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Raffi Vartian has an aim: to have signagelive the first name that comes to mind when it comes to digital signage software and solutions.

signagelive's Swiss Army Knife

“I’ve been given a tremendous flexibility by Jason Cremins, our CEO, to develop the business in North and South America, starting with the U.S. and Canada, and then into South America,” says Vartian. “I believe that by the time we’re concentrating on South American countries, many companies will already be familiar with us from our free 30-day trial offering – as offered on the company’s web site. And since our platform is multilingual, we’ll be able to enter various markets slowly and methodically.”

The 17-year-old signagealive, a privately owned company, is already well-known and strong in Europe, operating from its base in Saffron Walden, UK, and offering cloud-powered media delivery solutions and providing a platform for all sizes of digital networks. It already does have a small amount of business in North America. Vartian will be responsible for establishing strategic partnerships, securing resellers and distributors, and directing marketing strategy.

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News just in that OMG Outdoor (Omnicom Media Group) has joined OVAB Europe. There doesn’t seem to be any other information (yet) available.

A new research study from Lieberman Research Group, Great Neck, N.Y., shows how across-the-board impact of advertising on big TV events can be dramatically improved with a flight of cinema advertising.

The findings come from a quantitative study commissioned by New York-based Screenvision, innovator in cinema advertising and alternative content programming. The Screenvision/Lieberman Research study looked at two different groups exposed to the same Big Event TV ad, on television and in-cinema. An online survey was conducted in the 24-48 hours after the airing of the commercial during Super Bowl XLV in Feb./11, with a nationally representative group of 1,001 adults, age 18+. A second, in-depth interviewer-administered survey was conducted with 297 respondents at theaters in the Los Angeles and Nashville DMAs which screened these same ads, in the weekend following Super Bowl XLV.

The results showed that the combination of a Big TV Event ad buy with cinema advertising delivered double-digit increases in ROI- deemed metrics among the moviegoers who recalled the ads in both venues:

• Brand Affinity, i.e. the overall opinion of the brand: +41%
• Brand Awareness: +27%
• Word-of-Mouth, i.e., likelihood of sharing positive opinions: +27%
• Brand Recommendation: +13%

The study also demonstrated the unique power of showcasing showpiece Big Event TV commercials on theater screens as the recall of respondents who were exposed to spots only in theaters was 12% higher than those who had only viewed the spots on TV.

Cinema-only run also outperformed Big Event TV-only across the board by:

• +14% in Ad Likeability
• +21% in Ad Persuasiveness
• +6% in Brand Consideration
• +4% in Brand Opinion

Also 77% of respondents thought Super Bowl and other Big Event TV ads were a good fit for cinema AND Moviegoers seem to enjoy the Super Bowl ads more in the cinema environment, by a margin of 17:1.

“This study clearly demonstrates the unique power of cinema advertising and the role it plays in driving awareness, affinity, positive word of mouth and purchasing intent,” says Mark Mitchell, chief revenue officer of Screenvision. “It also dramatically reinforces the benefits that cinema delivers to amplify a Super Bowl, Grammys, Academy Awards and other Big Event TV investment.”

Following up on our short article with regard the Washington, D.C.-based Outdoor Advertising Association of America’s expenditures on lobbying, we were interested to see that the OAAA has released its extensive and interesting 2011 Annual Report in which a section is devoted to legislation – achieved or not – regarding the outdoor advertising scene.

We also noticed that the outdoor industry increased its political giving to federal candidates by 50% in 2011 compared to the previous year.

On the legislative front, 2011 was a successful year for the outdoor advertising industry, with, among others, voters overwhelmingly rejecting a billboard tax in West Hollywood (after the OAAA staff joined the well-organized coalition in opposition of the tax by walking door to door encouraging citizens to vote); Congress leaving the Highway Beautification Act intact; the industry achieving hard-fought victories at the state level; and government expanding its use of out-door advertising to communicate with the public on behalf of safety.

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Norwegian digital signage company Otrum is one of the first IBM customers in Norway to fully commit to cloud-based services. The company has migrated all digital signage clients to the IBM SmartCloud Enterprise (SCE), a move that eliminates the need for hundreds of physical servers at customer sites.

Otrum provides interactive TV solutions and content to the hospitality industry. As its interactive solutions handle more and more hotel guest information, intelligent systems are required to handle the analysis which provides hoteliers with the relevant profiling information on their guest.

Laser targeting guests is a core aspect of Otrum’s marketing solution, based on factors such as language, nationality, loyalty programme status etc. For this purpose Otrum uses the Cognos tool from IBM to handle marketing campaigns and highlight repeat behaviour patterns associated with guest interaction and purchasing.

