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A guide from Digital Signage Today

INSIDE: Airports are leading the way with digital arrival/departure boards, digital signs in terminal restaurants and new methods of airport advertising, but the rest of the transportation industry is catching up. Find out what has worked, what hasn’t and find out what you need to know for your next deployment.

Sponsored by:

Digital Signage in the Transportation Industry

ContentsPage 3 About the sponsors

Page 4 Introduction |

Page 5 Chapter 1 | An overview of digital signage Cost/benefit analysis How it affects the business process Why is it so challenging? Content delivery: Wired vs. wireless Unique features of digital signage networks

Page 9 Chapter 2 | Digital signage at the airport The arrival and departure board, reinvented The importance of real-time messaging at the airport Communicating with travelers Advertising in airports with digital signage Case study: ADFLOW Nuance Duty-free shops

1 Chapter 3 | Digital signage on public transportation Displaying advertisements Taxi digital signage gets the green light Building the perfect screen layout Incorporation of RSS feeds Content and live TV implications N.Y. cabbies threaten strike over digital signs in cabs Case study: London Underground video network

Page 34 Chapter 4 | Digital signage on the road The controversy over digital billboards Digital billboards and advertising on the road Ask the expert: What is your opinion on digital billboards? Pump-top displays come of age

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About the sponsors

Published by NetWorld Alliance.© 2009 www.networldalliance.comWritten and edited by Bill Yackey, editor, Digital Signage TodayDick Good, CEOTom Harper, president and publisherBob Fincher, executive vice president and general manager, Technology DivisionJoseph Grove, senior vice president and associate publisher

LG Electronics, Inc., is a global leader and technological innovator in the fields of consumer electronics and mobile communications. With more than 82,000 employees throughout the world, LG is a leading provider of LCDs, plasma screens, OLED modules and LED projectors. As established digital technologies continue to improve and new ones emerge, LG is committed to being on the forefront of the latest developments in digital signage. www.LGcommercial.com.

Digital Signage Today, operated by Louisville, Ky.-based NetWorld Alliance, is the leading online publisher of news and information on the emerging world of digital signage, dynamic messaging and cutting-edge business communication technologies. The content, which is updated every business day and read by professionals around the world, is provided free of charge to readers.

T o see the impact of digital signage on the transportation industry, a traveler doesn’t have

to look far. On the way to the airport, he sees digital billboards lining the highway, changing their messages every 20 sec-onds or so. When he stops to get gas, he is entertained by weather and news reports from a pump-top video screen.

Once at the airport, he checks the ar-rival/departure board, which is displayed on multiple flat screens. As he waits in the terminal, he engages in interactive touchscreen advertising. And once he lands and gets in a taxi, a rear-seat digi-tal sign shows him where he is via GPS and shows ads for local restaurants.

While writing this guide, I experienced that chain of events several times. I was able to chronicle the digital signage ap-plications I saw while in Paris’ Gare du Nord and London’s St. Pancras stations, Chicago O’Hare Airport, Las Vegas McCarran Airport, New York LaGuardia Airport and the world’s busiest airport, London Heathrow. On the ground, I spent a considerable amount of time in New York taxis and on the London Underground, both of which utilize digi-tal signage in unique ways, as we will explore later.

In this guide, we will focus on ways the travel industry is using digital signage to make the experience easier for its customers, and technology that digital

© 2009 NetWorld Alliance Media | Sponsored by LG Electronics, Inc. 4

Introductionsignage compa-nies are designing to capitalize on those opportuni-ties.

We would like to thank LG Elec-tronics for their sponsorship of this guide, which allows us to provide it to you free of charge.

Bill Yackey, editorDigital Signage Today

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I n a world where flat-screen moni-tors are beginning to take over CRT televisions, the de facto standard for

visual communication thus far, it some-times can be difficult to pinpoint the exact definition of digital signage.

A flat screen on top of a gas pump run-ning advertisements? Yes.

A flat screen in my house on which I watch TV? No.

A flat screen in an airport running live television? Maybe.

As you can see, the lines are blurred, but this definition seems to encompass the generalities of digital signage: Digital signage is any form of business com-munication where a dynamic messaging device is used to take the place of, or supplement, other forms of messaging.

Cost/benefit analysis

Until very recently, placing a flat screen, much less a network of many flat screens, simply wasn’t viable or cost-effective. Screens were too expensive, too big and wore out too quickly. The ROI wasn’t strong enough.

But the LCD/plasma revolution changed, and still is changing, all of that. Screens are so affordable they can rival the printing costs of static posters over the course of time; they are thin and can hang on a wall (which means no more

Chapter 1 An overview of digital signage

CRT monitors hanging from the ceiling on sketchy mounts); they can communi-cate with computer networks and fetch new content, eliminating the days of em-ployees trotting from screen to screen with armloads of VCR tapes.

How it affects the business process

Some of the ways digital signage is be-ing used today include:

In airports and bus stations, keeping travelers up-to-date on arrival and de-parture times while providing an adver-tising vehicle for shops, restaurants and hotels.

Because digital signage has become so versatile and afford-able, it is used in many venues. In banks, digital signs display interest rates and product information, as well as lifestyle mes-sages and branding.

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CHAPTER 1 An overview of digital signage

In retail, communicating with custom-ers about in-store specials, directing customers to other parts of the store, managing traffic and hotspots and con-veying brand messages.

In banks, displaying interest rates and product information, as well as lifestyle messages and branding.

In casinos and entertainment venues, creating a customer experience that is consistent with the ambiance and atmo-sphere of excitement.

In doctors’ offices and waiting rooms, providing entertainment to bored pa-tients while giving an ad vehicle to pharmaceutical companies and other providers.

In schools and on corporate campus-es, facilitating a level of communication between parties that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

The list goes on, and grows every day. Virtually any place that has printed signage — bus shelters and payphone booths, shopping malls, the tops of gas pumps — has the potential to improve its worth with an upgrade to digital, dy-namic messaging.

Despite all the progress that has been made, digital signage still is a very com-plex proposition for the company install-ing it. Mike White, president of systems integration firm Multi-Media Solutions,

called digital signage “one of the tough-est A/V installs in the world.”

Why is it so challenging?

On the surface, our definition might make digital signage seem like simplicity itself. After all, most everyone has a television set in his home and, in most cases, that set was installed by the person who bought it. Take it home, plug it in, turn it on — that’s all there is to it, right?

In the case of televisions and homes, yes, that usually is all there is to it, although even this is changing as the evolving nature of home theater be-comes more and more complex. But dy-namic signage in the business environ-ment is exponentially more complicated, for a number of reasons:

The content strategy usually needs to be tackled from scratch. Digital signage content has a completely new set of re-quirements; existing media assets often provide a good starting point, but none of them can be reused outright.

Content needs will vary across the enterprise. In all but the simplest digital signage deployments, multiple screen sizes and orientations are used — and a 42-inch screen in landscape mode calls for very different content than a 32-inch screen in portrait. The greater the number of screens in the network, the greater the organizational challenge for content.

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Multiple networks might be involved. The most beneficial digital signage products touch one or more networks. At retail, for instance, the signage network might be designed to communicate with the POS network, in order to gauge content effectiveness versus sales. But getting any two (or more) networks to communicate is an IT challenge, and it increases with the number of networks and nodes involved.

Very different business disciplines are at work. Digital signage appears on the surface to be an IT project. And yet it also is a marketing initiative. The rub? It’s both, and calls for some real team-work and sharing of duties.

Content delivery: Wired vs. wireless

One of the major decisions that digital signage deployers are faced with has to do with connectivity. How are all the screens in the network going to be con-nected?

A popular choice to date has been to use a hard-wired intranet system simi-lar to a local area network (LAN) in an office. All screens are connected using Cat 5 Ethernet cables and have access to the Internet. Some screens can lose the wires and be connected using Wi-Fi wireless connections.

But a new movement in this space may prove especially effective for digital sig-

nage deployments in the transportation sector. Cellular digital signage allows screens to be connected to a network even when placed at long distances. Unlike Wi-Fi, the connection is made through frequencies that our cell phones use.

