While most digital sign deployments involve LCD and plasma displays, we often fail to recognize the possibility and eventual use of projectors as a digital signage display device. Discounting the projector will not result in a failure of a network's ability to get their message across, but it's like taking a weapon out of the full kaleidoscope of possibilities. In general, we tend to think of the sixteen by nine aspect ratio, installed in landscape with a three-panel layout as the undisputed authority for digital signage installations. This is obviously not a general problem, but we often paint ourselves into that mold.

There are some major benefits projectors can have over standard flat-panel plasmas and LCD televisions. Some such benefits could include:

• Display size. Projectors can increase the size and therefore the relative impact of the display screen. They can be especially effective in this regard when it comes to indoor installations.
• Flexibility and control. Projectors can give display operators a bit more control, especially when integrating with touch and rear projection.
• Cost. In some cases when cost is an issue, projectors can greatly outperform their LED and LCD counterparts--often this depends on quality and product comparison.

3M is one of the leading companies in the world of projection used as a touch screen. Microsoft has their own version of rear-projection touch applications. In case you've not heard of it, it's called Microsoft Surface. The benefits of using rear projection in touch, multi-touch, interactive, and augmented reality installations is more vast than we currently know. Projectors will be at the forefront of much of this "revolution." As digital signage continues to move into the realm of interactivity, the projector will play a key role in this revolution.

High Def

As projection devices improve, we may be seeing less and less flat panel displays. While I highly doubt it, this is certainly a possibility. Can you imagine a day when a projection device will replace flat panel LCD televisions for sign installs? I certainly don't ever see that completely happening for a number of reasons I'll not enumerate. However, future sign installs--especially those in door will benefit from a crystal clear display coming from a projection device rather than a flat-panel display.

Rear Projection

There are so super-sweet rear projection applications out there. Rear projection has not nearly begun to be tapped in downtown environments where in-window installations can target out-of-home audiences. Installations with rear-window projection will eventually be found in the windows of street shops in nearly every major city--worldwide. Mark my words. It will eventually be a reality.

Whatever the future holds for the projector, we know that it is not going away--especially as far as digital signs are concerned. The audio/video integration companies would have a hay day if I said projectors or LCDs would replace one or the other. That would simply be ridiculous.

Webster's defines brotherhood as "an association (as a labor union or monastic society) for a particular purpose." If we take Mr. Webster seriously, than we can easily see the interconnections and benefits of IPTV and digital signage. Simply stated, digital signage nothing more than an IPTV box with scheduled playback. IPTV(Internet Protocol Television) has been around for sometime. IPTV is a "multimedia services such as television/video/audio/text/graphics/data delivered over IP based networks managed to provide the required level of quality of service and experience, security, interactivity and reliability."

In general, most digital signage networks are a form of IPTV. In fact, we receive, regular inquiries asking about how our solution may be of used in an IPTV scenario. Generally, these requests come from a foreign language content provider who wishes to distribute foreign language content to a niche network of users here in the U.S. In most cases, digital signage software solutions are congruent with what they are looking to accomplish. The technology usually fits within their specific needs. One of the biggest struggles here, however, is cost. Enterprise digital signage is not priced to be used by a consumer. But, as signage prices continue to fall, the technology will further be solicited by other industries as a solution for specific niche market needs.

IPTV vs. Digital Signage

When most think of IPTV, they think of a set top box meant for install in the home of a consumer. The "TV" in the name implies this. IPTV is simply a different form of content distribution for television content. Of course the applications for IPTV are much more wide than this, including digital signage technologies. I personally see digital signage as a subset of IPTV, a literal branch in the evolutionary chain of technology development. Place-based networks are simply a different use of IP television.

IPTV and digital signage also imply a difference in revenue streams. IPTV can be done on a subscription model for streaming videos. In addition, the content can be subsidized by advertising. The content for both mediums will generally be extremely different. While, in general retail digital media targets consumers in much the same way IPTV does, they are doing it in a very different setting. Chillin' in your home watching streaming videos through an IPTV box would mean digital ad content will be very different. While revenue models in narrowcasting (both in advertising and subscription hosting) vary almost as widely as they do for Internet Protocol TV, the technology certainly shares similar DNA.

Is IPTV dead?

