought to be word-like. Within
the context of digital signage strategy, it is often important to consider
the memory-type of interest. Whether
the goal is to create a memory (for
later use) or retrieve a memory (e.g.,
to help change behaviors now), the
speciﬁc type is very important.
In general, the presentation of information in the same format as the
memory format of interest is the best
strategy to create/elicit memories. In
other words, if an episodic memory is
of interest, presentation of visual information is more appropriate. On the
other hand, if semantic memories are
of interest, verbal information is likely
to be more effective. For example, if a
digital signage network is advertising
a holiday package, clearly the memory/image most relevant will be episodic in nature, whereas information
aimed at a public service message or
Web site advertisement may aim for a
semantic memory.
Long-term, short-term, working.
Different memory systems have different time-courses based on their
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overall purpose. Broadly speaking,
memory that lasts more than a few
seconds is considered long-term
memory. Memories of childhood,
your shopping list, things you desire,
your favorite bands, what you need
to make a cake and much more sit
within long-term memory. It is this
long-term memory that most digital
signage content is aimed at in one
way or another.
In some cases, the content is intended to place something into long-term
memory (“Tesco is value”). In others,
it is meant to modify something already within memory (“BT Broadband
— now more reliable than ever”). And
in others, it is intended to help the observer pull something out of memory.
The “stuff” that gets into long-term
memory will originate in a short-term
or working memory system. This
working memory system likely originated as a type of blackboard system
where information required to meet
one’s immediate needs was temporarily retained.
The actual way that something moves
from working memory into long-term
memory remains a mystery. However,
it is clear that certain types of information have a far greater chance of
making it into the long-term memory
system. The box at right presents a
list of these speciﬁc features. In the
context of digital signage media, it
is important to try and “hit” as many
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Memorable information is:
• Relevant
• Emotional
• Multi-sensory
• Varied
• Attention-grabbing
• Credible
• Timely
• Repeated
• Engaging
of these aspects as possible. Importantly, these should be kept in mind
whether one is trying to create new
memories or (as is often the goal)
call up already existing memories (for
example, to modify them, use them to
create new memories, draw attention
to something or change behavior).
Part 4: Emotion, preference and
liking
It is well established in the psychological literature that events that trigger emotional response are encoded
more easily and more deeply within
memory. Of course, one goal of digital
signage is to make information more
memorable. Given this, those crafting
digital signage content are well-advised to understand the role of emotion in memory formation. Additionally,
some is known about automatic
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emotion generation and creation. We
ﬁrst turn our attention to these automatic effects and subsequently look
at the interaction between emotion/
mood and memory.
Mere exposure effect
“Mere exposure effect” refers to the
phenomenon that mere exposure to
an image produces increased liking,
even when one is not consciously
aware of that exposure. Zajonc and
colleagues (Zajonc, 1968) demonstrated this phenomenon in numerous
experiments. In such an experiment,
the testers would repeatedly expose
people to a random word or image.
But the exposure was entirely passive and was so brief (less than 25
milliseconds) that it never reached
conscious awareness — in other
words, it was subliminal. After such
exposures, the testers would typically
ﬁnd an unexpected preference for the
previously presented items.
There are two popular explanations
for this phenomenon. First, it might be
due to a form of associative learning,
whereby things that are experienced
without any concurrent negative
consequences become more liked.
A more likely explanation is that prior
perceptual experience allows an automatic “ﬂuency” in neural processing
— when the object is subsequently
encountered, it is more easily processed and thus perceived (perhaps
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subconsciously again) as somehow
familiar. Such familiarity is then associated with liking.
Although this phenomenon is well
established, a series of recent studies
reveals a possible “dark side” to the
mere exposure effect — namely, in
many cases, a “mere exposure” can
actually lead to a dislike of an object.
We discuss this next.
