Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

Robert Heise, Global Display Solutions

Most people think about northern Italy for wine, food, fashion and beautiful scenery, but it's also home to some well-established technology companies like Global Display Solutions, or GDS.

The company has been around for decades and built up a very solid business for rugged, industrial-grade displays for use-cases like bank ATMs.

GDS expanded into digital signage and digital out of home, and those areas are now a big part of the company's business. GDS gets used for things like drive-thru displays and digital street furniture.

Robert Heise is an EVP and GM with GDS, and runs the US business. We hooked up for this podcast to talk about the company's roots, and how what they do and sell differs from the competition.

We also spoke about the potential and limits for direct view LED as digital posters, and the huge potential GDS sees for electronic ink.

 

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Neeraj Pendse, Elo

Elo has been doing touchscreens for 40 years - way, way before marketers started cooking up phrases like customer engagement technology. Over that time, the company has shipped more than 25 million units.

So Elo knows touch, and interactive.

Based in Silicon Valley, the company has in the last few years made a pretty big push into digital signage with everything from countertop displays to big 70-inch touchscreens that look like giant tablets.

I spoke recently with Neeraj Pendse, the company's VP Product Management. His responsibilities include Elo’s large format and signage products, the EloView service, and the commercial Android roadmap and devices. We get into a lot of things - including what works and doesn't in interactive design, how Elo differs from touch overlay companies, and why a touchscreen manufacturer developed and now markets device management software.

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Brian McClimans, Peerless-AV

The companies who do the infrastructure that gets screens in place and make video walls look amazing are a huge part of the digital signage ecosystem, but don't get all that much attention.

One of the biggest – if not THE biggest – is Chicago-based Peerless AV, which has been a major part of digital signage for many, many years.

Most people know Peerless AV for its mounting systems for digital signage displays and video walls – something they do very well. But the company has also been doing outdoor displays – not just the enclosures – for more than a decade

The company had a big moment with its marketing about a year ago when it started very clearly and overtly saying We do this, AND we do that. It’s working. The company had a killer Q4 and Q1 of this year was as good or better.

I spoke about where Chicago-based Peerless-AV is at with Brian McClimans, the VP Sales for North America and Asia Pacific.

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Sean Matthews, Visix

Sean Matthews managed to break away from booth set-up at Digital Signage Expo - well, actually he was probably happy as a clam to get away from the noise and bustle - to sit down and talk about Visix, the Atlanta-based CMS software company he's ran for many years.

While many of his software competitors have been all over the place chasing whatever vertical presented an opportunity, Matthews has pretty steadfastly kept Visix focused on a couple of key vertical markets - higher education and workplaces. There are more than 1,000 Visix systems operating on college and university campuses.

We had a wide-ranging talk outside the North Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and you'll probably pick up some of the bustle ahead of the show opening. Matthews gets into the roots of Visix, what's worked for the company, and where things are going.

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Jeremiah Archambault, ENS

Every year or so, Jeremiah Archambault rings me up, usually out of the blue, from his office in Victoria, BC, on the very west coast of Canada.

He runs a decade-old company called ENS that has, for that time, been steadily developing a digital signage CMS software and management platform, that's now called SAM. With each call, he's given me an update on what's new with the platform and his seemingly endless testing and refinement. I've always finished off the conversation intrigued by what he was putting together.

A decade on, his company has built up a decent footprint of everything from small to enterprise clients, and he's now at a point where things are getting serious. I spoke with him, this time, from the outbound marketing and inbound support call center he's set up and has running in the Philippines. He's aggressively signing up and on-boarding new business partners, with a particular focus on print and sign shops that now know they need to add digital capability, but want it white-labeled and managed by someone else.

In this podcast, we chat about the roots of the company, and a lot of lessons learned about deployment, hardware and dealing with pesky humans. We also get into how he's about to finally get noisy about his solution, with a freeware model that uses a PC stick he's dead-certain is reliable and ideally suited to digital signage.

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Jane Boyce, Tru Vue

When I was in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago, I made a point of having a look inside a bar at the Venetian that had a big, fairly spectacular video wall. An industry friend had seen it, and said while the content was great, the wall badly, badly needed anti reflective glass.

I looked ... and it did.

Big displays and slick software get much of the attention in digital signage. I'd argue not enough attention gets paid to other components that may seem boring by comparison, but make or break installations.

One of those components is the glass in front of screens. Engineered glass can eliminate or minimize reflection. Reject UV. And protect very expensive screens from damage.

Great technology and great content doesn't amount to much if you can't see the damn screen because of reflection from the surroundings.

