Screensaver=digital signage???

March 2, 2007 by Dave Haynes

Saw a press release about a Dutch company that is humping a solution called Digital Signage to the Desktop,which made me very curious.

“DSM First Global 1000 With Digital Signage to Desktops

LONDON, March 2 /PRNewswire/ — At DSM, Digital Signage to its 21,000 Desktop Screens is an Alternative to Email DSM – A Netherlands based chemical & life sciences multinational – is the first Global 1000 company to inform all its employees with digital signage to its existing office PC screens. Digital Signage to the Desktop(TM) runs on all of DSM’s 21,000 screens, and has already replaced several internal Email newsletters.

All of DSM’s desktop PC screens now double up as ‘digital signposts’, displaying corporate headlines upon login, as an emergency alert, or after 10 minutes of inactivity as a screensaver. Until recently, Digital Signage was only associated with Plasma – or LCD TVs. The software solution is from Netpresenter.”

“With Digital Signage to the Desktop – we call it internally DSM Newscast, we can ensure that our employees notice and remember all our vital news and information. DSM Newscast complements and strengthens our existing media. We can now deliver our messages much faster, confident that they are now read in a timely manner. In addition, our intranet sites and web logs are receiving more visits, because employees are able to click through on any headline, via DSM Newscast, to the intranet, says Jos van Haastrecht, Manager Digital & Corporate Communications at DSM.

It’s a screensaver app with network hooks. Look around the NetPresenter website and you’ll even find the thing referred to as a screensaver.

I guess it’s nice that the industry has gone from one that steadily had to explain itself, to one that has companies looking to reposition what they do as being digital signage – no matter the reach.

  1. James says:

    Saw this one too and was intrigued by it … how long before a software company develops a Windows screensaver that acts as a “digital signage on the desktop” app, receiving ads from a remote server and charging the advertiser based on number of plays? Would probably offer the PC owner some kind of incentive, a la MyPoints or some other loyalty scheme (a half-cent per ad shown?). Interesting …

  2. Dave Haynes says:

    Back in the dotcom heydays there were a few companies pretty much doing that – the best known of them PointCast. It was a cool (for that time) screensaver that has news, sports, images and ads on it. But it was a little buggy and was banned from many corporate environments because it was a bandwidth omnivore. It also pushed content down, instead of being pulled.

  3. Eric Kanagy says:

    Has DSM heard of Sony? Sony’s ranked 149 on the Global 1000…above DSM’s 795 rank. Sony announced this very same thing back in July of 2006, also using Netpresenter.

  4. Barnaby Page says:

    I’ve seen screensavers used as promotional signage in retail. Simple but neat idea, especially in a small store where there isn’t space for a dedicated d/s display.

  5. Frank Hoen says:

    ‘@ Eric Kanagy,

    Hi Eric, you are right that Sony is already using our software, both as screensaver and on on their Plasma TV network.

    However, Sony uses it ‘only’ in Europe. DSM is still the first Global 1000 company to roll this out globally to all their PCs.

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