Distracter devaluation effect
In the classic mere-exposure literature, little mention was ever made of
attention or task-demands. This is
likely because in most early studies
there was no talk whatsoever — that
is, the exposure was passive. However, it turns out that having a task
at hand adds a new wrinkle to the
mere exposure effect. Speciﬁcally,
if the task is such that the “merely
exposed” item actually interferes with
the performance of the task, then that
term will subsequently become devalued (i.e., disliked). Hence the name
— distracter devaluation effect.
Peak-end effects
An additional phenomenon worth
mentioning is the peak-end effect.
When one is experiencing an event,
it turns out that your retrospective
assessment of that event will be
weighed particularly heavily by the
peak emotion experienced and the
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end emotion experienced. Similar effects are likely true for other aspects
of cognition as well — for example,
phenomena such as memory for
events, afﬁliations with objects and
overall preferences will be heavily
weighed by the peak and end effects.
Thus, in the context of digital signage,
these results suggest that it might be
sensible to have a digital screen near
the exit — visible as the last (“end”)
experience in the venue. Such a
screen could, for example, be used to
create a warm parting experience.
Emotion and memory
In general, psychologists have used
several different approaches to study
the emotional impact of events on
memory. One has been to ask respondents to recall what happened
to them on emotionally charged days
(e.g., the day Kennedy was assassinated or 9/11). A second approach
has been to show people short videos (usually of crimes) and to ask
them later to report events as they
occurred in the video. Experiments
using such approaches have generated abundant evidence showing that
emotional states at encoding appear
to enhance memory.
Studies clearly show that emotional
memories (at both encoding and
retrieval) are indeed special: They are
associated with distinct brain areas
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and processing routes not obviously
used when information is non-emotional. Thus, in the context of digital
signage, creating emotionally compelling content is one way to improve
memory and increase motivation.
Congruency effects
Although emotion improves memory,
the story is slightly more complicated.
Psychologists have found that information that is congruent with (related
to or supportive of) a person’s current
emotional state is encoded and retrieved better than incongruent information. For example, when a person
is in a negative mood, he is more
likely to encode negative information
and events. Similarly, current mood
affects how we recall past events.
Thus, people have a bias toward
recollecting facts and events that are
congruent with the way they feel at
the time of recall.
Such congruency effects are found
in other aspects of experience. For
example, a great deal of research has
shown that learning and memory in
general are subject to strong congruency effects. Performance on an
academic test will tend to be better
if study took place within an environment similar to that of testing.
One must take all forms of congruency effects into consideration when
creating content for digital signs. For
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Chapter 5: Research and results: The psychology of in-store media
example, if the place or product is
related to a particular mood, then this
mood should be echoed in the content. Similarly, if one hopes to remind
a customer of a need or desire, then
the content should promote recall of
this fact — for example, by depicting
scenes that can trigger this memory
or emotional state.
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Appendix:
Further reading
The psychology of digital
signage
By David Drain, executive director of
the Digital Signage Association
This article originally appeared on Digital
Signage Today on Nov. 27, 2007.
A
t the recent In-Store Marketing Expo, I attended a session
called “Measuring and Continuously Improving Digital Sign Network
ROI.” The presenters were Brian
Brooks and Kelly Canavan of 3M.
Brooks, with Ph.D.s in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, has taken
his knowledge of how the brain works
and applied it to measuring the effectiveness of digital signage. To make
his case, Brooks laid the groundwork
by reporting on experiments that were
done to measure what is going on at
the brain level as it relates to branding.
In a taste test, consumers were asked
to describe the Coke or Pepsi they
were given versus a “generic” brand.
What they discovered is that the taste
testers thought that the Coke or Pepsi
tasted better than the generic brand
even though in fact the “generic”
was really Coke or Pepsi. “Branding
doesn’t just change our emotional
experience, but literally our physical
reaction,” he said.
Brooks and 3M claim to have developed a method, using “vision science
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technologies,” to engineer a physical
environment to achieve the desired
results. In other words, 3M says it
can take what it has learned in the
lab — with humans wearing special
goggles detecting eye movement
— and apply it to real environments
without humans and goggles.
As an example, Brooks showed a
picture of a typical big box store and,
with numbers, showed the ﬁrst four
places the eyes would look — in this
case, to a static sign on a table, then
on to other static signage. The next
picture showed the same scene, only
this time a digital sign was added.
