Here is a selection of random thoughts and gossip collected during a hectic New York Digital Signage Week.
In no particular order:-
- If there is one hot company in this industry at the moment, it is Paris based Quividi. They were constantly mentioned in presentations during Billboards Unplugged and The DailyDOOH Investor Conference. Their task now is to take their huge installed base and brand exposure to the next level.
- BroadSign seem to be making no secret of the fact that they want to be the prime mover in some form of software rollup; merging or acquiring other software companies to help move the market forward
- Despite numerous protestations of innocence, we continue to hear stories of Scala screwing their channel. Last week we heard one-side of what is / was the worst example ever. So bad in fact. we’d say it was disgusting.
- ComQi admitted that they are now focussing on retail (no real surprises there as they lost all the Care Media Holdings ad-supported business).
- YCD Multimedia having lost the grace and favour home that was Intel, have decided, in their infinite wisdom, to hang out with Prysm. Expect them to be on booths with Prysm at #ISE2014 etc. YCD also have a new HTML5 implementation, which we think is pretty exceptional.
- Rumour is that Four Winds Interactive had to raise some extra cash recently.
- Expect STRATACACHE to make an acquisition announcement early November.
- Activision.TV have seven more patents pending – so even those who have settled may need to watch their backs (again).
- Real Digital Media‘s Ken Goldberg spoke about some exciting announcements from his business coming soon.
- If you want to get into next year’s DPAA Summit for free, all you need to do is pretend to be a consultant with a mailing list, do a contra deal with the organisers and send out two emails. Voila! Several hundred dollars saved.
- RMG Networks and elevate Digital [1] really pushed the boat out during the DPAA Summit. Their airplane seat back / riff on cabin crew and street furniture booths were great. They both made the rest of the booths look pretty amateur.
- Titan have a digital product up their sleeve which they believe is totally ground-breaking. Expect it to be unveiled or at least seen in time for next year’s SuperBowl.
- Most of Van Wagner‘s Digital Billboards in NYC are running OpenSplash and those that are not at the moment are soon to be converted over. All managed of course by Ayuda Media Systems’ content management system.
- Ocean Outdoor are leading the charge in London with digital innovation but if the reaction to their CEO Tim Bleakley’s presentation at The DailyDOOH Investor Conference is anything to go by, they may well just be the most exciting digital outdoor owner anywhere in the world!
Those not missed during the week include: Aerva, Intel, Samsung and Steven Keith Pratt and it was reported that not one plaque went missing from any New York building [2] during the week – quite an accomplishment we understand.