EnQii [1] this week announced that it was launching EnGage Content Apps – an online content store to provide best of breed content for its digital out of home customers. The content app store is integrated with EnQii’s EnGage platform and allows customers to preview and buy content from a variety of suppliers to use in their out of home networks.
[2]“We are excited by this new initiative”, said Ajay Chowdhury, EnQii’s CEO. “Excellent content is the backbone of any digital signage system and until now users have had to go to many different places to get this content. We have partnered with some of the best providers in the field to showcase their products in one place and to enable our customers to seamlessly use it with our platform. This fills a much-needed hole in the digital signage industry.”
EnGage Content Apps can be accessed through EnQii’s EnGage platform. Once a customer accesses the store they can choose content in different categories, preview it, purchase it and publish it into their digital signage system. The system will include both free and paid for content that has been vetted by EnQii to ensure they work well for Digital Out of Home networks. At launch the content providers to the system include: –
- Digichief (news, sports scores, stock prices and infotainment)
- Custom Weather and AccuWeather (weather)
- Eventful (local events listings)
- BlueFox [3] (videos and images)
- PlayNetwork (music and custom content)
- Saddle Ranch Productions (custom content)
In addition to this content the app store will also contain EnQii’s own content widgets including QR codes, clocks, web links and TV inputs.
The EnGage suite of products consists of the EnGage content management and networking platform, EnGage Menu (menuboarding software), EnGage Creator (message creation software), EnGage Music (integrated in-store music software) and EnGage Content Apps (online content store).
This suite has been tailored for three key market segments – digital merchandising for retailers, food service / QSR and financial services, campaign management for advertising networks and merchandising for food service companies.
2 Comments To "EnQii Launches Content App Store"
#1 Comment By Chris Heap On 12 January 2011 @ 22:43 @988
With all due respect to Enqii, content is NOT the backbone, in fact it’s quite the reverse.
Technology is the enabler or ‘back of house’, whereas content IS the public face of the medium, the engagement mechanism and the part of value chain that is exposed, judged and measured by consumers, ad agencies and brands.
Content and what that elicits in terms of a viewer or user response is what drives adoption, response and ROI/ROO or any other definition that helps justify the investment.
I applaud the initiative but the context is all wrong.
This feels a lot like the initiative Cisco tried to implement last year – create content eco system partners to ‘add value’ to the technology proposition, however unlike Cisco, I sincerely hope that there is added value within this offering that is more than a simple handoff to other partners and that there is a service offering that guides, educates and assists customers in making good decisions about how and when to use both technology and content to best effect.
DS and DOOH should be sold & promoted as a media and marketing vehicle, not a technical one. The drivers of mainstream adoption is not the next SMIL standard or the newest iteration of the Okeykokey5000 but what it does/means/delivers to the audience and how it adds value to an organisation as marketing mechanism and how it helps, excites and engages audiences from an experiential perspective.
#2 Comment By Tim Harvey On 12 January 2011 @ 23:27 @019
Any digital media network is as weak or as strong as the content displayed & as good or as bad as the collective support that keeps the network running.