Shifting the paradigm: from digital signage to content computing

Digital media technologies have transformed the landscape for enterprise and media companies, optimizing business processes and delivering enhanced services to customers. An emerging technology, digital signage, has redefined the rules of marketing, enabling innovative strategies for providing information effectively to customers.

Digital signage - with its panoply of synonyms ("narrowcasting", "place-based media", "digital merchandising", "digital out-of-home", etc.) - is a form of electronic display that delivers targeted messages to specific locations at specific times. As consumers continue to shift away from TV and print media, digital signage systems have become viable tools for advertisers, marketers and enterprises. Digital signs can easily adapt to the context and the audience, even interactively; content - the information designed and displayed on screens - can be exchanged quickly, including text, images, animations, video, audio, and interactivity - and can pertain to any topic, from public or internal information to messages that influence customer behavior or enhance customer experience.

Digital signage has been in use for decades (e.g., LED ticker signs and LED video walls) but has yet to be adopted as a mainstream technology. At the moment, the market is highly differentiated and built around a heterogeneous distribution of endless small and interoperable software solutions. However, open technical standards promoted by industry organizations are under development and will make it possible to communicate across digital signage networks made by different vendors. Interoperability across systems and media players is increasing competition in the supply chain, significantly lowering costs and making the ROI on building networks vastly more attractive. Additionally, value chain consolidation is underway throughout the industry. Digital signage is poised to become a major public medium.

Content computing: a definition

Digital signage is currently limited by technology at the levels both of deployment and content. If content could somehow be redefined as an application deployable over the internet, then this limitation would be removed. Content computing can be defined as the creation, deployment and control of content over the internet.

Content: full portability

In a world full of disparate networks (private TV, edutainment,, etc.), the content for digital signage is key. What plays on display units as video, graphics, etc., is what makes a difference for the customer. However, getting compelling content to the right display has been fraught with problems and, to date, content portability has been rare. Using highly technical protocols, content creators produce content for targeted final platforms; once completed, this content is confined to its original specific player hardware-display combination.

"Full content portability lies at the heart of effective content computing." Once media assets are composed and grouped, which should be done simply from any computer capable of driving a modern web-browser, content should be placed back into an overall content library. From there it could be reused, modified, updated - providing completely new scenarios and marketplaces that do not exist today, such as third party content application exchanges for up-to-date content for museums, edutainment content application stores for retail environments (weather data snippets, news dashlets, etc.), and others.

Content: a driver of "show control"

Traditionally, media integration has been a product of several unrelated and disparate streams. Content is one stream; "show control" is another - complex programs generated by a separate group of specialized developers providing the "feel" or experience of the content . "Show control" programs currently are synchronized manually to the time-lines required by the content. Such a process is very expensive, requiring investment in highly specialized hardware, software and programming. The final product relies on clock synchronization to link the "show control" systems with those playing the video content.

Content computing would insert full "show control" capabilities directly into the content stream. "Show control" triggers and commands would be imbedded into the compositions as the content is laid out and scheduled. Not only does this render the need for "show control" hardware and "show control" developers unnecessary, but it allows the content developer to take charge of the ambient experience as well. In this manner, the integration of "show control" style experiences becomes a reality for new venues and applications, for example large scale rollouts of retail stores. Even a corner grocery store could tap into 'theme park' style experiences for virtually the same cost as 'static' digital signage displays.

Content: metrics and analysis

Feedback on content is essential to improving the customer's experience. Content computing should include monitoring and evaluation metrics around content: which composition was played, which media clip was selected, when and how often it was played; for interactive content, all interactions, clicks and paths through the content can be logged for analysis. Additionally, any information that can be gleaned from sensors, such as distance sensors, and external controls such as buttons, cameras etc., should be captured. Finally, content computing should incorporate analytics tools such as those available in cyberspace (e.g., Google analytics).

Deployment: using the cloud for ease and scale

Content computing could bring previously unheard-of economies of scale to digital signage and immersive media environments. First, the use of the cloud would allow everything from small rollouts at a few sites to massive deployments across thousands of stores, by removing the requirement for building data centers or acquiring highly specialized IT teams. Secondly, using 'carrier-class' systems would provide economies of scale untapped to date in the digital signage market - paralleling software systems such as Google, Facebook, internet banking, and others. In a perfect world, the only requirement for the customer, be it a specialty group or a global conglomerate, would be a decent power supply and a functioning network.

Software as a Service

Building and operating retail environments at scale is a huge and complex undertaking. There are a multitude of factors to incorporate, and successful immersive stores must be extremely flexible. Too often, large upfront capital investments have limited a company's flexibility and are accompanied by multiple sales and marketing strategies. A Software-as-a-Service business model simplifies this equation by removing the massive upfront capital expense, replacing it with a monthly operational expense. With minimal contractual run-times, the retailer has the flexibility to scale the signage and immersive technologies both up and down over the life of the retail store - and flexibility in keeping the retail environment fresh enables ongoing innovation.

Summary

Content computing revolutionizes the way customers deploy cutting edge digital media technologies in at least three significant ways. First, new technology is no longer seen as a burden, as the customer does not need to build and maintain an expensive organization of rare skill sets in order to own and operate a digital signage system. Secondly, the concept of scale is no longer terrifying, as content computing allows industrialized roll-outs instead of custom implementations and the customer can scale from one to thousands of stores without any additional engineering. Finally, large capital expenditure is no longer required, replaced instead with low monthly operational fees. The VIDERO C4 system provides the first example of content computing available on today's market.

VIDERO

The trail-blazer for the growing market of content computing, VIDERO was founded in 2006 as an independent offshoot of Netside GmbH. VIDERO's background is the creation and operation of Internet commerce solutions and e-commerce together with complex computer based media environments. VIDERO received the 2005 Sinus award for innovation which led to the application of VIDERO's technology in such renowned institutions as the Porsche and the Mercedes museums in Stuttgart, Germany. VIDERO and its US media integration partner are currently working with a major international brand to roll out a new immersive retail experience to stores across Europe and the US - possibly the first truly global content computing network world-wide.