Since the digital sign had a brown
color on the page, the eye traveled to
other places ﬁrst and the digital sign
last. But once the color on the digital
sign was changed to yellow, the eye
went to the sign ﬁrst.
As Brooks explained the science,
Canavan would interject or interpret
how it was relevant to the business
world. When we walk into a store, “it’s
not that we’re trying to decide what to
look at, we’re trying to decide what to
ignore,” explained Canavan.
Canavan went on to present case
studies of hotel and foodservice
environments which beneﬁted from
the implementation of digital signage.
In the ﬁrst pilot, a hotel was looking
to increase sales at its restaurants.
Sales increased 15 to 35 percent per
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Appendix: Further reading
day when digital signage content was
used to promote the restaurants.
In the second pilot, the objective was
to drive foot trafﬁc to a speciﬁc station
in a corporate cafeteria. When that
station and a particular product were
featured on digital signs, 27.8 percent
more consumers went to the desired
station and sales of the featured
product increased ﬁve times.
With these vision science principles
and tools, 3M asserts you can determine the best sign location and
creative content for those screens.
By conducting experiments in the
ﬁeld and analyzing the data, Canavan contends, you can determine the
cause-and-effect relationships and
make methodical adjustments for
improvement.
We all know there’s an art to effective marketing, but now there’s a little
more science to it.
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Appendix: Further reading
The battle of the pump-top
displays
By James Bickers, editor
This article originally appeared on Digital
Signage Today on July 23, 2007.
P
ay-at-the-pump technology
turns 20 years old this year,
and it has been a success
by anybody’s standards. In 1994,
13 percent of c-stores offered the
time-saver; today, that number has
risen to 93 percent.
But perhaps it has worked a little too
well. Margins on gasoline are razorthin, compared to the higher proﬁts
made on items sold in the store. And
pay-at-the-pump has meant a drastic
decrease in store trafﬁc. Andre van
der Velk owns four c-stores in California, two independent and two Shell;
he said two-thirds of his gasoline customers never set foot in his stores.
“There is a constant drive for the operator to get people to come into the
store and buy,” he said.
That drive has been the motivation
for traditional pump-toppers — static
signs advertising in-store specials —
and is now the force behind a number
of companies building digital signage
networks at gas station islands.
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Pay-at-the-pump a ‘necessary evil’
In May 2007, USA Today published a
list of the top 25 “Eureka moments” of
the last quarter-century, the 25 inventions that have had the most profound
impact on consumer behavior. On a
list made up of world-shaking inventions such as the laptop, the cell
phone and the debit card, pay-at-thepump ranked No. 9.
“Pay-at-the-pump is essential for
anyone who sells speed, and virtually
all convenience stores do,” said Jeff
Lenard, director of communications
for the National Association of Convenience Stores. “Some may call it a
necessary evil, but it is necessary.”
Several companies are trying to turn
this necessary evil into a proﬁt center by installing digital screens at the
pump, and using those screens to
display promotions for in-store items,
mixed in with entertainment and news
content.
Founded in 2006, Michigan-based
Gas Station TV (GSTV) quickly
landed a contract to be the exclusive
screen provider for Murphy Oil. So
far, the company has placed about
1,000 screens at c-stores in Atlanta,
Dallas and Houston. GSTV chief executive David Leider said the screens
feature national content from ABC,
mixed in with original GSTV content
that takes aim at local interests.
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Appendix: Further reading
The screens are provided to the
c-store owner at no charge; GSTV
pays the bills by selling ad space to
national accounts such as Chevrolet,
Progressive Insurance, Dodge, 1800-Flowers and Quicken Loans. The
network is managed by GSTV and
runs Scala’s InfoChannel software.
PumpMedia, which won the exclusive
contract for Chevron’s video at the
pump program, uses a similar business model and value proposition,
with one difference: C-store operators can opt to pay for the screens
and eliminate the outside advertising.
