The Screen Forum Event held at Barco Live Dots [1] lab got New York Digital Signage Week [2] off to a great start on Monday with five speakers taking the floor with short presentations to give their interpretation of what is happening in the Digital Out of Home industry and what, perhaps, its members should be doing to help it further develop and grow
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- Joshua Krute vice-president digital product at Clear Channel Outdoor [4] spoke about the audited number of 5,200 digital screens in the U.S. reaching 180 million people every four weeks. “It’s a $1 billion business,” he said, stressing the importance of location, and following it up with examples of how the screens are being used in Europe and the U.S. with campaigns that advertisers can vary depending on weather, location and traffic flow.
- Ryan Laul, director, [d]theory, who works with the digital strategy teams at Omnicom agencies, noted that the three factors impeding growth are: confusion at the agency level about what is out there; a stigma attached to the out-of-home sector where many of the boards are not attractive of perhaps were not kept in good shape; and inconsistencies in terms of measurement, creative and more. “We find ourselves spending a lot of our time on client education to help them understand the opportunities digital signage campaigns can offer,” said Laul. He showed how one campaign involved geo-fencing, QR codes, NFC, mobile and digital signage and suggested that there should be more collaboration with partners.
- Ben Putland, COO of Grand Visual [5], said that taking clients on a journey for digital campaigns is complex and suggested that making small, incremental changes from a static screen is a good way to introduce clients to what is possible, rather than throwing everything at them at once.
- Olivier Duizabo, Quividi [6] CEO, discussed automated audience measurement and gave a very good presentation, with a slant on how the benefits of audience measurement can be sold to agencies.
- And François de Gaspé Beaubien, chairman and CEO, Zoom Media [7], gave an abbreviated version of what he’ll be discussing, during his keynote at The DailyDOOH Investor Conference [8] on Wednesday. Hold on to your hats, because we heard everything from what he feels the industry should be called to his ideas on ways to tap into a bigger share of the overall digital spend – of which the industry only gets a current 7%. His views on programmatic buying alone should raise lots of eyebrows – and questions.
Barco, who sponsored the event, as usual, laid on a truly wonderful spread of food.