“A cellular-based network provides all of the advantages of Ethernet and Wi-Fi without getting tangled up in compli-cated infrastructure,” said Keith Kelsen, executive chairman of the board, the MediaTile Company. “There are no cables. There are no hubs and servers. We not only believe it’s the best option — we think that any solution that offers zero in-store or on-site wireless technol-ogy is the only option and the real future of connectivity.”

“A cellular-based network provides all of the advantages of Ethernet

and Wi-Fi without getting tangled up in complicated infrastructure.”

— Keith Kelsen, executive chairman of the board, the MediaTile Company

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Unique features of digital signage networks

Place is known. Because the loca-tion of any display will be known, this information can be used to make the content more appropri-ate to the place. If a display is near one particular product, the con-tent on the display can be crafted strategically with this in mind. For example, the content could pro-mote that product or its benefits, create an appropriate mind set (ambiance, reminder) or promote a complementary product or service available elsewhere. Another as-pect of “place” that is quite rel-evant is the fact that often a dis-play is near the point of purchase. A great deal of research has shown that advertisements near the point of purchase are far more effective. Although the size of this effect and the explanation for why it happens are controversial, it is clear that point-of-purchase information has a massive impact on behavior.

Time is known. Because a digi-tal signage network is controlled by a computer system, content is “served” as a function of time of day. For example, content aimed at business travelers might be shown at an airport on Monday mornings and family-aimed content might be shown Friday afternoons.

Events are known. Information related to the fusion of time and place can also be known. For ex-ample, current weather conditions can be known. The traffic flow can be known. The specifics of an event can be known (concert, sale, flight delay). Such information — and its use — is limited only by the creativ-ity of the digital signage network designers.

Audience is known. Because time and place are known, audience de-mographic and psychographic infor-mation can be well specified. This allows for highly relevant “narrow-casting” that should speak directly to the audience at that moment.

Content is dynamic. Having dy-namic, digital content has numer-ous advantages over other forms of advertising. Compared to print, the content creation/distribution pro-cess is more rapid and less costly. Also, the content can be custom-ized and tailored “on the fly” to each display device separately. Finally, the medium allows for ani-mation and, in the case of kiosks, interactive opportunities.

(Excerpted from “Digital Signage Networks: Theory, Psychology and Strategy” by Pixel Inspiration Ltd., reprinted with permission.)

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Just as airports have become some of the most fertile places for digital signage to grow, the arrival and departure boards in airport terminals scream digital signage opportunity.

Chapter 2 Digital signage at the airport

I n the past 10 years, the travel industry has been one of the leading sectors of digital signage and self-service

expansion. Leading that vertical is the airport industry, which has automated travel processes and used these technologies to speed up the entire travel process.

When people outside of the industry dis-cuss digital signage and self-service ap-plications, their conversations often turn to examples in the airport setting. After all, more variations on the technologies exist inside the walls of airports than in most places.

Airports have discovered that the tra-ditional way of traveling — calling an airline to book a ticket, checking in at the terminal, security point and gate and referring to an analog-style flight board — could be improved greatly by the use of digital signage and kiosks.

Simply put, airlines and airport authori-ties realized (and still are realizing) that those robot-like tasks didn’t require humans. For processes such as booking and checking in to a flight, it is becoming unnecessary to have an airline employ-ee assist customers.

Traveling is a matter of getting people places as fast and efficiently as pos-sible. Digital signage is emerging as a way of enhancing that travel experience from a customer point of view, while making the process easier for airport and airline employees.

Dynamic messaging on screens is aesthetically pleasing for travelers, but it serves a more important purpose of conveying updated flight and airport information to them, which is critical in the fast-paced airport setting. For airport authorities, digital signage can make for a safer and more secure environment, as well as aid the constant flow of traffic in the terminals.

The arrival and departure board, reinvented

Just as airports have become some of the most fertile places for digital sig-nage to grow, the arrival and departure boards in airport terminals scream digital signage opportunity. Traditionally, these boards were mechanical and flipped flight numbers around in a rotating fashion. They were updated by airline

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CHAPTER 2 Digital signage at the airport

employees, and each board had to be changed individually when a flight was delayed or changed. Some European train stations still use this method.

The next advancement for airport arrival boards was LED light boards, which, like digital signage, can be updated remotely. One of the biggest disadvantages to the light boards is that they aren’t visually appealing to the traveler. Generally, the lights spell out the flight names and departure/arrival times in bright red and green set against a black background. When the lights appear in a moving ticker format, the words become harder to read.

Nonetheless, the LED arrival board can be found in most airports around the country. The state of arrival boards lies somewhere between LED and digital, with larger airports moving to digital signage faster than smaller ones.

The next step of digital signage being used as arrival and departure boards is known in the industry as Flight Informa-tion Display Systems (FIDS). Along with the traditional back-end benefits of digi-tal signage such as real-time updating and network connectivity, FIDS can help with the traffic flow of airports by allow-ing people to see the flight information in multiple areas en route to their termi-nal. FIDS also have the ability to make the information larger so it can be seen from farther away, thus preventing the large crowds that can gather under LED boards trying to read their flight info.

To help with this, some airports have used larger-than-normal screens sizes and also put screens side by side, with dy-namic messages displayed across them. FIDS and variations of this technology have been deployed in the Denver Air-port, Philadelphia International Airport, Washington Dulles Airport, Sea-Tac In-ternational Airport, Boston Logan Airport and Anchorage Airport, among others.

The importance of real-time messaging at the airport

When people consider airport digital sig-nage, they immediately think about ar-rival boards and alert systems, although they may not be the most effective use of digital signage in that setting.

“What I see as a critical need that digital signage could effectively address in airports is wayfinding,” said David Little, director of marketing and business development for Keywest Technology, a digital signage hardware and software provider. Little points out that in airports wayfinding signage typically is stagnant and directs travelers to baggage claims, taxis and little else. But the potential is there.

“There are so many features available at modern airports and train stations that it takes a bit of digital creativity to assist people with all of the options available to them,” Little said.

“Airport digital signage can include infor-mation on popular destinations, restau-

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rants, shops and hotels as well as timely information on local events and possibly the opportunity to buy tickets,” said Rocky Gunderson, founder and marketing and network developer for SeeSaw Networks.

Touch technology is available on digital signs in sizes as large as 50 inches, which will give way to more touchscreen wayfinding signs in the future. Already a popular commodity at industry trade shows, digital wayfinding signs allow travelers to choose their route and learn about the airport before they enter the terminal. For example, a hungry traveler could not only use a digital wayfinding system to locate his gate, but also see what food offerings were in that area.

Also, because of a digital signage net-work’s ability to be updated immediately and constantly, wayfinding signs could change to direct travelers to their flights by the name of their destination, not just point to their intended gate. Automatic RSS feeds could keep the boards up-dated so the network could operate with little human involvement.

Communicating with travelers

With increased security measures taking effect in airports globally, travelers once again have seen an increase in wait time in the security checkpoint area. Similar to the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, recent attack attempts on airports have resulted in stricter TSA regulations as to what passengers can bring on a plane.

England particularly has been one of the primary targets for airport terrorism since 9/11, and English airports have been forced to expand regulations for carry-on items. One well-known example is the 100-milliliter liquid regulation, which says passengers can carry a maximum of 100 milliliters of any liquid on a plane, and that those liquids must be in clear bottles in a clear plastic bag. In the United States, the volume allowed is three ounces.

Enter a digital signage opportunity in the Manchester (England) Airport. Wait times were becoming longer after the regulation was put in place, mainly be-cause people either forgot to throw away

Airport digital signage can include information on restaurants, shops and hotels as well as timely information on local events and possibly the opportunity to buy tickets.

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their liquids or didn’t understand the parameters of the regulation. Each day, Manchester Airport disposed of more than a ton of liquids from passengers, including water, aerosols, sun creams, deodorants and perfumes.

“Even though these restrictions have been in place for a year, a lack of awareness has meant that passengers have been surrendering bottles and liquids in their thousands,” said Jackie Neville, head of product development for Manchester Air- port, in a news release. “As a result, tons of waste has been generated, which costs us a great deal of money to dispose of.”