Under the ad-subsidized model, the
storeowner gets 75 percent of the
screen’s loop time, and PumpMedia
sells ads on the other 25 percent.
Peter Tawil, president of PumpMedia,
said the idea for his company came
to him in 1999, when he was working
in television advertising. While fueling his car one day, he heard audio
advertisements for in-store products
and services being played over the
station’s loudspeaker.
“The guy had a shoe shine inside, a
magazine rack, a small restaurant,”
he said. “He had it all going, and he
was smart — he was promoting all of
his products inside the store. When
I heard that, I thought, ‘OK, that’s
smart, but if you can do it with audio,
wouldn’t it be more powerful if it had
video attached to it?’”
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Larger companies are getting in on
the action, too. Daktronics is part
owner of Fuelcast Network, a joint
effort with VST International to get
digital signage onto self-service gas
pumps, and Westinghouse recently
announced an exclusive arrangement
with AdtekMedia to provide technology for that company’s PumpTop TV
program.
‘They will take any ad that they
can’
Pump-top digital signage is still in
its infancy, still at the stage where
there are any number of small players
trying to eke out an existence selling screens and ad space on them.
Ken Goldberg, chief executive of
Real Digital Media (which, along with
Avocent, supplies the technology for
PumpMedia), said he recently took
some c-store clients on a road trip to
survey the competitor’s landscape.
They found three different regional
pump-top networks, each with their
own proprietary hardware set-up and
content strategy.
“The content that (the clients) saw
was not in line with what they wanted
their customer to see,” he said. “One
of the ads was a preacher talking
about a local church — they certainly
don’t want religious messages coming out of the pumps.”
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Appendix: Further reading
On one of the screens, they spied an
ad for the pizza restaurant down the
street — a direct competitor from the
pizzeria inside the c-store.
“They will take any ad that they can,
including Rev. Billy Bob and cheap
pizza,” Goldberg said. “And there are
a lot of them. You might put 10 bucks
in your gas tank and you’ll see three
ads.”
All of which hints at a market that is
ripe for consolidation. Clearly, there is
great potential in using digital signage
at the pump, but widespread adoption
— particularly by large chains associated with big-name brands — will
require a uniformity of experience and
a heightened understanding of how to
handle brand assets.
“In an old-fashioned way, this is what
the industry has been doing with
pump-toppers since the 1970s,” said
van der Valk. “This is just a technology advancement of the old pumptopper. The only reason it is taking
so long is that the oil industry is very
protective of what they put above
their logo.”
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Appendix: Further reading
Managing digital signage
content
By James Bickers, editor
This article is an excerpt from “Content and
Content Management for Digital Signage,” a
free how-to guide from Digital Signage Today.
O
pinions are sharply divided
on whether it is a good idea
to divide the screen real
estate on a digital signage network.
Of course, there are those networks
whose entire business model is built
on the segmented screen — for
instance, captive audience networks
such as those in elevators or airports
that sell ad space around and alongside streaming media content such as
news and entertainment.
But aside from those very speciﬁc
models, it is sometimes wise to segment screens into different “regions”
or “zones,” each with a speciﬁc purpose. Doing so wisely requires more
than a little restraint, as well as a
concerted focus on what is in the best
interest of the viewer.
Here are six “best practices” for dividing screen real estate:
Go with the ﬂow. The screen as a
whole should suggest a logical “ﬂow”
— that is, viewers should intuitively
be able to tell where they should look
ﬁrst, what they should look at next,
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etc. Generally, this is accomplished
by making the content that is of greatest value to the viewer the largest. If
a recipe is sharing screen time with
an ad for a speciﬁc food product featured in that recipe, the recipe itself
should get the majority of the screen
space. Otherwise, the consumer will
subconsciously register the entire
screen as an ad, and is more likely to
ignore it.
Keep it consistent with your brand.
On-screen content should be consistent with all other messaging in the
enterprise. This begins with simple
things such as color schemes and
fonts, and extends into more esoteric
matters such as the size of design
elements, relative positioning of
type and images and visual styles. It
doesn’t matter whether your content
is created in-house or by an external
agency; in-store digital media needs
to be added to the list of products
managed by your creative team, and
that same team should be involved
in meetings to decide how to allocate
screen space.
