A Proposed Digital Signage Litmus Test

Filed Under Advertising, Digital Signage

There’s been a lot of interest recently from a number of media publications and media professionals in the DOOH space. I’ve always been a “Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions” type of guy and so it’s great to see the focus of a number of the articles/opinions shift from purely critical to “questioning” (looking for answers) or “defining” (attempting to solution define)

Jason Brown, who is president of sales and marketing for ideaCast out of Chicago does just this with his recent editorial on ROI in Mediapost. He attempts to give some ROI evaluation criteria to buyers and planners as a starting point based on his experience with his network. ideaCast is a network of Digital Signage in Gyms based out of Chicago who have National Cinemedia as a backer.

While each point in his article is very important, I don’t agree with all of them and I’ll describe below but kudos to Jason for getting it out there.

Jason’s ROI thesis promotes the following factors as integral to ROI analysis and proof by buyers and brands:

Dwell Time
Sight Sound & motion
Scale
Demographics
Relevance
Engagement

I’ll let you first read the article here, before I add my 2 cents in. In many cases, I agree with Jason but might suggest that a few items may be more of a pricing consideration than a relevance or ROI consideration - i.e. instead of choosing to include or exclude a DOOH Network in your plan based on a long dwell time, I’m suggesting that ideaCast’s higher dwell times should command a higher CPM price (just using this as a baseline cost) due to the amount of time spent with the medium…e.g. if C-Stores have a 3:50 “dwell time” on average and command a $3 CPM maybe ideaCast’s should command an $8-12CPM as an example only. You’ll see this premium pricing a lot in the health field (Gyms, Dr Offices, Pharmacies, etc) where CPMs typically are much higher than other categories.

Dwell Time

As per above, consider a C-Store and a Gym, side by side. Operating in a bubble, let’s pretend that every person who goes in the gym, also visits the C-Store. The audience is the same, but the Dwell times are different (40 mins avg. for gyms versus 4 mins avg. for C-store). Gyms are active media consumption whereas C-Stores are a little more passive in my opinion. The value of the Gym member is higher in my opinion because you have a more active consumer who you can spend more time with. If we take that out into the real world, however, the gym actually has a fixed audience based on membership and frequency - the numbers are predictable. the C-Store has an avg. audience that I would say is higher (I’ve seen 2-3 reports on gyms and 2-3 based on C-Stores and C-stores usually have higher foot traffice depending on DMA and area). So while your C-Store media may be priced lower due to passivity and dwell, a buyer may have the opportunity to reach more audience in the C-Store so the media cost may average out

Sight, Sound and Motion

I’ve written in the past about how Store based TV has already been done (1990) and why it failed. Ultimately, with Digital OOH we have an opportunity to try it again but we cannot make the same mistakes as we have in the past. Each environment is different, consumers don’t necessarily want “TV” out of their homes and Digital Signage has some unique properties that each network can take advantage of to capitalize on the relevance of the environment. The big kicker here that I have had to deal with in the past is Sound. It does work in Gyms but as per above, becomes an affront to the consumer in venues like a C-Store. Repurposing TV is how a number of mediums are being used today but people consume media differently Out of Home and as we continue to study how consumers “consume” it, I think we’ll find that we need to take a look at how we deploy media. James makes a good point about cost but I’m starting to see some very good, relevant, custom content come out of the Creative Agencies that specifically addresses the medium. I’ll be excited to watch where this goes.

Scale

This comment is dead on. I would support James on this one, “market density” would be the word that many are looking for

Demographics

Again, dead on. I’d add to it that media agencies need transparency and help in really understanding this

Relevance

Again, completely agree

Engagement

Aha! here’s where I have to relate back to some of my earlier comments on custom creative. If you are a Network or an Agency evaluating a network, you become the medium for people to use. Pretend for a minute that you are your own Network or Cable TV medium. Would you ever look to a TV network and say “my advertising failed because your medium isn’t engaging enough? I doubt it - you’d say that the content (the show) wasn’t engaging enough, which didn’t attract enough audience or the ad creative was bad and it didn’t engage the audience so we got no buy in from the consumers. Engagement is a function of the Creative deployed on the network. The medium is the medium. Whether it’s successful or not is up to the relevant content (the Network’s responsibility) and creativity behind the advertising (the creative agency’s responsibility). If you put little effort in your creative approach, you will, as with any other medium, see lackluster results. I think it’s our responsibility to help the media agencies fully understand how to use each category and they will and can then act as the bridge for most effective use

I guess where I’m going with my additional commentary on Jason’s article is, the audience, relevance and engagement are where I think the ROI comes in (where you get the return). Some of the other factors are what determines the cost of the campaign/buy which may be more appropriately deemed the benchmark costs against which you measure. The identification of full ROI becomes ”did I reach my audience at scale for the effort I needed to put in for my brand”?

Thanks for tackling that Jason! Great to see more fodder on the street.