LA Times has a look at this biz
May 31, 2007 by Dave Haynes
The LA Times has had a run at the digital signage industry, talking to the usual suspects and referencing the usual stats about the expected growth of the business and so on. If you’re in this space already, there’s not much to learn.
But the piece, from the Sunday paper, is not a bad primer for someone oblivious to what consumes our working days.
The bit I found interesting was at the very end:
Troy Davenbaugh, 42, of West Los Angeles is one of the elusive consumers trying to hide from advertisers. He doesn’t own a TV. When he does watch a show on his roommate’s set, he can skip through ads with TiVo.
The digital screens that popped up in his local Albertson’s ticked him off.
“They’re more annoying than anything,” he said. “When I come here, I come here to shop. I’m turned off by anything being constantly blasted at me – it just becomes too much.”
For some, it’s less than that.
As Jeffrey Weiner browsed through Albertson’s, he was asked what he thought about the food ads blinking on the screen suspended above the produce section.
His response: “What screen?”
As much as we like to believe there’s a moths-to-a-porch-light thing that happens when a big LCD screen turns on in a store, there’s an awful lot of people won’t even notice the screens unless they’re regulars. And unless what they see grabs them and gives them real value, in some form.
Personally I’ll take any and all the press that the industry can get. The Sunday LA Times helped to begin to put us more on the radar and it was followed later in the week by a bit in the “Investor’s Business Daily” (see: http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=17&issue=20070525 ). I don’t know about you, but I love it when a potential buyer tells me that they have seen my screens or are aware of our business.