I personally feel the answer to this question is yes and no. IPTV competes mostly with Internet TV when it comes to video content delivery. Internet TV, which encompasses transport streams generally sent over the Internet, is a much cheaper method for distribution (which can mean the quality is degraded). Unfortunately, Internet TV generally does not allow for multicast capabilities, which limits it's functionality somewhat. With the increase in the prevalence of streaming media devices, IPTV continues to expand. Yahoo, Hulu, and even Netflix boxes brought to you by Roku are being used as streaming devices for in-home entertainment. IPTV and Internet TV are two synergistic technologies whose use will never die--it all depends on what needs completed.

How are digital signage and IPTV technologies symbiotic?

To say the two technologies are mutually exclusive is simply ridiculous. Furthermore, to say they cannot mutually benefit from one another is doubly ludicrous.

1. Multicasting. Multicasting allows for increased functionality for content delivery. Whether you're running a sign network or a IPTV network, implementing multicast capabilities can greatly expand the audience you solicit to in your software sales.

2. Content. I wrote previously about a general lack of content. Using IPTV as another source for digital sign content, would be a very big plus.

3. Display of content. While I believe the three panel layout is dying, it may be wise to not discount it for the consumer-driven Internet TV crowd. Yahoo's Connected TV is a good example of using screen zones.

4. Revenue generation. Advertising will always play a large role in in the home television as well as in digital out-of-home.

5. Interactivity. Applications like video-on-demand and interactive applications with mobile devices are increasing at a rapid rate in DOOH. Place-based media will continue to see integration with interactivity. And so will digital signage. As both move forward in their technology, interactivity platforms will see cross application between industries.

There are nearly no technologies which cannot receive a benefit from other--already developed--solutions in other industries. Because digital signage and IPTV are literal "blood brothers," it makes integration and cross-application between the two technologies nearly necessary. And since some companies in the industry have already delved into consumer IPTV, it is certainly an interconnecting technology worth noting.

The past couple of days I have been keeping up a bit with the South by Southwest show down in Austin, much of whose focus has been placed on the two new up-and-coming location-based applications Gowalla and Foursquare. Apparently, these two apps have been experiencing similar growth patterns and are currently somewhat tied in the race to be "the next killer app." Competition aside, I want to talk briefly on location-based applications, GPS, and what it all means for place-based media.

Location-Based Applications?

First, we may want to answer the simple question "what are location-based applications?" and "what type of benefit do they give the world?" Let's see how Gowalla and Foursquare define themselves. Foursquare tells us:

Foursquare on your phone gives you & your friends new ways of exploring your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things.

Similarly, Gowalla's website states the following:

The easiest way to share your location with friends.

These definitions are almost too simple for what the applications allow you to accomplish. In fact, these definitions remind me of Twitter's, "what are you doing right now?" A simple tagline of what Twitter is capable of doing, but certainly not an all-encompassing description of the full power of the application.

People use foursquare to "check-in", which is a way of telling us your whereabouts. When you check-in someplace, we'll tell your friends where they can find you and recommend places to go & things to do nearby. People check-in at all kind of places - cafes, bars, restaurants, parks, homes, offices.

You'll find that as your friends use foursquare to check-in, you'll start learning more about the places they frequent. Not only is it a great way to meet up with nearby friends, but you'll also start to learn about their favorite spots and the new places they discover.

These applications are for the in-city and worldwide traveler. You can take your GPS enabled smartphone with you and tag places, earn points and input what you thought about the locations you visited. It's like geocaching on steriods. The reason I like the application more than others is that it gets people out and about discovering new things from national parks to local restaurants in the city. It's a great way to showcase the world and share opinions of the places people are.

Place-Based Media

For those who have not been geocaching before, you should certainly give it a whirl. It really does not offer much except that it gives you the ability to do something while you are out and about. I personally have enjoyed doing it while riding my bike in more wilderness areas, camping, and just seeing nature. It could certainly be classified as a very "nerdy" activity--especially when you find a cached site that is in the middle of nowhere which might include a barbie head and some old sticks of gum. It makes you feel a bit like a loser for hiking or biking through the wilderness just to find somebody's garbage. However, it's more about the experience than the actual "find"--at least that's what you can tell yourself.

When it comes to more urban areas, waymarking and location-based apps, it's much easier to drive traffic to and get individuals to visit places when they have been marked by others who have attended or visited. In such high traffic locations, there will certainly be digital signage installed at some future date. And, as technologies marry, you will probably be able to check-in to the place-based display using your mobile device, inputting your opinion on the location with something like Gowalla or Foursquare.