A company called Tru Vue - which has ginormous manufacturing plants in Illinois and Minnesota - does what it calls technical glass, or engineered optics. Their process applies a transparent coating to sheets of glass that kills reflection and can actually improve what people are looking at through that glass.

I was interested in talking to Tru Vue because digital signage is a new market the company is just starting to open up. The great majority of the world's top museums and art galleries already use Tru Vue glass in front of their Picassos and other art treasures.

So, logically, if the glass makes a Picasso look better, it's probably going to do a pretty good job making burgers and shakes look tasty on a drive-thru digital sign.

I spoke with Tru Vue CEO Jane Boyce ...

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Bjorn Pieper, NDS

The Dutch software company NDS has been offering a digital signage software solution for 25 years now, and like the handful of other companies that have been around this business that long, they've survived and grown based on the ability to do certain things very well.

In the case of NDS, the company's roots and core business are at airports. That started with getting arrivals and departures data up on passenger terminal screens, and over the years, grown more sophisticated.

Airports are cities, in many respects, and they are the precursors for the smart cities digital signage networks that are starting to bubble up globally. You tie into a lot of systems, and what's visualized on the screens reflects what is going on, more broadly, in the facility or area.

I spoke with Bjorn Pieper, the Chief Commercial Officer for NDS, about how his company works not only with airports, but a lot of big corporations, to make digital signage networks that are truly smart.

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ISE Chats: SodaClick content and Inotouch transparent LED film

ISE already seems like a long time ago, and I had to go into my digital recorder's SD card to look over what interviews I had not yet dug out and made ready for podcasts.

This episode features a couple of shorter interviews with companies that I bumped into, in and around ISE's largely dedicated digital signage hall.

The first is with a start-up based in London - called SodaClick - that Jason Cremins of Signagelive encouraged me to go see. These guys do creative templates for digital signage, and the interesting things for me were first, that the output files are HTML5, and second, that the guys behind it are graphic designers first. That second point matters because I have seen affordable digital signage content creation platforms in the past that worked well enough, but offered template designs that totally looked like they were designed by software developers with few or no design chops.

I spoke with SodaClick founder Ibrahim Jan.

The second interview is with a company from South Korea called Inotouch. One of the things I was looking for at ISE was transparent LED on clear film - not the semi-transparent stuff that's part of mesh curtains. Most of what I saw didn't look so hot, the exception being what LG was showing at its mega-booth, and these guys.

Their film was genuinely transparent and they had a tighter pixel pitch than what LG has on offer. It's the sort of thing that would go on windows in retail and on big glass curtain walls - assuming things like heat load are sorted out.

I spoke with Eugene Bae of Inotouch.

Eric Virey, Yole Developpement

I have always felt sorry for any poor soul who gets the arm put on them to go to a trade show and get schooled up on digital signage - because there are so many hardware and software companies selling variations on what is essentially the same stuff.

I would really feel sorry for someone walking into a big display show, charged with finding the most suitable LED display technology for a project. There are 100s and 100s of options out there, and lots of terms being thrown around that seem to have different meanings.

There's chip on board. SMD. Mini-LED. Micro-LED. Glue on Board. 4 in 1 LED. On and on it goes. It's "My head's going to explode!" territory.

The LED video wall business is the sort of thing that begs independent, educated analysis, and happily, there are a few people out there doing that work. Like Eric Virey, a Frenchman who lives in Portland, Oregon, and spends his working life looking at and decoding the LED display business.

Virey, a Senior Technology & Market Analyst for the French market research company Yole Developpement, kindly gave me some of his time recently to help clear some of the fog. There was something up with his mike, so the sound quality is not as good as I'd like. 

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Alberto Cáceres, Trison

Being in Amsterdam for ISE recently offered a chance to meet up and talk to some people who are squarely focused on business on the other side of the Atlantic.

I knew Trison was a major player in digital signage solutions in its home country of Spain, but I didn't realize the company had a far greater reach than that. In 2018, Trison was in the middle of 2,500 digital signage and related jobs, in 76 countries.

The company started 20 years ago doing audio solutions, in northwest Spain, and has grown into the major solutions provider for retail digital signage in Europe and beyond. A Coruna is home base, but Trison has offices in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Shanghai, Mexico City and elsewhere.

I spoke with CEO Alberto Cáceres outside the ISE press room.

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Sam Phenix, Planar/Leyard

I managed to squeeze in a few podcast interviews in and around ISE last week, and this is the first - a long-planned and finally realized talk with Sam Phenix, who is the VP of research and development for Planar and Leyard.

That puts her in the middle of everything happening in the display market right now, from LCD and OLED to light field displays.

We spoke right at the blended company booth, in the middle of the show, so it's a little loud. And some people just flat ignored how there were two people with a microphone in the middle, and kept on talking around us. Oh well.

