What do Pandora, Ugly Betty and digital signage have in common? #dignc

Thursday, September 2, 2010 by Chuck Gose
Not much to be honest, except that they will all be at this year's Digital Non-Conference in Cincinnati at the end of September.

The announcement just came out this morning that the Founder of Pandora, Tim Westergreen, will be speaking at the event, along with America Ferrera from Ugly Betty. To be honest, I'm not sure what Ugly Betty has to do with it all but I'm confident we'll find out.

I attended last year's event and came away super impressed. Breakout sessions where held throughout downtown Cincinnati and "forced" attendees despite the rain to get out and explore the city. I had the fortunate experience of getting to meet John Battelle, one of the co-founders of Wired, and sit with him at his table before his keynote presentation.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/neilconway/4936428203/One of the breakouts I attended last year focused on digital signage, which was great to have but I was a bit disappointed in the direction it went. That's why I'm pleased this year to be one of the panelists. The session is being led by Tim Burke (Electronic Art) and I will be joined by Bill Collins (Decision Point Media) and Christopher Hall (Digital Signage Today).

Last year's discussion centered around digital signage as a dynamic advertising tool, which it most definitely is. But there is so much more that the technology can do and I hope the panel heads in that direction with the conversation and presentations. I'll make sure we bring up corporate communication networks.

During last year's panel, Bill made a comparison of digital signage networks to ice cream (hence the picture) that I completely disagreed with. So I plan on having some fun with that this year. Can anyone say PROPS?!

If you're interested in attending, you can register today. It's a great event and not very expensive at all.
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Photo by Neil Conway





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Everything in context; context is everything!

Wednesday, September 2, 2009 by Leah Kane
A large part of my week is spent keeping up with the Jones's...websites.  Everything is constantly shifting in the world of web marketing, the rules (and search engine algorithms) change by the day. Because of this, exhaustive efforts are made to curry favor with the Great White Whale of the internet: Google.

Google is frighteningly intelligent.

Have you ever noticed how Google appears to anticipate what you are REALLY looking for?  You might enter the phrase "used auto parts Toyota" in the search box and Google returns twenty listings for used Toyota parts...in your neighborhood. 

That level of accuracy merely skims the surface of what Google can do; there are a whole host of tools Google provides webmasters of which the casual web user is unaware.

AdSense is one such tool.  AdSense, in a nutshell, matches relevant ads to a site's content.  Google already does this exceedingly well, but recently has announced what they call "improved contextual targeting."  You'll find yourself on a website, say, planning a ski trip to snowy Lake Tahoe, and what will appear next to the lodging options but a cozy ad for L.L. Bean.  Coincidence? Obviously not, but what you may not realize is that that ad was served up to you from a pool of ads, dynamically.  

We coach our digital signage operators to take a similar approach with respect to management of their networks.  It's insufficient merely to create compelling visuals for digital displays.  These days, contextual targeting is everything.  Know your audience, understand their habits, anticipate their needs and deliver your messages at the right place, at the right time.

One advantage digital signage advertisers have over internet advertisers is that the targeted consumer is already out of the house!  (In fact, the industry term is "Digital Out of Home", or DOOH) It's much easier to sell paint to a person in a hardware store than it is to a person lounging on their couch with a laptop. 

Context.

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