Make smart use of contrast, color
and size. Human eyes always will
land on the largest, brightest item
in any given ﬁeld — use this as a
way to guide the viewer around the
screen. If you are using scrolling text
for ancillary messaging, don’t make
that text larger or brighter than the
message that needs to get the pri-
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Appendix: Further reading
mary focus. Minimize the attention
given to information that people will
seek out when they need it, such as
weather conditions or news updates.
And again, use color schemes that
reﬂect the rest of your branding — if
your brochures and static signage
have trained people to know that
your headline text is in beige type on
a light yellow background, use the
same pairing on-screen to create a
psychological connection with other
messages.
ing a visually sophisticated message,
with lots of sidebars and graphs and
scrolling numbers. If you’re trying to
tell your viewers how to make delicious chicken skewers that the family will love in just a few minutes, the
situation calls for a much simpler approach — perhaps just a single large
window with a video demonstration.
Understand motion and how it
affects viewers. If something is moving or changing, our eyes are naturally drawn to it. You can use this to your
advantage, or you can allow it to become a liability. If animation or motion
are going to be used, make sure they
are most prominent in the area of the
screen that deserves primary focus.
Too much movement elsewhere on
the screen will distract from the message, if not cause the viewer to give
up in frustration and look away. And
keep in mind that viewers hate unnecessary or gimmicky movement and
effects — overly cute transitions, tickers that move too quickly and blinking
text should all be avoided.
Eschew gratuitous information.
It’s a great time to be in the business
of delivering content, because there
is so much of it out there. Weather
tickers? You bet. Sports scores,
updated by the minute? Headline
news? Latest blog posts on any given
topic? Viral videos? User-generated
content? It’s all there for the taking,
but just because you can put something on your screens does not mean
you should. Take a step back from the
entire endeavor, and remind yourself
what it is you are trying to communicate. Phrase it in the simplest terms
possible (“I’m trying to tell people
about XYZ new product,” “I’m trying
to get people to go to the bank counter at the front of the store,” “I’m trying
to increase sales of house brands.”).
Now, what content do you truly need
to convey that message?
Keep it simple — but only if it
needs to be. If you are trying to tell
your viewers about the movements
of the NASDAQ, updated every 10
minutes, you’re going to be present-
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Understand the level of depth of your
content, and plan a visual strategy
accordingly.
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Appendix: Further reading
Give the people what they want —
building a content strategy based
on customer expectations
Human beings enter into virtually
everything they do with one or more
expectations, and when those expectations are met, they feel happiness.
When their expectations are not met,
they feel any number of negative
emotions — disappointment, betrayal,
anger, frustration.
Imagine picking up a glass ﬁlled with
iced tea and taking a drink — only to
ﬁnd out that it actually contains soda.
The immediate visceral reaction is a
negative one, as if the drink tastes
bad.
It does not, in fact, taste bad — it’s
just not what you were expecting,
and your subconscious threw an alert
at you, saying “Something is wrong
here.” In fact, you like soda, and a
moment later you take another sip,
and this one tastes much better. The
liquid did not change; your expectations did.
Customers entering your space will
have expectations about the experience they think they are about to
have; the same is true of each individual aspect of the experience as
a whole. If you serve coffee, it had
better be good coffee; if you have
shopping carts, the wheels had better
not stick; if you hire “customer service
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representatives,” they had better give
good customer service.
When customers look at a digital sign
in your place of business, they are
likely expecting one of two things:
information that is directly related to
their relationship with you (marketing-driven messages, product promotions, etc.) and information that is not
(weather, news, community events,
etc.). Critical to the success of a digital signage network is delivering the
information customers expect, when
and where they expect it.
For instance, do subway commuters
looking at a screen want to see information about what is on sale at the
nearby grocery store? Probably not,
even though they might ﬁnd that information valuable at a later time. They
more likely would appreciate weather
information, since they are about to
step out into the world where weather
will directly affect them.