It's a really great, frank discussion about all the emerging display tech out there.

 

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Lauren Millar & Mark Stasiuk, Fusion CI Studios

If you've been to the Salesforce headquarters in San Francisco, or certain resort casinos, you will have seen and been blown away by giant virtual waterfalls that appear on LED walls and wash down, over and around things like entryways.

It's kind of amazing, and way beyond much of what you see on big digital canvases - like big 4K stock videos or graphics.

This stuff is part creative - part science, and the company that does this kind of work better than anyone is a little studio that works half and half out of LA and Vancouver. Fusion CI Studios got its start doing special effects for things like disaster movies and action flicks. They virtually part Red Seas, burst dams and blow things up.

One of Fusion's co-founders, Mark Stasiuk, took the weird career path of being a volcanologist with a PhD in geophysical fluid mechanics, who taught himself visual effects so he could more effectively explain the science. He got good enough at it that Hollywood special effects people started calling.

That science background is the big differentiator between what Fusion can do, versus creative shops that are all about the design.

I grabbed Stasiuk and co-founder Lauren Millar for a call, and we walked through how this all started, their process, and why this level of visuals is so impactful.

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David Bailey, Aitrak

It doesn't matter how slick your software is, or how beautiful and robust a display may be, if the content on a digital sign doesn't attract attention and hold it, at least for a bit.

So tools that help track and analyze how people view advertising, packaging and other marketing messages can be incredibly valuable. But they can also be clunky, expensive and slow.

A startup called Aitrak is trying to change that - using artificial intelligence and computer vision to do predictive modeling on how people will consume specific pieces of campaign creative - where they'll look, what they'll notice first, and how long they'll look.

Eye-track = Aitrak, by the way.

Creatives and media planners can use Aitrak's tools, or send the material to Aitrak to develop the model and insights.

Right now, the first iteration is built around static out of home street furniture posters and other non-motion creative. But Aitrak is working on the same sort of tool for motion digital assets and creative. That would allow media network owners, agencies and brands to pre-select the best combinations of creative for a location in a matter of minutes, and cut their costs dramatic ally.

I spoke with UK-based CEO David Bailey about a cloud-based service he says gives creatives superpowers.

NRF 2019 Round-Up: Interviews on ESLs, HTML5, Interactive Lightboxes And Avatars

This is a special edition of the podcast which I am pretty much whacking together myself, in the wake of running around the NRF show last week in New York.

I had my handy little Tascam recorder with me, so I grabbed some quick interviews with several companies I bumped into, with the idea of stitching them together in a round-up. These are not the biggest companies. Not necessarily the hottest stuff on the show floor. But they caught my eye, or in the case of the first interview, reflect my thinking that I wanted to know more.

Normally I get interviews properly smoothed out by my sound engineer guy, but with four interviews and intro and so on, it was a big ask on short notice. So here I am, fiddling around with Audacity audio software. So this will be a bit rougher than normal, but the content is solid.

One of the things I noticed on the NRF show floor was how there were way more electronic shelf labels than I have seen in the past, which is why I stopped to chat with Rob Crane, the head of global sales for the ESL company Altierre.

I bumped into Tomer Mann, from 22 Miles, outside the Intel booth. He was doing stand-up demos of his company's long-running wayfinding platform. That's well established, but I was interested in what the company was doing in retail, using HTML.

Inside that Intel booth, I chatted with a Spanish company, called Kendu, that comes out of retail graphics and has introduced a hybrid print and signage solution that uses LED animations behind a lightbox frame of print graphics, and also uses gesture for interactivity.

Finally, I was wandering around the Innovation Lab - which is a lot of new companies, but also companies who can't afford a full booth. I noticed people hanging around a floor display, and reacting to the screen. A company that's partially Toronto, partially Berlin, has an avatar chatbot thing that uses AI to drive interactivity. TwentyBN's avatar seems a little gimmicky, but done well it would be useful in spaces where there's a set of predictable questions.

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Leo Resig, Chive Media

The big selling point for Chive TV is that the streaming channel's five-hour mix of curated social media content keeps butts in barstools.

The Austin, Texas-based company has some 4,000 bar and restaurant venues running content on one or many of their TVs, and about 500 more come on monthly - with a lot of that growth through word of mouth.

Now Chive has broadened its free streaming content offer beyond just bars - adding venues like gyms, medical clinics and workspace break rooms. There will soon be 10 different channels of content on what's now branded as Atmosphere TV.

Chive was founded about a decade ago by two brothers, and I spoke with one of them - Leo Resig - about how it all started, why they created a streaming TV channel, and how charitable work is a big part of what they do.