The Manchester Airport, in conjunction with digital signage provider Pixel Inspi-ration, developed a multichannel infor-mation system to get the message of the new regulation to its passengers before they got to the gate. Included in the sys-tem was a digital signage network in the airport that informed travelers of the new “Check before you check-in” campaign. The network was made up of 97 83-inch, rear-projection screens in the check-in area. The screens ran animated notices on the network that targeted travelers waiting in line to check in to their flights.

In addition to the regulation messages, the signs were used to display airport branding messages and marketing mes-sages.

“Digital signage is really taking off in airports right now as it not only pro-vides flexible branding opportunities for airlines, but also enables airports to broadcast clear and vivid marketing and safety messages to passengers as they wait to check in,” said Barry Bugg, ac-count director for Pixel Inspiration.

Across the pond, American airports are using digital signage to speed up the security check-in process. One example exists in the McGhee Tyson Airport in Knoxville, Tenn. Though not large com-pared to neighboring Nashville Interna- tional or Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, McGhee Tyson Airport services most of the East Tennessee area as well as provides service for air cargo and mili- tary aviation. The airport sees more than 120 arrivals and departures daily and seats about 4,000 passengers at one time.

The Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority decided to integrate digital signage into its security checkpoint op-

“Digital signage is really taking off in airports right now as it not only provides flexible branding opportunities for airlines,

but also enables airports to broadcast clear and vivid marketing and safety messages to passengers as they wait to check in.”

— Barry Bugg, account director for Pixel Inspiration

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eration when Department of Homeland Security standards and guidelines were raised. They worked in conjunction with Multi-Media Solutions for the project. The overall goal of the project was to make sure passengers were more prepared to pass through the security checkpoint before they stepped in line.

Like in the Manchester Airport, the Knoxville Airport Authority wanted to display clear and visible signs for shar-ing information, instructions and special announcements regarding security checks and the procedures required to pass through the checkpoints. The digi-tal signs also were used to alert passen-gers of any changes in the Homeland Security Advisory threat level.

As far as the digital signs themselves, the mounting of the LCD screens was standard, with most of them suspended from the ceiling with flat-screen mounts. The content needed to be controlled remotely from a central hub, which is in a different building than the security checkpoints.

Luckily, the screens were in view from the office, which acted as the central hub in the adjacent building. The anten-na was able to easily connect the signs to the PC wirelessly, aided by the fact that the airport has huge floor-to-ceiling windows, which allowed the signal to communicate between the two units.

McGhee Tyson’s digital signs are pow-

ered by RePromotion Enhanced media players, which are attached to the back of the Mitsubishi LCD screens. The media players accept content from the central PC wirelessly and can be pro-grammed to play the content back on the screens at chosen time intervals.

Here are some examples of other digital signage applications in airports geared at reaching customers as they travel:

Reno/Tahoe International Airport: In May 2007, three static billboards at Reno/Tahoe International Airport were replaced with three 65-inch plasma screens. The screens are mounted above the escalators that take passen-gers to and from the concourses.

The original billboards were ads for Grand Sierra Resort, and it was the re-sort that wanted to upgrade its billboards to digital signs. The resort worked in conjunction with Image Base Interna-tional (IBI) on the project. IBI and Grand Sierra installed digital signs in the Grand Sierra hotel lobby that are updated with real-time flight information, taken directly from a feed to the airport’s Web site.

The Reno/Tahoe deployment is a good example of the advantages digital signage can provide for advertisers, in addition to reaching captive travelers. IBI set up the screens so they were controlled by an on-site PC running its I-Screen software. The content changed every eight seconds, and the signs have

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the ability to show different content on each screen. Best of all for the adver-tiser, Grand Sierra Resort has the ability to update the content remotely from the hotel on a real-time basis.

Santiago (Chile) International Airport: Chile’s main airport finished a digital signage deployment in May 2007. This project, however, was on a huge scale. More than 280 42-inch Samsung plasma screens were deployed throughout the domestic and international terminals at the airport. The screens were connected to a network that provided six channels of content — counter assignment, coun-ters, boarding, baggage claim, arrival and departure boards — and one for just advertising.

The deployment was orchestrated by Scala Inc. in partnership with Chile-based ViewMax, which also designed a 4-by-4 plasma video wall for the airport, which displays advertising and public information.

Santiago International Airport has more than 7 million passengers that fly in and out of the airport each year, 60 percent of whom are international. The airport has 115 service counters and the facility covers 295,000 square feet.

Ezeiza (Argentina) International Airport: Another Scala InfoChannel Network was deployed at the Ezeiza International Air-port in Argentina around the same time as Santiago Airport’s. In Ezeiza, Monte-

video, Uruguay-based Obvio designed and installed two signage projects inside the duty-free shops in the departure terminals.

One project was in the back of the shop, where Obvio integrated plasma display monitors into an existing backlit display. The other is a large video wall com-posed of frameless plasma displays. A news release reported that the Ezeiza screen is the largest frameless plasma screen in Latin America. Both the plas-ma video wall and the back wall signage are used to promote brands sold within the store, give price comparisons and inform customers of special promotions.

Obvio designed two other types of back-wall digital signage units in the duty-free shops in Guarulhos Airport in Brazil. The content shown on the screens is very similar to that at the Ezeiza Airport.

Advertising in airports with digital signage

Ask any advertising expert about digital signage and he’ll tell you that one thing is for sure. It gets attention. From an advertising standpoint, it provides huge advantages for reaching customers. Those advantages are enhanced in an airport setting.

In the digital signage industry, we often talk about reaching captive audiences. Researchers try to find when and where consumers will be most likely to look at


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digital signs and, most importantly, when and where they can be most influenced by digital signage to spend money.

Not incidentally, many of those research-ers have found that consumers pay more attention to digital signage content when they are in a situation where they are waiting. The term is called “wait warp-ing,” and it occurs when a customer perceives his wait time to be shorter because he is entertained during that period of time. It is another reason why the airport, where people wait for hours at a time for flights, is seeing such an influx of digital signage applications.

More digital signage geared toward advertising is being seen in concourses, as well as in the small commercial businesses that exist inside the airport. Retail shops, food courts and media companies that buy advertising all are taking advantage of this outlet when it is available. All of these companies use digital signage as an alternative to the traditional static signage and backlit displays. By doing this, they have the ability to decrease the amount the costs of printing signs, play content at specific times of day and remotely control their displays, all of which increases their marketing and advertising effectiveness.

JetSet Media

So far, we’ve touched on airport digital signage in the sense that it is deployed in the concourse setting and is designed

to appeal to coach and first-class pas-sengers. But one company is focusing its digital signage efforts on a more exclusive and hard-to-reach group: the elite traveler.

Rich demographics don’t get much richer than JetSet. The Kansas City, Mo.-based digital signage content provider operates screens in 70 private terminals (known in industry parlance as fixed base operations, or FBOs), bring-ing a mix of advertisements and infor-mation to c-level executives, celebrities and athletes.

It’s an audience powerful enough to make ad buyers drool: JetSet’s typical audience member has a net worth of $10 million and an investment portfolio

Retails shops in airport terminals are beginning to see the advantages of digital signage as an alternative to traditional static signage and backlit displays.

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of $6 million, buys a new luxury car once a year and owns at least two homes.

The company was founded in January 2006, and turned on its first screen in May of that year. President and founder George Kauffman said landing those first few venues was incredibly difficult.

“Gaining the venues was nearly impos-sible in the early going,” he said. “I often say getting the first six was much harder than getting the last 50. And what’s more, we knew going in that (we’d need) at least 50 FBOs in order to sell a single ad on this network.”

Kauffman said his company started with an extensive interview process, asking FBO owners what kind of information would be useful to their passengers without being intrusive or overpowering. Since the network would be subsidized by advertisements, a delicate balance had to be struck.

“This FBO industry is a very conserva-tive group, so asking them to alter their business even in the slightest of man-ners is taken very seriously,” he said. “Losing or disappointing a single cus-tomer is something they generally will not risk, when they are buying 1,500 gallons of jet fuel for $5 a gallon.”