Samu Raunela, CTO at Otrum, comments “In our industry Otrum is leading the way in cloud-based services, we are not only talking about cloud-based services but have them in full operation today. Being ‘in the cloud’ has become a demand from our customers, and this has given us confirmation that we made the right choice over three years ago, both in going ahead with adoption and choosing IBM as a partner.”

Paul Are Killie, Director Cloud IBM Norway, adds “Otrum has tapped into the future, they have taken a great leap ahead and have done this hand-in-hand with IBM. In Otrum’s case, both they and their end customer will benefit from operational and financial efficiencies.”

We see that YCD Multimedia have some of their solutions at both the HP and the Intel booths at the #NRF 101st Annual Convention & EXPO which kicks off Sunday 15th January in NYC.

We understand that YCD will be showing a mobile wireless digital signage solution, developed for Coca Cola in Israel. The mobile device plays specific clips promoting the product on the stand and since it is a wireless display, it can be located anywhere around the store.

Not much new in that you’d say – Amscreen (and others) have been doing this for sometime now of course but these systems can be managed and fixed remotely using Intel® Active Management Technology.

On the HP booth will be YCD’s ‘Retail Advertising and Merchandising Platform‘ (RAMP) which we like so much, A new analytics module has access to the point-of-sale (POS) systems, analyzing the correlation between the displays and actual sales.  A unique feature provides the user with the capability to immediately examine this correlation in various categories such as individual store departments, geographical regions, location etc.

Users can review trends and improve campaigns and ads. The new module closes the loop between in-store promotions and actual sales, allowing for real-time optimization.  
 
YCD will also demonstrate a mobile application allowing remote access to RAMP over the Internet from an Android mobile phone.

signagelive are we believe the first software company to announce support for the new range of IAdea HTML5 and IPTV capable digital signage devices announced earlier this week.

signagelive has worked closely with IAdea over several months to develop native support for the new range of players and displays with integrated players, which offer HTML5 and IPTV streaming support, in addition to still image and video content.

Commenting on the collaboration, Rex Chen – VP of Sales and Marketing for IAdea told us “IAdea is excited to partner with signagelive to bring great digital signage management features to IAdea’s new HTML5 platform. We believe this combination will enable many large-scale projects including hospitality and electronic menu applications. From the success we had in 2011 we are confident the added features to support dynamic content will greatly expand our market with signagelive.”

The IAdea HTML5 and IPTV capable devices will be supported within signagelive through an upgrade to the current Virtual Player license, at no additional cost.

Here’s another great use of digital signage in retail, spotted in London earlier today…

To be fair it’s surely down to poor window merchandising (or poor digital content management / turn your screens off mate!)

We happen to know that Mood Media recently won the FCUK music contract for all their stores – let’s just hope this isn’t their video content strategy!

Despite reports that CBS Outdoor was threatening to terminate the GBP 1 billion Tube ad contract, we just received a notification from Transport for London (TfL) confirming that CBS Outdoor will retain responsibility for all adverts on the London Underground network through TfL’s commercial advertising concession.

CBS Outdoor has held the commercial advertising concession since 2006 and is responsible for advertising sites across the London Underground network. As well as the traditional advertising sites which total approximately 31,000 poster sites at stations there are also in excess of 88,000 panels in train cars. The digital advertising network on London Underground is made up of cross track projection sites, liquid crystal display (LCD) sites and runs of digital panels along escalators.

Graeme Craig, Commercial Development Director at TfL, said: “Following discussions with CBS Outdoor we have reached a comprehensive agreement that sees CBS Outdoor continue to run the commercial advertising concession for London Underground. We are delighted to be maintaining our long and successful relationship with CBS Outdoor.”

Antonio Alonso, CEO of CBS Outdoor International said: “We are pleased that our partnership will continue on what is undoubtedly the best outdoor advertising estate in London and we look forward to working closely with TfL and London in the exciting lead up to the London 2012 Games and beyond.”  

Holiday shopping and presents received were reflected in some interesting data compiled by JiWire, San Francisco.

The location-based mobile media company’s on-the-go audience network connecting to public Wi-Fi found significant variations around connected-device adoption from BEFORE 1st December – 24th December and AFTER 25th December through to 31st December and AFTER the holiday timeframe.

Key findings include:

• The Kindle Fire more than tripled in connections in the U.S., growing 3.4 times;
• The iPad decreased in connections by 4.5%;
• In the top DMAs, post-holiday, leading city Denver saw a 400% increase in people connecting with a Kindle Fire, while the iPad saw an increase of 151%;
• Los Angeles followed Denver with a158% increase in people connecting with the Kindle Fire and a 24% increase in people connecting with the iPad, post-holiday;
• Pre-holiday, 51.3% of people connected from their laptops and 38.8% from smart phones;
• But post-holiday, it was almost the opposite, with 38.5% percent connecting from their laptops and 50.8% connecting on their smart phones.

While the individual figures are small bytes of information, taken together, they certainly reveal a changing mobile landscape.