As digital signage metrics standards continue to emerge, rest assured the industry will follow. Metrics are paramount to the success of any digital signage network attempting to sell advertising space. In fact, this is true for any advertising medium.
We’ve also read a lot about how in the land of the digital signage, content reigns. Let’s say you’ve engaging content. Let’s go even further to characterize your content as amazing and your digital signage venues as the highest traffic spots in town. You know you’re making an impact.
Since the internet is the biggest game changer since the cotton gin, it needs to be involved more in digital signage than simply the modus operandi for content upload and distribution. There needs to be a reason for customers to sit down when the day is done and bring the experience of digital signage home with them. Digital signage must give consumers a compelling reason to go home at night, jump on their PC and revisit the website of the company whose ad caught their attention earlier in the day.
How is this done? I’ve written a few articles earlier about the uses of mobile devices with digital signage. But, I think something is missing. Perhaps a digital signage/kiosk hybrid with internet access would work appropriately. Or perhaps, adding some other obnoxious feature to the digital signage, like smells, would be appropriate.
Whatever the plugin, widget, or application added, it must somehow drive traffic to a company’s website. Think for instance about a signage network of 100 or even 1,000 digital signage screens. Think of the power this company has making lasting marketing impressions. Now, if those lasting impressions actually drove consumers to the web, what would be the result? Traffic would be the result. Traffic on the WWW is like stink is to monkeys. Monkeys are just not as successful without their stink.
I actually read a report sometime ago released by Google which showed how web traffic drives everything else. If you can successfully get a significant amount of web traffic, your site will be successful. Facebook is a good example of this. After amassing a huge following the privately held company was given buy-out offers worth several billion dollars. This was before any real profits could be recognized. Take a look at Twitter. Now that the company has amassed a massive following, do you think they intend to go on without profiting? I doubt it. Advertising is the name of the game in all these scenarios.
The problem I see with run-of-the mill digital signage is that consumers can not input their credit card number into it. Computers allow them to do this. What a shame! When we can effectively give people a method of purchasing NOW, then digital signage will make the Quantum Leap.
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