Part of the screen’s value proposition for both FBO and passenger is the Flight Tracker, a Flash application that pulls data from the FAA to show all inbound

flights. Kauffman said many of his customers use the screens as a central source of planning information, directing everyone from limo drivers to family mem- bers to use them.

Weather radar gets a slice of the screen real estate, as does the FBO owner him-self — a portion of the screen is devoted to advertising local products and servic-es, such as fuel prices and jet sales.

The screens run on software from Pop-star Networks.

Ad buyers not only get access to an incredibly exclusive audience, they can segment that audience even further and target it geographically; ads can run across the entire JetSet network, or just in desired markets. Ads can run on a playlist or can be triggered by external stimuli (for instance, an advertiser can have different pieces of content for dif-ferent weather conditions).

“Once we saw the screen, we were sold,” said Russ Boy Jr., proprietor of Fort Lauderdale-based National Jets. “The screen sure does get a lot of atten-tion in my facility.”

That seems to be the case in other facili-ties, as well. Earlier this year, JetSet ran a piece of advertiser content from Cessna that poked fun at turboprop planes (“Friends don’t let friends fly tur-boprops”). It was an ad that had run in print magazines for years, without gen-

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erating a single complaint. Within three days of the ad going up on the JetSet screens, the company had received 37 complaints from customers who feared the ad would insult their valued flyers.

“Typically, I wouldn’t tout such an event, but the underlying point is that the ad was being seen and eliciting an immedi-ate response,” Kauffman said. “Cessna was thrilled, and simply pulled down that tag line.”

Kauffman said his company is on target to have screens in 130 to 150 FBOs by the end of 2008, with most of the growth due to word-of-mouth referrals.

“Marketers looking to increase their brand awareness among this elite audience need to reassess their media plans,” said Laura Davis, digital me-dia consultant to retailers, in a news release. “Reaching this affluent demo-graphic group between destinations in comfortable, private airport settings is a great way for marketers to influence high-end purchases.”

Chicago O’Hare International Airport

One of the limitations of airport sig-nage of any kind is that it often can be overlooked by passengers as they rush to get to the ticket counter or to their flights. An emerging tactic from advertis-ing companies has been to use inter-activity as a way to draw people in and

create a captive audience, especially among those travelers who have to wait in terminals for flights.

As part of this initiative, Accenture, a Chicago-based management consulting and technology services company creat-ed a high-definition interactive display in the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. The display is made up of nine separate DLP screens combined to make one large display. The high-definition screen measures 10 feet by seven feet and displays news, weather, entertainment and sports content. The screen is touch-enabled, and users have the ability to control what type of content is displayed on the screen by touch. It also has multitouch capability, which means that multiple users can control content at the same time. The content was developed by professionals in Accenture’s Technol-

One of the limitations of airport signage of any kind is that it often can be overlooked by passengers as they rush to get to the ticket counter or to their flights.

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ogy Labs, and all of the screens can be updated remotely from that location.

In addition to the freestanding Accenture digital displays, O’Hare International is seeing more digital signage used for advertising going up on its walls.

Elsewhere in one of the Midwest’s larg-est airports, Clear Channel Outdoor, the largest outdoor advertising company, has plans to install a large digital bill-board indoors. The board will feature eight 6-by-8 foot LED screens, pro-grammed to run eight-second advertis-ing spots continuously.

Las Vegas McCarran Airport

The Las Vegas Strip is a virtual blur of digital signage in its most extravagant form, so it only makes sense that Vegas’ McCarran Airport follows suit. Although not as flashy and large, digital signs have been placed in McCarran by Orlando, Fla.- based Monster Media. But these signs, which are used for advertising, aren’t just standard examples of digital signage.

Monster Media is using the signs for immersion-based advertising, where passers-by are filmed by a small cam-era and their images show up on the screen as part of the advertisement. Viewers can interact with aspects of the advertisement by moving their hands or bodies around. For example, viewers can make Skittles candy scatter on the screen by waving their hands across a

pile of them in the ad.

Alliance Airport Advertising, which sells the indoor ads for McCarran Airport, has signed a two-year agreement with Monster Media for the immersive adver-tisements. And Alliance likes the con-cept, mainly because it brings in more money than traditional static advertising. According to Alliance, it costs $3,000 per month to advertise on a static sign, while Monster yields $12,000 per month for each advertiser using the interactive digital signage.

Monster Media CEO Chris Beauchamp says customers are entertaining them-selves with the digital signs, and he hopes it will take their minds off long, irritating waits at the airport.

The first advertiser to take advantage of Monster’s program was TravelZoo, an online travel publisher. One of Trav-elZoo’s first ads featured an interactive slot machine where customers could virtually pull down the handle and win travel-related prizes.

At its inception, some questions were raised as to the legality of taking some- one’s picture and putting it on the screens without his permission, but Monster Media insists that since the data is not recorded in any way, it is completely legal. The company also noted that by entering a public space, such as an airport or transit system, you automatically give up that right, anyway, like appearing in a tourist photo.

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Case Study: ADFLOW Nuance Duty-free Shops

To travelers, nothing is more im-portant than getting where they need to be on time. This presents a challenge to those companies that choose to market their prod-ucts in airports, where most of the traffic is hurried.

“Travelers do not have much time to browse and, therefore, you do not have much time to influence their pur-chasing decision,” said Wayne Ruttle, vice president of digital sig-nage provider ADFLOW Networks. “The airport is a hustle-and-bustle retail environment with customers on the fly, and attracting their attention and trying to influence their buying decisions is tough.”

With 320 stores in airports, The Nuance Group is the largest global duty-free retailer in the world. In 2004, the company’s North American branch decided to install seven digital displays at its stores in Toronto Pearson Airport, in an attempt to catch the attention of some of the estimated 25 million people per year who pass through.

“The screens allow for vivid, animated visuals to be changed in a very short period of time, and also allow the flexibility of updating and changing commu-nications almost instantly,” said Mona Lee-Tam, Nuance’s North American director of marketing and promotions. “It is also more cost-effective than updating tra-ditional print media.”

Continued on the next page

“The screens allow for vivid, animated visuals to be changed in a very short

period of time, and also allow the flexibility of updating and changing communications almost instantly.”

— Mona Lee-Tam, North American director of marketing and promotions, The Nuance Group

The screens, connected to AD-FLOW’s media player hardware and Web-based content management system, serve two purposes: Some of them are mounted in store windows, facing outward to bring traffic in, while the rest are situat- ed strategically inside the store, strengthening merchandising ef-forts and allowing the retailer to tap co-op advertising dollars.

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Case in point: A key liquor supplier wanted to run a national promotion on one of its products within Nuance stores. It created a one-minute video clip and purchased a month’s worth of time on the in-store displays. The result? A sales record for that product during the promo-tion.

The screens also provide significant operational ef-ficiencies for the retailer. Since Nuance has suppli-ers all over the world, managing its media assets is no small task. But the ADFLOW Web-based content management system provides the company with an always-open pipeline for incoming content, from any-where in the world.

Ruttle said the Web-based system was one of the main reasons Nu-ance chose ADFLOW; the other was the fact that the company offered an IT-free solution.

“Since their corporate network infrastructure was off-limits to any digital-signage initiative, our Web-hosted solution was ideal,” he said.

Growth is on the way for both the airport and for Nuance. Toronto International is in the middle of a 10-year, multibillion-dollar expansion and develop-ment program. By the end of 2010, Nuance will have expanded its signage program to 36 display screens throughout the airport, all networked and controlled by the ADFLOW system.

“Millions of people every month will see the screens and react accordingly,” Ruttle said. “Digi-tal signage works best when it is strategic in nature and designed to meet specific retail objectives.”

The Nuance Group — the largest global, duty-free retailer in the world — has installed digital displays at its stores in Toronto Pearson Airport in an attempt to catch the attention of some of the estimated 25 mil-lion people per year who pass through.

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Chapter 3 Digital signage on public transportation

A s discussed in Chapter 2, one of digital signage’s biggest advantages is that it has the ability to

attract attention from consumers in such a way that it draws that attention away from static signage.

