Audience Measurement Defines Content.

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We all know that digital signage works, or it wouldn’t have got as far as it has. But it is very difficult to prove why and how it does work, and, without this proof, some advertisers are just not going to buy into it. Television can reassure its advertisers that so many people had their televisions on when their advertisement was being played, radio can tout its number of listeners, and the internet can tell advertisers how many people actually clicked on an advertisement. These figures are all very persuasive for advertisers, but what can digital signage offer in comparison? This kind of transparency for industry scrutiny has not become available for digital signage yet.

If you’re an advertiser who is going to invest in a campaign on a digital signage network, you will want to know who your advertisement is going to reach, how many people it is going to reach, how many people are actually going to pay any attention to the screen, and which location achieves the best audience exposure. These demands would have seemed rather unrealistic a couple of years back, but already these are becoming realistic and realisable stipulations.
 
 
TruMedia Technologies is a leading provider of real-time audience measurement for the out-of-home display industry, which is able to answer these questions with actual facts and figures. Its proprietary and field-tested video analytics technology measures visual attention towards digital signs, TV monitors, display windows and in-store product displays. Their solutions accurately track exposure to media, advertising and merchandise, and can therefore be used to adapt content proactively.
 
TruMedia’s solutions empower businesses by providing business intelligence that allows one to understand the audience characteristics of different displays. The number of people who look at the displays, how long they look for, the number of people who walk by, how long people stay near displays – and their demographics – are crucial information which TruMedia makes available to enable businesses to understand how their media is performing. Utilising these metrics can help businesses to obtain a quantifiable return on investment, determine the best locations for different displays and content, and tailor screen content based on audience characteristics to optimise the impact and reach of advertising.
 
They have recently released iTRI, a simplified audience measurement solution which is designed to make audience measurement affordable for more businesses. This tool is for experiencing and demonstrating proactive advertising and face-based audience measurement first hand. This software can be installed on a PC and works with any USB camera. Its three modes can generate up to twelve hours of audience data at a time. The application demonstrates TruMedia’s content-based reporting and proactive advertising capabilities based on the viewer’s gender using pre-loaded fixed advertisements.
 
Myra Cohen Doukhan, Marketing Director at TruMedia, said: “iTRI is a great demonstration tool which we hope will speed up the learning curve by making audience measurement accessible to everyone.”
 
In November 2008, TruMedia Technologies further strengthened their position when they signed a partnership agreement with Samsung Electronics Corporation. Under their agreement, TruMedia’s iCapture PROactive Merchandising solution for digital screens has been integrated into, and will be sold together with, Samsung’s MagicInfo player-enabled cx Series of professional large format displays. TruMedia’s iCapture PROM connects with Samsung’s MagicInfo Player to select advertisements and other content based on the viewing audience’s size and demographics. Although audience measurement data is not included, basic data such as audience number and gender distribution is presented.
 
JinHwan Kim, VP of Strategic Marketing of Display Business, Samsung, commented: “Combining our DS solutions with TruMedia’s offerings will provide our customers with one complete, integrated solution including screen, player and proactive advertising capabilities. TruMedia is a results-driven, high-performing company, whom we are pleased to be working with.” The CEO and Chairman of TruMedia, Moti Gura, elaborated: “We believe that the future will see proactive advertising become a standard feature of all DS screens, and we are pleased to be taking this first step with Samsung.”
 
Perhaps the single most significant and critical advantage of digital signage, the ability to tailor content right down to the level of individual screens,can only be fully leveraged through detailed audience measurement data. Whether a network is ad-based or used for branding or promotions, bringing viewers relevant content is crucial to achieving success. TruMedia’s real-time audience measurement solutions can be integrated with other business applications to connect with content management systems to select content which is based on current audience size and type. Proactive advertising means adapting digital signage content to match the viewing audience. In-store media can be changed quickly and easily so that appropriate and relevant content reaches people when they are ready to buy. Content has to be relevant to a particular person standing in front of a particular screen at a particular moment.
 
When people talk about the development of the digital signage industry being constrained, perhaps the lack of proof of the advertising impact and profitability of digital signage is what holds it back. Certainly, according to the results gathered by POPAI’s global digital signage study, it’s a combination of the advertising impact of this medium not yet being sufficiently proven, the profitability of these projects also not yet being proven, and the lack of a universal ‘media currency’ for digital signage, like CPT, which limits it. Enabling these measurements and establishing a comparative basis might enable digital signage to become the most popular form of advertising in the future.
 
Case Study: Altavia
 
One of the largest sporting goods retailers in France has digital screens installed in their outlets to promote items in the store. Altavia wanted to prove to this large sporting goods retailer that with improved advertising content they could increase the effectiveness of the screens to improve their sales. Altavia chose TruMedia Technologies’ automated real-time audience measurement solutions for this task. RVB Altavia installed iCapture on a single 15” screen in one of the chain stores. They measured the existing content running in a 48 second loop (produced by the retailer) for a specific sports bag that the retailer wanted to promote. Altavia then produced their own content including audio, running in an 85 second loop for the same bag. The measurement was done over a 5 week period (2 weeks for old content and 3 weeks for new).
 
Viewers’ faces were analysed in real-time by the iCapture video processor to yield business-critical information such as true ‘face towards’counts and individual exposure times. Further real-time classification algorithms determined the viewer’s gender and age-group.
 
The results obtained proved that the content produced by Altavia was more effective at catching and maintaining the attention of viewers. They showed a 20% increase in the number of viewers and doubled the attention span of the average viewer. These kind of results were made available to Altavia by using TruMedia’s automated audience measurement technology to prove the benefits of their service.