And, of course there remains the discussing of advertising, cross-technologies, and cross-promotion which would take too long to discuss and may be jumping the gun a bit for purposes of our discussion here. I simply wanted to introduce some newer mobile and out-of-home apps that may eventually work well with digital signage technology. Of course, they will not work well in every instance, but can certainly be integrated well in high-traffic, well known urban locations.

Issues

One of the current issues which has garnered quite a bit of attention is the potential of strangers knowing your specific location. This becomes an issue for those who are checking in to specific places that are not their own homes. There is a site dedicated to this issue. It's called Please Rob Me. If you are a thief and would like to know who is not home so they can be pillaged, you can visit PleaseRobMe to check and see who is out of home.

There are other security and technology integration issues, but if you have no problem with people knowing where you are at all times, then by all means update-away. Otherwise, you can simply give your input to locations without "checking-in" to let everyone know where you are at all times.

Eventually location-based apps will meet place-based media in ways we may not have imagined up previously. Both applications are a perfect match for one another: they both target audiences who are out-and-about, away from home.

I wrote sometime ago about how all-in-one signage displays would eventually be the norm. This idea may somewhat negate the fact that a player is still present, but we can't forget the importance of the digital sign player. It is in keeping the player in the forefront of our minds that I craft this post. Many electronic sign operators take a "install it and leave it" approach to their network. They like to create the content, install the display and the player and then walk away, but this is not the best methodology for management. Displays and players if they are to perform to their utmost potential need monitoring and regular "check-ups."

Monitoring Player Performance

Some digital signage software applications allow, not only for player tracking and health monitoring, but also proof of play reporting--giving content managers a way to judge whether content was played on a "running" display and how often said content made its appearance. If there is anything worse than poor content, that's no content at all (well, I guess that's not always true, but it's certainly a good generality). So, when a player goes down, it is detrimental in several ways:

1. It hurts the network being served. The network where the content is being played is certainly effected by player outages. It's costly for reputation. It's costs monetarily.

2. It hurts advertisers, if there are any, displaying their content on the screen. This can hit the pocketbook and create some pretty angry customers if you are running an ad network.

3. It's detrimental to the venue's reputation. I was in an airport doing some traveling sometime ago. There was a large digital sign network installed throughout the terminals. The only working signage available was the signage displaying the arrivals and departures. All the blank screens really looked ridiculous. I'm not sure what the issue was there, but it certainly was not what I would call a "high-quality" network.

4. It hurts the reputation of the industry. A failure for one of us is a failure for us all.

What to do about it...

The mantra, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" could adequately apply here. But what do we do when something goes wrong and we're 3,000 km from the player? Apart from getting an actual human being to check the device, we can start by attempting to perform a VNC (Virtual Network Compute) remote desktop into the device. If this does not help us detect the problem, then it is prudent to have someone take a look at the unit. There are any number of scenarios that could have taken place with the sign player. It could have been kifed by some derelict delinquent, someone may have bumped the installation, a power surge could have taken place (hopefully protection was implemented to prevent this one), or perhaps the player simply gave up the ghost. Whatever the cause of the players failure or demise, having it down for too long is costly--especially if revenue is dependent on content. Content dependence is most readily evident in the case of advertising networks.

I know overuse of the aphorisms probably is unneeded, but I feel like blurting another: "an ounce of prevention is certainly worth a pound of cure." In the case of player monitoring, this is certainly true. It often costs networks much more (see the 4 points above) for networks to revive a dead player than it ever does to prevent it by putting the proper safeguards in place.

While some may say user-generated content is out of control and taking over, I disagree. It's like some people look at UGC as a new, clever idea or something. Having users generate content is not new. It's been around since the good ole' days of newspaper editorials. Once the web came about, it certainly has increased. Blogs have virtually taken over cyberspace. When I search something online now, often I am taken to some random and obscure blog or forum whose content was created by an external user. Now that we have the time-waster known as Twitter for microblogging, we can now get "users'" information without even blinking--with updates straight to our mobile phones.

But when is UGC appropriate and not? Where do we draw the line between the appropriate and inappropriate? How can user-generated content be used as a useful tool? What problems does UGC cause and what problems does UGC solve? When it comes to user-generated content on digital signage, what mediums work the best? YouTube? Hulu? MySpace? Twitter? Mobile marketing of some sort? Hopefully, we will address these questions as this post progresses.

