Last week I was at my local shopping centre and noticed that they installed digital signage. The setup was as follows:
- There were two 47″ LG screens hanging from the ceiling.
- There was an LG player the back of the first screen
- Connected to the player there was a Telstra USB 3G modem – I’m assuming this was needed for Internet connectivity
- There was also a VGA splitter that connected the Video output to the second screen
Now, in terms of content and what was displayed on the screen seemed quite disappointing. There was only two ads displayed on the screen. One was the company’s own advertisement and the other was just an image.
My initial thoughts were, “How is the company making money?” and “Are the network owners already struggling to find advertisers?”
I believe this is a common issue for digital signage network startups. Most believe that having a network means that they can easily generate advertising revenue but that’s not always the case. Finding advertisers is the biggest challange easpecially if the network only has a handful of screens. Its a numbers game -most of the advertisers want exposure and they are willing to pay for it if the exposure is high.
So before jumping at the chance of setting up a digital signage network make sure you have advertisers ready to buy your advertising space…. and good luck.