DailyDOOH

Ayuda Media Systems released Tuesday a new iOS App called the ‘Ayuda App‘ for OOH operators that includes location browsing of inventory on maps, photo sheets, proposal generation with TAB OOH Ratings, and a social-like news feed for what’s trending. 

“Mobile first, cloud first.” commented Andreas Soupliotis, CEO of Ayuda about the company’s new strategy. “Most of us use our phone and tablets more than our notebooks today. We’re thus living in a world where offering a great experience on an iPhone or iPad is more important than having a great desktop experience. We already have products like Juice and Splash that scale to devices because they use HTML5 adaptive layouts, but to really get it right, you’ve got to offer a native app.”

The Ayuda App version 1.0 includes two main functions: inventory browsing, and a Facebook-like news feed.

• The inventory browser includes features such as browsing locations on a map or in list view with filters for media type and sales markets, photo sheets, list rate cards, TAB OOH Ratings, and the ability to create a proposal and email it to clients.
• The news feed (see below) includes a Facebook-like wall that posts, in real time, relevant information on campaigns the user is tracking. The user can ‘follow’ and ‘like’ any piece of information they want such as: advertiser, a campaign, a location, a hold, or copy arrival. Any information on what they are following ends up on their news feed, with hashtagging support

– initially developed for iPhone, we understand that Ayuda soon has plans to release an iPad version with an experience that takes full advantage of retina display, Ed.

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I sat in on several sessions that were held each afternoon according to various partner interests at Scala Americas Partner Conference in Austin last week.

The ones I attended included: James Fine and Stéphane Bastien of Telecine, Montreal; Brian Russell of CTI Solutions, Kansas City; Bryan Nunes of Signet, Santa Clara; and Daniel Rubenstein, senior director of financial services at Scala.

James Fine and Stéphane Bastien of Telecine, combined, as they often do, a lot of interesting information interspersed with humour. They repeated their ‘bad content’ script acted out by two incredibly-good staffers cum actors that was first shown at the Video Walls Unplugged event during #dse2014 and talked about Footage2go, developed for people who don’t know what to put on their digital signage screens. It’s in the cloud, and you can search for whatever you want, including videos. Further, it works on any player or platform.

“Digital signage lets you constantly change your content,” said Fine. “It’s a living, breathing thing.”

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Consumers are pulling more brick-and-mortar retailers into realizing the need for digital signage.

“Lots of companies are now putting it into their budgets,” Dan McAllister, senior vice-president and general manager Americas, said at Scala Americas Partner Conference in Austin. “And where the IT people were involved in meetings in the past, now digital marketers are being included in the meetings, because the investment involves consumers.”

With this in mind, Scala has formed two specific committees to help support companies getting involved, as well as making companies aware of a special website, My.Scala.com,“a website we are working on that will be a portal for our partners to access that provides access to all kinds of information that they would need from Scala,” said McAllister.

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JCDecaux is expanding its Transvision network with the launch of a second screen at London Victoria Station. Part of JCDecaux’s investment in premium digital Outdoor, this second Transvision screen will strengthen JCDecaux’s London rail portfolio, underlining the importance of the South-East commuter audience to brands.

Delivering a weekly footfall of over 1.7 million, Victoria Station is the second busiest rail station in the UK and operates as two separate termini. The new screen will be located on the eastern side of the concourse, directly in front of a second experiential zone in the Station, facilitating campaigns that link screens to space, part of the offer from JCDecauxLive, the experiential brand at JCDecaux.

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Here’s a Command and Control setup, the like of which (or should I say the “shape of which”) you have probably never seen before…

It’s in Dallas. It’s part of RMG Networks’ Executive Briefing Centre (EBC) and that’s probably as much as I can tell you right now.

A worthy follow is Art Everywhere.

Web site here.

Outcome Capital, LLC announced a few weeks ago that it acted as placement agent on a private placement of subordinated debt and preferred equity in Monster Media, LLC. The capital was provided by Spring Capital Partners, L.P., and C3 Capital Partners, L.P.

Outcome Capital served as exclusive financial advisor to Monster Media.

The best sessions by far at #Connect2014 are the lone wolves up on stage (regular readers will know our aversion to panel sessions or roundtables).

We especially liked…

• Tim Nolan, Senior VP Marketing Creative and Brand Strategy, Lifetime Networks who showed why the TV Networks under his creative control loved outdoor advertising. My main takeaway from his speech was how he felt that Outdoor added to ‘Blog and Trade and Fan Engagement’ which increased the power of his marketing spend many fold. He gave plenty of examples of campaigns where ‘talent’ (the actors on his programming) tweeted on same and several where TV chat shows had picked up on the uniqueness of his outdoor promotions. It was the sort of presentation that should be required listening to all media planners out there!
• Suzanne Grimes, President and COO, Clear Channel Outdoor North America gave solid reasoning why the US industry should get behind #ArtEveryWhereUS (nice mentions on stage as well for technology partners Ayuda Media Systems and Blippar 0- demonstrating why pro bono work can pay so well). Suzanne admitted that initially she was not personally convinced about #ArtEveryWhereUS but was swayed by how successful London had been with the original Art Everywhere initiative. She then played TV footage of the US view on same. As we say to our US readers #LondonIsThePlaceToBe

London’s original take on Art Everywhere here http://arteverywhere.org.uk and North America here http://arteverywhereus.org

Liverpool Football team’s controversial 2-1 win against West Ham yesterday (Sunday) in the UK Premier League saw Paddy Power up the stakes with this tactical campaign running live on Ocean Outdoor’s Liverpool Media Wall.

With Liverpool back on top of the Premier League, the odds on the team lifting the League title are shortening.

Next weekend is a potential decider when Manchester City visits Anfield. Win that, and the title will be Liverpool’s to lose.

JCDecaux has unveiled its vision for the future of Outdoor advertising with the launch of Channel 6, a national network of 1,400 digital screens in the UK.

Located in major retail and transport hubs, Channel 6 will enable brands to deliver screen based communications in an active space for retail purchasing, with the opportunity to target out-of-home audiences who are also shopping and searching via smartphone.

With growth set to continue until the end of 2014, Channel 6 will deliver a weekly reach of 40% of the UK population.

Spencer Berwin, Managing Director – Sales at JCDecaux UK, told us “Outdoor’s role is changing as we continue to develop our screen based advertising. Our investment has provided a new digital channel with national reach and if we were a commercial TV channel we would have the fifth biggest weekly reach in the UK. The time is now right to highlight our national screen based channel in the active space – Channel 6.”

Part of JCDecaux’s major investment in digital Outdoor, JCDecaux recently unveiled SmartScreen – an insight-driven network of 400 screens at the biggest Tesco stores in the UK. Powered by dunnhumby insight, SmartScreen will enable optimised scheduling based on audience behaviour and sales.