Benefits of User-Generated Content

Allowing for others to generate content has many benefits--regardless of what medium we're using. Some of them may include:

1. Users feel akin and part of the overall experience. When you're locked out of a discussion, when you feel you have something to say that would most likely contribute to a more beneficial conclusion, it can be frustrating. I'm sure many can assuredly say this about politics--regardless of your "leanings." The same basic idea follows in UGC. When content can be created by the user, they feel they have some stake in the entirety of the experience. Think about Wikipedia for instance. I realize much of Wikipedia's content has been created by Wiki professionals, but how many of you have actually edited a mistake on Wikipedia? It's gratifying to be part of the contributory audience.

2. Some of the content creation headache is taken off the shoulders of those whose job it rightfully is. Content creation can take a great deal of work. Anyone who has tried to create content knows this. Those who realize the importance of interesting, refreshing and engaging content realize not only how important it is, but how time consuming refreshing said content is and will continue to be. When users are creating the content, there is somewhat of a respite for content creators.

3. Content will include much more variety, flare, and interestingness. This can be seen as a perfect example of two heads are better than one. As the size of the content contribution audience grows, the variety also expands accordingly. Text-to-screen gaming on digital signage in Times Square can be much more effective for getting content variety than something similar installed at a local hardware store.

4. The content will be more sticky. Think for a moment about the editorials section of the newspaper. Who does not enjoy reading the editorials section? Sometimes we read it because there is some on-going discussion taking place, while other times we participate because it's unique enough to grab our attention. Think of some of the largest websites on the internet. Sites like Wikipedia, Vimeo, and YouTube take advantage of the principle of sticky UGC.

5. Having users generate the content can help with metrics, measurement, and targeting. I will discuss this more in detail later in the post.

Negative Issues Relating to UGC

While UGC can be very beneficial, in many instances, it can pose quite a problem--especially in digital sign displays.

1. The issue of a filter. User-generated filtering for user-generated fluff is often very difficult.

2. Content quality can be down-graded. Not only can it be downgraded, sometimes content can become overtly inappropriate. And those who truly know content know that good content is what separates good networks from bad networks. Regardless of what type of engine you have under the hood, if it don't look good it's worthless. Sign networks need to think of their digital signage more like a horse and pony show, rather than a day at the tracks. This is where user-generated content--unfortunately--can fall painfully short.

3. It's seen as less reputable. Rightfully so. UGC could just have easily been created by a 15-year old hacker as it could by a grizzled college professor. You may never know. I remember reading an article a couple of years ago speaking on this very dilemma. It referenced literally thousands of Wiki articles which had been created by just a couple of people without college degrees. While Wikipedia has done a good job in recent years at mitigating this issue, it still crops up now and again. Similarly, UGC on a digital signage display can be quite the headache

4. Rights. This is somewhat of a subcategory of the filtering issue. Content rights can often be ignored when external users are generating the digital signage content. This was as much as an issue with YouTube as it is with place-based operators today. It is always a struggle to ensure credit is given where credit is due.

UGC and Electronic Signs

The cross-over is somewhat plain between how UGC effects other forms of media as well, including digital signage. There are some differences which need divulged, however. The first type of user-generated content for DOOH that comes to mind is the integration between it and the Internet. When an electronic display can show UGC that has been generated using some sort of Internet portal like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc. then content creation is not the issue--content filtering is.

Other forms of UGC  on a digital display could include content created using a mobile device. This could include a simple SMS text message or something more dynamic and interesting created on a smartphone like a iPhone or Droid. This content tends to be a bit less quality than other forms of content, but it can engage bystanders in the display. Engagement of this degree can also be jointly coupled with "calls-to-action" and ROI measurement heretofore untapped.

Other applications for UGC can also include interactive gaming using mobile phones. While the content in this instance is not created using the mobile device, it certainly does allow for interactivity with the display.

UGC and Metrics

While I mentioned metrics already, I think it vital to delve into this issue more granularly. User generated content on digital signage is something that can greatly enhance a network operator's ability to measure the metrics of the display. It needs to remain evidently clear that while interactivity can help enhance measurement, it certainly does not mean that the ROI of your digital signage network will be greatly improved. Hence, the conundrum here is this: does it make sense to pour more money into your digital display just for some interactive feature if this feature is not going to give more return?

I hate to say it, but this--as always--is dependent on what your objective is. If you are more concerned with increasing ambiance or giving people a cool factor, then it is certainly worth the wow--even if the "wow" costs a great deal more. However, if you are doing this on a network of scale that will cost your organization bundles more for something that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, then it makes no sense. Making the choice on whether to use a user-generated display or not may be highly dependent on whether a pilot outperforms with UGC vs. a standard digital signage display. If that is the case, then UGC all around!