Digital Signage and Video walls make the best use of new technology
 | Digital Signage and Video walls make the best use of new technology
Digital signage Advertise or perish is an age old truism in business. And nothing is more evident in the fact that even household benchmark names still spend millions of pounds advertising. Look at the big fizzy drinks companies, the beer commercials. Until cigarette advertising was stopped the various brands still had massive advertising budgets.... who can forget John Player Special of Benson & Hedges ads. And why did they keep them up when smokers were pretty much addicted to smoking and smokers, like beer drinkers and even consumers of fizzy drinks, are usually fiercely loyal to their preferred brand? For the simple reason that it was found that if they stopped their sales started slipping The next thing about advertising is, given that one has to advertise what is the best medium? Time and time again it has been shown that prime time TV yields the best results, but that is very expensive. A 20 second slot just before or during the evening news bulletins and the major soap shows costs the advertiser a great deal and for it to be effective it has to be a campaign which runs for a few weeks. It also has to be for a specific general product, like ice cream or freshly baked bread. It is no good advertising specific or esoteric products. It is no good advertising blue widgets for use in acme fire engines as just about no one has an acme fire engine so will never need a blue widget. But the truth is that TV, especially moving pictures draws attention and, even at a subliminal level, a message is received. So we now come to Video Walls. First seen in enclosed spaces like Airport terminals and between levels in shopping malls a video wall consists of a mosaic of high grade, high resolution LED backlit screens. The controlling program can be made to send each screen a different message, or the same message. Each screen may at any stage be displaying an identical message to the other screens on display or may be changed so that it is in fact showing only a small part of the display and the video wall, viewed as a whole is displaying one picture made up of all the screens put together (or a variety of images from different sources). This is very effective advertising. Shopping mall owners and areas where there is a large wall unused but in good view of lots of passing traffic are installing them and selling advertising space. But they can also be used for education purposes in school and university halls where the programmes can be made to keep the interest and the attention of the viewer who is receiving a sort of Imax experience where the message can be very clearly imparted. This all fits in with the digital signage effect which uses multimedia to pass all sorts of messages to viewers. Ranging from information to direct advertising, from news flashes to educational messages. Digital signage This new and very effective technology is developing new uses daily and can be installed wherever one has an underutilised wall. |
