Digital Signage - a Potential Goldmine for Advertisers

In this age of of TiVo and digital video recorders allowing television viewers the control over what they watch and when they watch it, what’s an advertiser to do? After all, the more control someone has over what she watches, the less likely she’s going to sit through commercials. Many in the television watching world have been worried about the loss of advertising revenue.

A revolutionary turn around has been taking place thanks to the breakthroughs in digital signage technology. Digital signage is a multimedia advertising method in which a main unit sends a signal to a device such as an LCD monitor. Incorporate IP video via digital signage software and you can send both audio and video to that monitor. Place that monitor near your point of sale and you very well could influence a shopper’s buying decision. In most cases, you’ve at least caught that consumer’s attention, helping with brand awareness and possible future sales.

As LCD and plasma screens become less expensive, it’s not hard to see that digital signage should be something a savvy advertiser or marketer should – at the very least – research.
By advertising in the right location, companies are better able to reach their target market. The following represent some examples of how digital displays can be used.

• Placing toy-oriented signage in a store’s toy section.
• Placing a digital signage unit showing this season’s latest fashions in the clothing section.
• Providing do it yourself instruction on a digital signage display in the hardware section.

Marketers can use digital signage to find out what shoppers want and don’t want. For example, what if a shopper were selecting an item for purchase at a touch screen monitor display that worked as a hybrid interactive digital sign. As the customer selected various items, the digital signage software would be capturing his purchase preferences. This information could be used to evaluate sales, which items sold better on particular days, and so on. This information-rich database could then be used to base decisions on, such as in-store promotions or sales on what customers want when they’re more likely to want it.

Is TV advertising dead? Probably not. Put it’s certainly not as robust as in the past. The same can be said for radio and newspaper advertising. While these forms of media have been around for a long time, they use non-targeted passive forms of advertising. Digital signage offers a much more actively targeted choice to advertisers and represents a potential goldmine for advertisers.