Static signage long has been prevalent in public transportation venues, such as bus stops, train stations and ferry docks. One reason that advertising has seen such success in these areas is that, as with any kind of public transportation, people are going to have to wait. Stud-ies have shown that people waiting in these areas are more susceptible to receiving information, and are looking for a way to kill time.

“On buses and trains, the average expo-sure for a consumer to a network, such as TransitTV, is about one hour and 40 minutes,” said Kim Norris, president of the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau.

Take the London Underground system, or as Londoners call it, “the Tube.” Almost every square inch of tile space in these subterranean stops is covered with wall advertisements placed by companies such as J.C. Decaux and CBS Outdoor. Once on the trains them-selves, advertisements line the inside of the walls, with a Tube map intermittently placed between them.

Some Tube stations require riders to take an elevator to the ground level, and

those elevators mirror the rest of the Tube walls, showing ads for off-Broad-way shows, makeup and shoes. One characteristic of the Tube is that riders generally use escalators to reach the ground level, and on the walls of the es-calator are small signs that run from top to bottom. Sometimes these signs show the same advertisement while some are of the “Burma-Shave” nature, where a message is displayed successively from sign to sign as the rider moves up the escalator.

But one British digital signage company — Esprit Digital — has gone one step further. At London’s Tottenham Court Underground station, the traditional paper signs on either side of the escala-tors have been replaced with screens. James Brenner, president of Esprit

Advertising and informational signage have long been preva-lent in public transportation venues. Studies have shown that people waiting in these areas are more susceptible to receiv-ing information, and are looking for a way to kill time.

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CHAPTER 3 Digital signage on public transportation

Digital said his company has patented software that allows ads to move along-side riders from one screen to the next as they ride up the elevator. At Screen Expo Europe 2007 in London, Esprit had a demo of footage of “Rocky Balboa” running alongside passengers as they went up the escalator, prepared for the release of the film “Rocky Balboa.”

Brenner said Esprit has a contract to install the system at other Tube stations.

As in most places in central London, dig-ital signage easily found a home in the Tube stations and is becoming a regular occurrence in London public transporta-tion. Companies like CBS Outdoor have begun to transform their movie poster-like signs into digital signs, which allow them to maximize that precious and expensive advertising space by allow-ing more than one ad to run throughout the day. Also, being dynamic, the digital signs are catching more people’s atten-tions, allowing those signs to stand out in the sea of ads that are on the walls. (For more information about escalator digital signage in the London Under-ground network, see the case study at the end of this chapter.)

Cruise lines, which are used to offering luxurious accommodations for guests on their liners, have been keen to adopt digital signage and applications that pro-vide information and advertisements.

Tallink Cruise Lines operates cruise

ships that run between Tallinn, Estonia; and Helsinki, Finland. The company’s newest cruise liner, the M/S Star, was outfitted with a digital signage solution that was placed throughout the ship, with a strong presence in the food court area. Digital signs are placed over the ice-cream bar, pizzeria, snack bar, entrance and the shopping area. At the snack bar, the screens are used as digi-tal menu boards, which display pictures of menu items and price tickers.

The solution was designed by Elec-trosonic Lightinen and Cayin Technol-ogy, which placed the 29 flat screens on the ship. The dynamic, informational content that runs on the screens is pow-ered by a networked SMP-PRO2 media player. Cayin’s back-end technology, the CMS Content Management Server, runs the network and is controlled by a Web-based user interface.

The Cayin CMS server, like many available in this market, can operate all of the screens from a central location and allows remote management of the content. The software allows different content to be played at different sites,

Cruise lines, which are used to offering luxurious accommodations for guests on

their liners, have been keen to adopt digital signage and applications that

provide information and advertisements.

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messages to be prescheduled and streaming video to be broadcast live from the Web.

Nanonation, a digital signage and kiosk software provider, also has had in-volvement in placing digital signage on cruise ships. Upon launching several 3,600-passenger cruise liners, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines installed digital signage to promote its spa and fitness facilities. In keeping with its luxurious high-end facilities, RCCL wanted a high-impact screen that included sound.

The result was a virtual concierge service, done through two 65-inch high-definition screens equipped with touch capability and placed outside of the spa and fitness center. The screens let guests preview the spa treatments, fitness equipment and facilities in high definition. There is even footage of a woman — in HD, of course — layered into the content, guiding users through the system and making recommen-dations on spa treatments and other services.

Displaying advertisements

We have discussed how digital signage provides excellent opportunities for advertisers. Here are some examples of how advertisers targeting passengers have capitalized on this technology:

Nokia interactive digital signage: Above the Tube in Central London, at

the entrance to the Tottenham Court station, is an example of interactive digital signage. Nokia recently put up an interactive touchscreen, where users can play a “matching game” on the large phone’s screen. The screen serves as a way to keep Tube passengers busy while waiting as well as an advertise-ment for Nokia’s N95 cell phone.

Interactive bus station signage for the Palm Treo 680: The D2 Palm Treo 680 digital-signage deployment made significant waves when it hit Times Square in November 2006. The project included a $25 million marketing cam-paign headed up by AKQA, a media and technology advertising agency.

As part of its campaign, which included billboards and street teams riding on Segways, AKQA leaned on D2 for the design of interactive bus-shelter kiosks that used interactive digital signs that simulated interaction with the new Treos.

In each shelter, D2 replaced one wall with an orange ad for the Treo 680 — though the actual device in the ad was a 42-inch Panasonic flat screen pro-grammed to display the 680’s Web-site browsing abilities.

The bus shelters were chosen based on targeted demographic audiences. D2 and AKQA joined forces with Google, Yahoo!, eBay and Fandango — brands known and trusted by Palm’s targeted demographic, according to D2 and AKQA.

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A computer stored behind each Treo sign powered the digital sign. The computers were built by D2 to withstand extreme heat and cold. Each sign of-fered wireless connectivity to the media network.

D2 promoted the Treo in Times Square through an orange vinyl wrap that cov-ered the side of a Times Square build-ing. When passers-by walked by the orange Treo wall, they were prompted to use text messaging to control content displayed on the sign.

“The benefit of this is that it works as a beautiful promotional device on a drive-by basis, or to passers-by,” said Sandy Nix, president of D2 Sales.

The results of the project were immedi-ate, said Brian Hubbard, a member of the installation crew. He said passers-by began texting the sign before the instal-lation was finished. Nix said the texting feature gives advertisers a gauge for judging a campaign’s success.

Taxi digital signage gets the green light

In summer 2007, a long-awaited approval from the New York Taxi & Limousine commission went through, allowing companies such as NBC Universal, ABC and Clear Channel to move ahead with installation of in-taxi digital signage. The project had been piloted in the spring by the commission in an effort to boost

communication between taxis and improve service for passengers. The screens, some of them with interactive capability, are used for advertising and can be GPS controlled to run advertise-ments depending on what part of town the cab happens to be in.

Clear Channel and NBC Universal are working together to run NY10, Clear Channel Taxi’s entertainment network, in New York City cabs. The network fea-tures short form content that is exclusive to NBC, as well as content from NBC News, MSNBC, NBCU and some net-work programming.

The hardware was developed by Cre-ative Mobile Technologies and is known as the FREEdom Solution. In addition to running content, the network allows

In summer 2007, a long-awaited approval from the New York Taxi & Limousine commission went through, allowing the installation of in-taxi digital signage.

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passengers to see GPS maps of where they are and supports electronic funds transfer so passengers can pay the cab fare with a credit or debit card. By Aug. 1, 2007, all New York City taxi cab me-dallion owners were required to sign up for the integrated payment and content management program.

ABC is partnering with Verifone for a project called TAXI-TV. New York’s WABC-TV runs content supported by advertisers on the network, featuring shows such as Eyewitness News, Accu-Weather, ESPN and restaurant, shop-ping, nightlife and lodging information from the Zagat Survey.

However, not all is well with the cab driv-ers who are being forced to install these digital signs in their cabs. (See sidebar for details on the New York cabbie strike.)

Building the perfect screen layout

Not only do large digital signs increase customer impressions, they also allow the deployer much more space in which to work. A common concern among deployers is how to design the screen layout of their digital signs to maximize space for information, yet not make it cluttered and hard to read.

