Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
It’s common belief that the debacle that was Tesco TV (latterly called Tesco Screens) (finally shut down back in early 2009) set the UK and continental European retail digital signage market back several years.
That whole saga has been much talked about online and during industry conferences and it is not my intention to get into that debate again here but I raise it because very soon, Tesco (and JCDecaux) is very likely once again to be centre stage. This time though it looks like all involved have thought long and hard about what’s needed and MAY have actually got it right.
Whilst we are all excited and waiting for JCDecaux to launch the Waterloo Motion, it is more likely that the really big digital initiative from JCDecaux is the 400 digital screens being erected outside UK Tesco stores.
Spencer Berwin, managing director of JCDecaux, announced the investment at Brand Republic’s Media360 event in early June.
It is claimed that the network of new digital screens will be made even more appealing for advertisers due to its ability to fuse data from the outdoor industry’s Route research, with Tesco’s Dunnhumby retail sales data.
If it’s true that “Advertisers will be able to target specific dayparts to optimise their ad campaigns by four parts of the week – morning, afternoon, evening and night time” then we’d suspect that BroadSign (JCDecaux’s software supplier of record) has either been really busy or has got their work cut out.
By far the best Route specific software linkup we have seen is Ayuda Media System’s Cerbero (note to BroadSign, if you are working on all this, just license Cerbero rather than trying to re-invent the wheel)
Media Week reported that Spencer Berwin called the development a “hugely important step” for its outdoor offering, enabling brands and marketers to target specific dayparts to optimise their ad campaigns.
It certainly sounds exciting and thank goodness that the industry hasn’t decided to attempt to go back inside the store to sell advertising.
August 9th, 2013 at 16:37 @734
Hi Adrian,
Targeting by day parts with the BroadSign software has been a basic feature for a while 🙂 The additional information provided by Route can allow the player to adjust its loop and match content to audience. The advantage of not being a playlist based system is that this is not as difficult to implement as it would be for others.
As for re-inventing the wheel, if someone hadn’t, we would all still have wooden cartwheels on our cars 😉
Jody..
August 9th, 2013 at 21:29 @937
Adrian
TTV was not all bad and paved the way for what a lot of us/you have done over the last few years. TTV put us all on the global stage not least through the genius of Bob Clarke ( and his ability to upset everyone). Spencer knew exactly what would deliver the big bucks in Tesco real estate eight years ago, I know I was present, a shame it took so long for people to take notice of him.
Phil Austin