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Angela Vanderburg, Q Division

This week we look at how the financial services industry is using digital signage in branches, and more to the point, what works and why.

Angela Vanderburg is the Digital Practice Lead for Consumer Banking and Retail Financial Services for Q Division, the retail-focused digital strategy consultancy that was launched by STRATACACHE. She's a shameless digital signage nerd who endlessly studies how the technology is used and the content choices that were made on networks, all the way down to locations.

We're talking because Vanderburg guided a pair of very significant research exercises in Europe and North America that got insights and data from consumers, and from decision-makers at banks.

In this episode, you'll hear about what the research revealed, why stuff like weather reports actually work well for banks, and how things that I maybe think are gimmicks are, in fact, worthwhile. 

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Kim Sarubbi, Cannabis Medical Network

Screens in medical waiting rooms is one of the most well established kinds of digital OOH media, and there's been no end of companies that developed networks built around advertising-supported content.

 That's now happening in the United States with medical cannabis clinics, through a pair of signage industry vets who have applied what they learned in mainstream medical centres to clinics focused on cannabis products - as alternatives to things like opioid medications.

Kim Sarubbi has been working with Phil Cohen on medical center content for a quarter century, and answered Cohen's call when he said he was getting back into waiting rooms aimed at the emerging cannabis market, via the Cannabis Medical Network.

They are already in roughly 1,000 clinics with a screen, media player and custom-created content that's designed to educate patients about the potential benefits of cannabis for battling things like PTSD or easing the pain or effects of cancer, epilepsy or other diseases.

I spoke with Sarubbi about the challenges of operating in a still emerging industry and market where the rules can vary, the product gets looked at with raised eyebrows, and the snake oil crowd can easily intermingle with the makers of much more proven and established products and treatments.

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Kaan Gunay, Firefly

There's nothing new about media on taxi tops, but a San Francisco start-up called Firefly is trying to go about it with a different approach.

Firefly describes itself as the first mobility-based SmartScreens platform - an advertising media firm that gets it footprint and scale from the rideshare industry.

Firefly is working primarily with the drivers for services like Uber and Lyft, offering a supplemental revenue stream in return for fixing a hyper-local, geo-fenced digital sign on the cartop. Firefly absorbs the capital cost, and spins off an average of $300 a month to the driver. That money isn't huge, but it can be enough to significantly offset leasing or insurance costs and make driving for a living worthwhile.

Co-founder Kaan Gunay is a mechanical engineer by training, but in recent years has found his way to Stanford, where he got his MBA and where the roots of Firefly first developed. He's also very active in community good works, and we spoke about how continuing that was, and is, fundamental to how Firefly does things.

At least 10 percent of all media on screens goes to to promote and advertise local not-for-profit organizations and provide public service announcements for non-commercial entities such as charities.

The car-toppers have sensors - for things like air quality - that generate data that's open for government planners, and others, to use.

I spoke with Gunay last week, just as his company was announcing a big $18.5 million seed funding raise.

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Kaijus Asteljoki, Valotalive

Workplace communications is one of the most active verticals in digital signage, and a big reason for that is the ability of screen technology to get important information to staff - without hoping they open and read mass emails or see posters on breakroom cork boards.

The Finnish startup Valota saw the rise in business-based digital signage coming, and has been developing a product totally focused on visual messaging in the workplace.

Based outside Helsinki, the company's Valotalive product is a messaging platform built around a growing set of content presentation apps that visualize data from widely used business systems like Salesforce and Microsoft's Power BI.

The platform enables set it and forget it content that's fed via these systems - so when the KPIs for a company change, they change automatically on screens located around facilities. It's a big step up from Happy Birthday wishes and notices about the parking lot being paved on the weekend.

I spoke with CEO Kaijus Asteljoki about the roots of Valotalive, and what he says are the key things end-users need to think about when putting together a digital screen network for their workplaces.

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Ryan Croft, TransitScreen

This is inadvertently turning into transit digital signage month on this podcast, having spoken lately with CHK America about epaper transit signs and just last week with Roadify, which aggregates data from transit systems.

This week I'm talking to Ryan Croft, one of the co-founders of TransitScreen, which has made a mark in North America and globally with a subscription service that puts together and presents on screens all the mobility options for people at specific venues.

What that means in practical terms is people coming down in late afternoon to the lobby of their office block, and looking at a carefully-considered and laid-out screen that shows everything from the state of local buses and trains to the availability of Uber, Lyft and some of the other alternative transport options out there these days.

In our chat, we get into how TransitScreen got started, what they've learned along the way, why they've now added a mobile app, and how the sort of data insights all this mobility data is generating might have some interesting new uses.

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