With screen sizes up to 103 inches these days, deployers in the travel industry have been opened up to a new set of opportunities.

“We are seeing two types of screen lay-outs,” said Wayne Ruttle, vice president of ADFLOW Networks. “One includes entertainment content on a zoned screen to broadcast live TV, news ticker, etc. The second one is very large format display screens grouped in bunches that broadcast advertising in a very impactful and impressive way.

“We also see the day when in-flight digital signage screens cater to travel-ers about restaurants, hotels and events taking place in the city they are travel-ing to just before landing. Then display screens in the hallways of the airport reinforce those messages right through luggage pick-up. Advertisers will indeed take advantage.”

Incorporation of RSS feeds

Digital signage gives deployers the ability to not only run constantly chang-ing dynamic content, but the ability to design that screen so that it can run multiple pieces of content and informa-tion at one time.

One way that this is accomplished is through real-time information provision. Especially useful for improving customer experience in areas such as train sta-tions or airports where waiting or queu-ing is involved, real-time information encourages wait warping.

Real-time information generally includes feeds from the Internet that show up-to-

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the-minute news and weather updates. The footage is delivered to the digital signs through the digital media network, which receives the information at its central hub via the Internet.

All of the delivering can be done at every level without human assistance. The Internet supplies tools that allow updates to be sent automatically to specified addresses. One of the most popular Web feed formats is called RSS, which in its current format means Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0).

RSS is used to publish content that is updated frequently. In addition to news and weather, RSS is used to inform us-ers of blog entries, podcasts or sports scores, without the user having to visit each Web site to access that informa-tion. The updated information is col-lected and sent using an aggregator program.

Customers who choose to include live RSS news and weather updates lever-age their digital signage networks to provide even more benefits for their customers. In addition, the deployers reap many benefits. As we said earlier, overall customer experience is improved by means of wait warping, which means customers are more apt to return for future business.

Also, customers generally are im-pressed with digital signage, and even more impressed with digital signage that

provides them with accurate, relevant and up-to-date news and weather reports. Lastly, deployers double the effectiveness of their digital signage networks by com-bining the RSS feeds supplying news and weather info with their existing ad-vertisements and promotional content. The combination has the potential to draw more eyes to the screen and use the news and weather feature to expose customers to promotional content who normally wouldn’t take the time to watch.

Content and live TV implications

Oftentimes in airport terminals and train stations we see flat screens running normal TV programming such as CNN or MSNBC. But travelers may not im-mediately consider this digital signage. The truth is, in most cases, that is digital signage by definition. The content is not being broadcast, rather it is being narrowcasted to the screens through a digital media network. Running live TV and television programming in airports or stations can be tricky due to the legal ramifications involved. In the next sec-tion, Robert Scott, a lawyer in Dallas, explains how to legally run TV content.

Also, customers generally are impressed with digital signage, and even more im-

pressed with digital signage that provides them with accurate, relevant and up-to-

date news and weather reports.

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Digital signage, live television and the lawBy Robert Scott

Embedded, high-definition content com-bined with television feeds from popular networks such as CNN, ESPN or MTV enable retailers to draw customers in, promote products and specials, bring the retail environment to life and gen-erally enhance the customers’ overall in-store experience.

One popular method of display lets re-tailers display digital advertising around cable television content. While an effec-tive and burgeoning market for advertis-ing, the format is not without its potential legal implications. Before you run out and buy a set of monitors to display digital signage around cable television content, good planning and investigation into any legal ramifications should be your first step.

Common uses and copyright obligations

The concept of using television display in consumer environments has been around a long time, but it is only with the recent proliferation of affordable flat-panel monitors that digital signage has become a marketing stronghold. Retail-ers are incorporating LCD or plasma dis-play panels into store design; banks and financial institutions are incorporating televisions into lobby areas; even public

spaces such as transit hubs, fast-food restaurants and gas stations are benefit-ing from the electronic medium.

As a communications tool, digital signage offers the ultimate capability: Retailers can deliver targeted messages as dictat-ed by customers’ interests, requirements and spending habits. Content is king. Promotions, announcements, product information, retail spots and brand loy-alty messages permeate the consumer environment while cable television feeds offer entertainment.

However, with this amount of television content being pulled from numerous sources and providers across varying networks come considerable copyright considerations for the content user.

When using a signage provider to ac-cess and deliver cable television con-tent, it is important to be aware of the parameters of the contract between your provider and the cable companies. The signage provider’s contract with the cable provider often includes a provision limiting use to “noncommercial” settings.

Even if commercial use is allowed, the subscriber — in this case, the retail outlet — must obtain permission from the cable provider before such use is possible. Displaying cable television in a digital signage medium without express written permission probably would con-stitute prohibited commercial use and the subscriber would have breached its

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contract with the cable provider.

In addition to potential contractual viola-tions the content user may have made, the Copyright Act may be implicated. The content in cable television is copyrighted in its entirety and the replaying of it in a digital signage medium constitutes what is known as a secondary transmission. In this case, a secondary transmission is the transmission of cable television broadcasts by the digital signage net-work simultaneously with the primary transmission from the cable channel itself. In other words, the digital signage network retransmits a cable signal simul-taneously with the cable provider. The retailer’s digital sign is duplicating the cable provider’s service. This is where contractual and copyright issues come into play.

Potential pitfalls to avoid

Altering content: According to copy-right laws, any user other than the own-er of the cable transmission does not have the right to alter the transmission in any way. This means that if the digital signage network in any way changes the original appearance or delivery of the cable content — for example, by divid-ing the television screen into parts and displaying advertising around the cable content — the signage provider would be liable.

Licensing: If secondary transmission of cable signals, modified or not, is illegal,

how do bars transmit sports events for patrons? Licensing. And the same ap-plies to music. Bars and other venues license the right to play cable television for a fee. Ignoring an available license program and transmitting content with-out permission could result in fines or a lawsuit. One such licensing organization is The American Society of Compos-ers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). ASCAP has been known to pursue even small, family-owned bars for copyright infringement actions.

Potential damages

If copyright infringement claims are brought and upheld, remedies could include actual damages, statutory dam-ages and injunctions. In extreme cases, remedies may include the impounding or destruction of the offending articles and charges of criminal liability. More often than not, however, the copyright owner will seek monetary damages and an order, called an injunction, to pre-vent further infringements by the digital signage user.

Actual damages include profits earned by the user as a direct result of the digital signage displays. In such cases, it is imperative that the content user can deliver accurate records. The copyright owner is required to present proof only of the infringer’s gross revenue, and the infringer is required to prove his or her deductible expenses and the elements of profit attributable to factors other than

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the copyrighted work.

Statutory damages are determined by the judge. The guidelines dictate that damages may range from $750 to $30,000 per infringement, though if the court finds the content user acted will-fully, that ceiling is raised to $150,000 per infringement.

The defendant in a copyright infringe-ment case may be forced to pay the plaintiff’s court costs and attorney’s fees, which, depending on the complexity of the case and the amount of work in-volved, could reach into the tens of thou-sands of dollars. Courts use a number of factors in determining whether to assess costs and fees against the infringer.

Protecting your businesses

Though there are some potentially costly consequences when discussing copyright infringement, businesses can take simple steps to mitigate these risks. Remember that with new technology and ingenuity also come new consider-ations and obligations for both providers and users.

Conducting early research into the benefits and pitfalls of digital signage is the first step in preparing a plan to ensure your business is protected. Re-tailers should examine their subscriber agreements carefully to determine the extent of their transmission rights. When reviewing these or any legal documen-

tation, the advice of an attorney with expertise in licensing and copyrights can be an invaluable resource, and one well worth the cost to avoid costly mistakes down the road.

Robert Scott is managing partner of Dallas-based Scott & Scott LLP, a legal firm specializing in IT compliance man-agement.

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N.Y. cabbies threaten strike over digital signs in cabs

A large number of New York City taxi drivers are upset about a technology up-grade that is being implemented in their cars, and have threatened a two-day strike that could bring much of the city’s cab service to a halt.