“Customers walking in a shopping
mall will not stop or even slow down
to watch an advertorial,” said Anke
Gill, director of marketing for 1-21VIEW Corporation. “These customers want quick and relevant information that can be digested in a short
period of time. Customers sitting in
a doctor’s waiting room or in a bank,
however, expect something very different from digital signage — they
want to be entertained so that their
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Appendix: Further reading
waiting time is perceived to be shortened. The content emphasis here
should be on longer content segments with high entertainment value.”
“Shoppers want to be entertained
and informed, not just advertised to,”
said Tony Turiello, group manager for
Panasonic System Solutions Company. “Don’t broadcast advertising for
40 or 50 minutes at a time — break it
up with other non-advertising content.
While the audience is captive, don’t
penalize them for it — creatively engage them.”
Some possible goals for marketingdriven messages include:
• Improved customer experience
— making the customer happy
through entertainment clips, lifestyle messaging, or positive afﬁrmation (“Thank you for your business!”)
• Product information — not just
where things are, but creative use
of video to demonstrate product
value (recipes in a grocery store;
tax-time tips in a bank; in an
auto parts store, video on how to
change your own oil)
• Special promotions — weekly
sales, overstocks, upcoming
events, “micro-sales” (“For the
next 15 minutes, get 10 percent
off XYZ!”)
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• Ambience — nebulous content
that might not create a top-of-mind
impression on viewers but instead
aims to create a general feeling of
well-being; to make the customer
glad he is there
Goals for information-driven messages include:
• News content — headlines,
weather, ﬁnancial news, sports
• Community events
• Corporate communications —
welcome messages in a lobby,
cafeteria menus, upcoming
building events
• Wayﬁnding
• Public relations messages
Most digital signage networks will
beneﬁt from a selection that draws
from both lists, usually woven together (e.g., don’t stack all of the sales
information up next to one another;
intersperse community information
and ambience between promotions
to eliminate the subconscious notion
that “this screen just shows ads”).
“Consumers want to be engaged,”
said Richard Fassio, founder and
president of creative content agency
Modern Digital. “Engaging can encompass everything from entertainment to informational content. Every
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Appendix: Further reading
situation will have a different deﬁnition of what is engaging. This is why
it so important to deﬁne what the user
experience will be in order to create a
compelling media strategy. If you aim
at nothing, you’re going to hit nothing smack dab on the head. Deﬁning
what experience you want someone
to have … this is the ﬁrst step.”
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Appendix: Further reading
Tracking digital signage
effectiveness
By James Bickers, editor
This article is excerpted from “Measurement
and Analysis for Digital Signage,” a free
how-to guide from Digital Signage Today.
R
etailers, banks, restaurants
and any other business that
deals with human beings in
person, at their location, always must
be aware of trafﬁc. Declining foot
trafﬁc is a harbinger of things to come
— ShopperTrak, which provides technology tools for measuring footfalls,
estimates that a steady decline in foot
trafﬁc over a given period will result in
decreased sales in about 13 months.
And being aware of decreases as
they happen allows the business to
move dynamically, enacting campaigns to bring more people into the
space.
Laura Davis-Taylor, president of
Retail Media Consulting, said three
primary types of tools do the actual
measuring of customer activity:
• Simple trafﬁc counters, such as
laser beams across the entrance
to a store
• Video recognition systems, camera-based technology that counts
the number of people that walk by
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a certain space, if they stopped
and for how long, etc.
• Trafﬁc-tracking tools, ceiling-based
cameras that assign a unique
numerical ID to each customer that
enters the space, creating a log of
that customer’s activity in the store
(movement, dwell time, patterns).
That information can be turned into
“heat maps” that are accessible in
real time.
While the basic trafﬁc counter is
limited to some very rudimentary
numbers, the other two options can
be extended to provide data on the
effectiveness of digital signage. Trafﬁc data from zones within a store featuring screens can be correlated with
POS data, to establish relationships.
