The Business of Digital Signage

The Importance of Being ‘Metricable’: Monthly viewership of digital video displays: estimated to be 155 million adults in US.
 
No more rough estimates, no more compiled data from disparate networks, no more industry hyperbole.  Last month Arbitron published an independent research report that for the first time took a scientific, measurable approach to assessing actual viewership of DOOH networks. My thanks go to Diane Williams of Arbitron, who has completed and published a research report that states more than two thirds of the US population over the age of 18 took note of a digital sign in the past month.  According to her report, this means close to 155 Million US adults a month are taking notice of this medium.  

This report certainly received good press and social media coverage when it was published but it struck me that this report’s importance has been under-estimated relative to the validation of the digital signage industry, the power of targeted relevant video as a communications medium, and the importance of being ‘metricable’.

Prior to its release, the only “industry” figures being widely used to size our industry were derived from an aggregation of network operator deployments, based upon estimates of the both the number of deployments and the traffic at those locations.   These are not defensible metrics by today’s standards.

The Arbitron report is a truly significant event: to be able to have an independent audit of the estimated viewing population for digital networks – and of course the number of 155m is very high. This goes a long way to giving our industry the credibility it deserves, and continues to build the trust of buyers. Hats off to Arbitron and Diane’s research for inverting the methodology for the model and driving it from a viewer perspective rather than a general network estimation based on traffic flows.   Defensible metrics are important for the industry - are there others out there?



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