At issue is the Taxi & Limousine Com-mission’s Taxi Technology Enhancement program, which would place displays in the back seats of all of the city’s cabs by February 2008, along with card-swipe units to facilitate credit- and debit-card payments.

City officials say the goal is strictly to improve customer service, not only through card acceptance but in-car map-ping, entertainment content and two-way messaging to speed the retrieval of lost items. But a number of cabbies say the devices not only will invade their privacy, they will eat away at their take-home pay.

“The taxi cab is a quintessential New York symbol, and we don’t take it lightly when changes are made to the cab,” said Bhairavi Desai, co-founder of the New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance.

Desai said that even though the NYT-WA’s membership represents only about

a fourth of the drivers working in the city, she anticipates most, if not all, New York drivers will take part in a strike.

“We think it could be every taxi on the street,” she said.

Transaction fees, GPS tracking at the heart of disagreement

The TLC’s Technology Enhancement program is built around four key require-ments: universal credit/debit card accep-tance; electronic trip sheets that auto-matically record the information drivers currently capture with pen and paper; two-way text messaging to help garages communicate more quickly with drivers about lost items; and a passenger-facing screen that displays real-time maps of the trip, public service announcements and news and entertainment content. Taxi owners have a choice of four ap-proved vendors for the technology, which is estimated to carry a total price tag of about $20 million for the city’s 13,087 cabs.

Allan Fromberg, deputy commissioner for public affairs for the TLC, said cus-tomer service, particularly in the form of card acceptance, is the primary push for the program.

But under the terms of the TLC program, it is the drivers that will be required to pay the transaction fees whenever a card is used. Desai said those fees would amount to about $1,000 per year

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for a driver who took a single card trans-action per day.

The GPS system that powers the on-screen maps is another point of conten-tion — particularly, Desai said, since it is connected to the car’s meter.

“It’s actually being used to capture driv-ers’ economic data,” she said, disput-ing the TLC assertion that GPS is used only for mapping and the location of lost property. “They put it on the meter — you don’t need it on the meter if it’s only tracking where the vehicle is moving. Drivers are independent contractors, not employees. Why should they give up their private financial information? It’s like if a company owner got an employ-ee’s bank statement each month.”

The card acceptance mechanism is connected to the car’s meter. Desai said that if either of these crucial compo-nents malfunctions, has trouble finding a signal or goes offline for any reason, the meter will shut off automatically and the driver won’t be able to accept fares until the problems are solved.

So far, about 3,000 of the city’s taxis have the card swipes installed; about 1,300 have the full package of technol-ogy. Already, Desai said she is getting reports of cars that can’t get a strong enough signal to connect for either the on-screen data or a transaction.

“There have been a lot of signal fail-

ures,” she said. “The advice the driv-ers are getting from the garage is, ‘Oh, just keep driving around until you get a signal.’”

TLC representatives would not com-ment on the potential strike, but issued a statement from commissioner and chair-man Matthew W. Daus:

“Under the Bloomberg Administration, taxicab drivers continue to be a top pri-ority — with the last two fare increases delivering a living wage of over $17 per hour. Riders have paid an additional $1 billion directly to drivers’ pockets, were promised technology enhancements in return — and they deserve to have that promise kept. The taxicab industry has never been healthier and safer, and I am confident that the vast majority of our 44,000 professional drivers will continue to serve the public as they do so well every day.”

In 2004, New York’s taxi system raised fares for the first time since 1996, and 75 percent of that raise went to drivers. In 2005 rates were raised again, with 100 percent of the increase going to drivers — the first time that has hap-pened in the history of the organization. The TLC estimates that drivers have collected an extra $1 billion in increased fares since 2004.

What will the passengers think?

New Yorkers are a notoriously opinion-

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ated bunch, and those opinions seem divided as to the fairness and value of the technology enhancements.

Diane Roback, a publishing executive who considers herself a frequent cab passenger, likes the idea of being able to use the company credit card but doesn’t think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

“I don’t like to see cabbies charged a percentage of the transaction,” she said. “They have a hard enough time making a decent wage.”

She also takes extreme exception to the GPS technology, and the incremental loss of privacy for both driver and pas-senger it seems to represent.

“New Yorkers generally don’t need a GPS system to give them directions,” she said. “So this is being done for tourists? That’s a big quality of life is-sue that’s being inflicted on us when it doesn’t seem like it would be any real gain for us. I hate giving up any level of privacy, and once this is given up, it’s never given back.”

But Soledad Roybal, a freelance events manager who also frequents the taxi system, said she would welcome the in-formation such a system would provide, and how it might help make drivers more accountable.

“As a passenger, I have felt the frustra-

tion on more than one occasion of a taxi driver not knowing where he is going or taking advantage of me when I don’t know, especially from the airport,” she said. “I do tend to wonder if the reason that the drivers don’t want this is be-cause they could be forced to take a different, less profitable route.”

As for the transaction fee for card pay-ments, Roybal said that’s part of the cost of doing business. “Small business owners — including my parents — take credit cards for all amounts small and large, and they pay the fee,” she said.

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Case study: London UndergroundLondon’s underground rail system, known to locals as the Tube, carries more than 3 million passengers a day to and from their destinations. For advertisers, Tube stations have become a hot-bed for advertising, as those passengers mean a huge amount of impressions per day.

As advertisements continue to flood the Tube in digital form, Viacom and its partner for digi-tal media, EDL, needed a new solution for their transportation digital signage.

The solution was through Digi-tal View, which brought digital signage hardware and services to the table, as well as a digital media network capable of re-mote management and content distribution to the screens. The escalator system is composed of 66 monitors with 23-inch LCD displays with SXGA resolution (1280 by 1024).

The goal for the two companies

For advertisers, the London Underground rail system has become a hotbed for advertising, as more then 3 million passengers per day mean a huge amount of impressions per day.

was to design a high-impact experience for Tube passengers that would maximize the space the location had to offer.

In terms of engineering and maintenance, the location is highly demanding. Screens are on 24/7 and are susceptible to heat, cold, wind and vandalism. Digital View countered those elements with high-quality IP-65 enclosures, Digital View DN3 solid-state media players, Digital View SV-1600 controllers and the RemoteTransfer Linux-based media and network management system to maximize uptime.

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Chapter 4 Digital signage on the road

A lmost all of us have done it. You’re driving down the road, reading a seemingly normal

billboard, when suddenly it changes. It’s surprising at the time.

Not only have digital billboards begun to expand into mid-markets, but the quality of the screens themselves continues to improve. Brightness is being regulated, making the signs look like static ones during the day, but allowing them to be illuminated at night.

This progress isn’t without controversy, however. As the technology moves to mid-markets, more residents are com-plaining about the brightness factor. What might seem normal to New York City residents may not have the same effect to those in Des Moines, Iowa.

State and local officials also have given their opinions. Some governments feel that the dynamic signs are a distraction to drivers and, in some cities, have gone as far as to ban digital billboards. Other governments have placed regulation on brightness levels, dynamic content and change intervals.

In January 2007, the city of Eagan, Minn., placed a temporary moratorium on digital billboards; a few weeks later, Des Moines, Iowa, followed suit, saying the “impact of electronic digital and video signs on aesthetics, land use values and highway safety was not considered” when the city’s zoning ordinance was drawn up.

The controversy over digital billboards

Of the 450,000 billboards across the American landscape, only about 500 are full-color digital signs, capable of chang-ing their message every few seconds. But that number is projected to rise into the thousands in the next 10 years, which has legislators and safety advo-cates concerned.

Currently 43 states allow digital bill-boards, but concern still is spawning debate, research and legislative activity. Public worry over distracted drivers is nothing new; five U.S. states ban cell phone use while driving, and another 15 have partial restrictions in place. That same worry will impact the future of digi-tal technology in outdoor advertising.

“Drive down a road with an electronic billboard on it and you’ll know right away that they attract attention,” said Bill Gerba, president of WireSpring Technologies. He frequently travels a stretch of I-95 near the Fort Lauderdale Airport where “the electronic billboard is so bright compared to everything else

Not only have digital billboards begun to expand into mid-markets, but the

quality of the screens themselves continues to improve; however, this progress isn’t without controversy.