If the tool is sophisticated enough, it
can track the effectiveness of individual campaigns on the screens — for
instance, did that video promo for
Oreos result in an increase in sales?
That POS data also can be analyzed
alongside play logs, allowing operators to see which digital assets had
the greatest effect on sales.
New technology on the horizon
Two new technologies are on the way
that promise an even greater focus
on speciﬁc customer data.
The two largest companies that track
consumer exposure to media and
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Appendix: Further reading
marketing, Nielsen Media Research
and Arbitron, both have announced
services for measuring in-store
media, in addition to their traditional
radio and television ratings. In December 2006, Nielsen announced
its “follow the consumer” service
Nielsen In-Store, a joint venture with
the In-Store Marketing Institute. The
forthcoming service is built around a
measurement model called Pioneering Research for an In-Store Metric
(PRISM), which aims to allow in-store
marketing effectiveness to be compared alongside traditional media.
Arbitron has scheduled rollout of its
Portable People Meter over the next
three years. The PPM is a pager-like
device that a program participant
wears throughout the day. The device, which will take the place of the
hand-written diaries that participants
usually ﬁll out and mail in, listens for
special identiﬁcation codes within
the audio portion of any given media
(a radio broadcast, for instance, or
a television commercial or in-store
promo). At the end of the day, the
participant places the device in a recharger/docking station, which sends
back to Arbitron complete data on
what media that person was exposed
to that day, and at what times.
Both companies continue to offer
more traditional, low-tech solutions
for trafﬁc measurement, such as exit
interviews and manual counting.
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Making a good impression
Arguably the most important metric
for companies honing their in-store
media is the impression. Unfortunately, not everybody uses this term in the
same way.
In the simplest usage, an impression
occurs any time a message is displayed. Some companies require a
person to view the message in order
for it to count as an impression; and
some companies will make a distinction between a gross impression (any
time a message is displayed and one
or more people were within viewing
range) and a net impression (any
time a person demonstrates recall
of a message). Complicating matters further are alternate terms — “ad
view,” for instance, or “opportunity
to see,” commonly used in the U.K.,
both of which are synonymous with
“impression.”
Other numbers that need to be
tracked include reach, or the number
of unique people who are exposed
to the message; and frequency, the
number of times each of those unique
people was exposed to the message
over a given period of time.
Multiplying reach by frequency creates a ﬁgure called the gross rating
point, or GRP. “A GRP, as deﬁned
by Nielsen Media, is a percentage
point of the total audience size,” said
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Appendix: Further reading
Bill Gerba, president of WireSpring
Technologies. “So, for example, in
most Nielsen research, which revolves around television advertising,
one GRP equals 1 percent of the total
number of TV-viewing households.”
Finally, there are proof-of-play statistics, which are created and managed
by the software running the digital
signage network. Nurlan Urazbaev
of BroadSign International called
proof-of-play numbers “the basis for
accountability in digital signage” and
a crucial component of an in-store
marketing program.
whether or not the software measures
proof-of-play at the player level or the
screen level — in other words, if the
message was sent to ﬁve screens,
but one of them was not functioning
correctly, is that counted as ﬁve ad
plays or four? Being able to measure proof-of-play at the screen level
— knowing, in this example, that the
screen was off, and only four ad plays
should be recorded — is an attractive
capability, and one that will be especially important if the screen deployer
wants to court advertisers.
“In contrast to broadcast TV, a modern digital signage system should be
able to record every instance of an
ad displayed on each screen — the
player level is not enough,” he said.
“At the end of a campaign a proof-ofplay report compares the number of
planned ‘ad plays’ — we call them ‘ad
repetitions’ — with the achieved ones.
Having these statistics, it is easy for
the ad sales department to show what
exactly advertisers paid for, reconcile
invoices, etc. Solid proof-of-play also
facilitates creating rate cards and
campaign planning and budgeting.”
The level of speciﬁcity provided by
a proof-of-play report (also referred
to as play log, billing log or performance log) varies from one software
package to another. Perhaps the
most important distinction to note is
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