If you develop content in the digital signage sector, read this stuff! And yes, that's an order.

April 20, 2011 by Dave Haynes

If you have been involved in this sector for any length of time, you probably already know about Bill Gerba, the CEO of the software firm Wirespring and one of the truly smart people in this business.

While some folks have built a name for themselves by grabbing any microphone in reach, Gerba has pretty quietly been doing a pile of work that won’t necessarily help his business or build rock star status, but is raising the level of knowledge in the industry, as a whole.

He has been very active with POPAI working on standards, notably on privacy. And he’s been doing, with his team, deeply analytical work looking at the real costs of this business. For the last few weeks, he has been trickling out work that looks at the science of content as it relates to this sector.

As Gerba notes:

We observed that digital signage research is expensive, time-consuming, and just plain out-of-reach for many networks and content creation companies. Hoping to find a better, cheaper and more accessible way to figure out what kind of screens and content will “work” best, WireSpring developed a simulation platform that uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk crowdsourcing system to rapidly test lots of variables, and run those tests hundreds or even thousands of times.

Start at the beginning of the series to get the background and rationale, and stick with it. The findings are intriguing and should be must reads for anyone building spots or screen layouts for this sector.

Thanks for making the effort, Mr. Gerba.