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CHAPTER 4 Digital signage on the road

around, especially at night, that it’s im-possible not to notice.”

Digital billboards represent a small frac-tion of the market; the Outdoor Advertis-ing Association of America estimates there are 500 of them, but projects that number to increase to 4,000 in the next 10 years. The three largest outdoor ad-vertising companies in America — Clear Channel Outdoor, CBS Outdoor and Lamar Advertising — are all experiment-ing with digital, to varying degrees.

Clearly, the technology behind digital billboards is not inherently hazardous — Times Square and Las Vegas are ample evidence of that. But the placement of it in a new environment may cause grow-ing pains.

The Federal Highway Administration recently commissioned a study on what digital billboards mean to driver safety. The federal government also committed $150,000 to study the issue.

John McDermot, analyst with technology consultancy Accuvia, said digital billboards will present risks and safety hazards, especially initially. “They are not an ev-eryday occurrence for most drivers,” he said. “I believe legislation will eventually strike a balance and dictate a correlation between video and traffic speed.”

The burden, it seems, will fall on ad agencies and content creators: They are going to have to resist the urge to

pull out every flashy tool in their bag of tricks. They also will have to take new factors — such as brightness control and how it interacts with dayparting — into account at the design stage,

“When the screen (on I-95) is display-ing something with a lot of white or light colors at nighttime, my pupils constrict to the point where I do have to slow down and let my eyes adjust,” Gerba said.

David Little of Key West Technology agrees. “I believe digital billboards with motion are distracting to drivers,” he said. “They shouldn’t be used.”

Even so, Bill Collins, research analyst and president of Decision Point Media, points out that advertising by its very nature aims to capture the viewer’s attention, and that the complaints being leveled against digital billboards are nothing new.

“It’s important to point out that in the past, many people have made unsup-ported claims that billboards in general are a traffic safety problem,” he said. “However, to date, I am not aware of any reputable traffic safety experts that see billboards, in general, as being a major safety problem.”

“I believe legislation will eventually strike a balance and dictate a correlation

between video and traffic speed.”— John McDermot, analyst, Accuvia

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Digital billboards and advertis-ing on the road

The billboard industry, a mature one, is hungry for new innovation. Federal and local regulations make it difficult to put up new billboards; the challenge then becomes squeezing more revenue out of existing ones.

Digital billboards that are installed seem to be doing very well. Tracy Libertino, analyst with Accuvia Consulting, said 94 percent of people who saw a mov-ing billboard recalled the product being advertised, versus 43 percent for tra-ditional billboards. That led to a sales increase of 107 percent for products shown on moving billboards, versus 54 percent for static ones.

The billboards also open the door for a larger number of ad sales. Typically, ads on a digital billboard are sold in eight-second increments. Sales executives can offer targeted packages that deliver content to boards in strategically chosen locations at strategically chosen times of the day — an impossibility with paper signs.

They can charge more, as well. Liber-tino said the average cost per thousand impressions on a traditional billboard is around $2; the CPM for a digital bill-board can be almost 20 times as much.

And then there is the very real public safety benefit, which already has proven

Ask the expert: What is your opinion on

digital billboards?

“It appears they are very distracting, which makes the value for advertisers attractive for sure, and they are investing.”

— Wayne Ruttle, ADFLOW

“We believe digital billboards are one of the best values for advertisers and a great service for potential customers.”

— Rocky Gunderson, SeeSaw Networks

“I believe digital billboards with motion are dis-tracting to drivers. They shouldn’t be used.”

— David Little, Keywest Technology

“I believe legislation will eventually strike a balance and dictate a correlation between video and traffic speed.”

— John McDermot, Accuvia

“To date, I am not aware of any reputable traffic safety experts that see billboards, in general, as being a major safety problem.”

— Bill Collins, Decision Point Media

to be priceless. On Feb. 12, 2007, a 14-year-old Minnesota girl disappeared. Several digital billboards in the area ran a multimedia Amber Alert; the girl was found the next day.

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In Huntsville, Ala., police recently com-menced a manhunt for a registered sex offender. Lamar Advertising Co. put together artwork that resembled the sus-pect, ran it by the local Crimestoppers organization for approval and put it on the regional billboard network at 5 p.m. At 9:45 p.m., the suspect was captured.

Pump-top displays come of age

As pay-at-the-pump technology turns 20 years old in 2007, the concept has been a tremendous success. In 1994, 13 percent of c-stores offered the time-saver; today, that number has risen to 93 percent.

But perhaps it has worked a little too well. Pay-at-the-pump has meant a drastic decrease in c-store traffic. Margins on gasoline are razor-thin, compared to the higher profits made on items sold in the store. Andre van der Velk owns four c-stores in California, two independent and two Shell; he said two-thirds of his gasoline customers never set foot in his stores.

“There is a constant drive for the opera-tor to get people to come into the store and buy,” he said.

That drive has been the motivation for traditional pump-toppers — static signs advertising in-store specials — and is the force behind a number of companies building digital signage networks at gas station islands.

Founded in 2006, Michigan-based Gas Station TV (GSTV) quickly landed a con-tract to be the exclusive screen provider for Murphy Oil. So far, the company has placed about 1,000 screens at c-stores in Atlanta, Dallas and Houston. GSTV chief executive David Leider said the screens feature national content from ABC, mixed in with original GSTV con-tent that takes aim at local interests.

The screens are provided to the c-store owner at no charge; GSTV pays the bills by selling ad space to national accounts such as Chevrolet, Progressive Insur-ance, Dodge, 1-800-Flowers and Quick-en Loans. The network is managed by GSTV and runs Scala’s InfoChannel software.

PumpMedia, which won the exclusive contract for Chevron’s video-at-the-pump program, uses a similar business model and value proposition, with one differ-ence: C-store operators can opt to pay for the screens and eliminate the outside advertising. Under the ad-subsidized model, the storeowner gets 75 percent of the screen’s loop time, and PumpMe-dia sells ads on the other 25 percent.

Peter Tawil, president of PumpMedia, said the idea for his company came to him in 1999, when he was working in television advertising. While fueling his car one day, he heard audio advertise-ments for in-store products and services being played over the station’s loud-speaker.

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“The guy had a shoe shine inside, a magazine rack, a small restaurant,” he said. “He had it all going, and he was smart — he was promoting all of his products inside the store. When I heard that, I thought, ‘OK, that’s smart, but if you can do it with audio, wouldn’t it be more powerful with video attached to it?’”

Larger companies are getting in on the action, too. Daktronics is part owner of Fuelcast Network, a joint effort with VST International to get digital signage onto self-service gas pumps, and Westing-house recently announced an exclusive arrangement with AdtekMedia to provide technology for that company’s PumpTop TV program.

Pump-top digital signage is in its infancy, still at the stage where any number of small players are trying to eke out an existence selling screens and ad space on them. Ken Goldberg, chief execu-tive of Real Digital Media (which, along with Avocent, supplies the technology for PumpMedia), said he recently took some c-store clients on a road trip to survey the competitor’s landscape. They found three different regional pump-top networks, each with their own propri-etary hardware set-up and content strategy.

“The content that (the clients) saw was not in line with what they wanted their customer to see,” he said. “One of the ads was a preacher talking about a lo-cal church — they certainly don’t want

religious messages coming out of the pumps.”

On one of the screens, they spied an ad for the pizza restaurant down the street — a direct competitor from the pizzeria inside the c-store.

“They will take any ad that they can, in-cluding Rev. Billy Bob and cheap pizza,” Goldberg said. “And there are a lot of them. You might put 10 bucks in your gas tank and you’ll see three ads.”

All of which hints at a market that is ripe for consolidation. Clearly, there is great potential in using digital signage at the pump, but widespread adoption — par-ticularly by large chains associated with big-name brands — will require a uni-formity of experience and a heightened understanding of how to handle brand assets.

“In an old-fashioned way, this is what the industry has been doing with pump-top-pers since the 1970s,” said van der Velk. “This is just a technology advancement of the old pump-topper. The only reason it is taking so long is that the oil industry is very protective of what they put above their logo.”

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