Another overpriced sector report, another mild tizzy

August 26, 2011 by Dave Haynes

Once again, a report from a company that does reports on any sector that has a pulse is getting all kinds of coverage and excited social media action for its sunglasses-needed bright picture for digital signage.

Global digitalsignage market to reach $13.8 billion by 2017!  

Where, pray tell, will we all put our yachts???

Can we please start looking at the sources of these things before we relay the summaries of these things to the masses, and stick our collective index fingers on the industry exclamation key.

Look past the big $13.8 billion number in the report by Global Industry Analysts Inc. and you see that the company spits out analytical reports on 40,000-plus market and technology trends, at a pace of 1,300 reports a year. That’s a report – assuming the researchers get weekends off and work normal days – released about every 90 minutes.

Look at the report summary and you will see the whole thing is priced at just shy of $5,000 for all 715 page. Or, you could buy off the menu.  The $1,450 section called Product Innovations  appears, entirely, to be a series of recycled press releases such as: “Muzak introduces Encompass DS Solution”. You can pay this research company $100 for that, or use this cool new thing I found called Google and have it in front of you for free, if you can spare about four seconds.

There is a vast section that, based on the way it sets up, is paid advertorial from a series of hardware and software companies that have paid for their inclusion in the report. You also pay to read those reports, which is just an amazing racket (if it works).

To be fair, the press release for this report appears to have been cranked out by someone who has at least SOME familiarity with the sector, and the generalities aren’t quite as sweeping as in this one. But, it’s also stuff anyone could cobble together based on some reading, a little digging and extrapolations about overall economic growth rates could be applied to a sector (for example, Asia looks more promising than Europe right now).

When you see research by a company that specifically does research on the advertising or media technology sectors, that’s probably worth looking at. Forecasts on ad spend by agency holding companies and media research firms reflect a 24/7 understanding of the space. Same with hardware projections by companies that look at the display and PC markets all day long.

When you see research issued by a company that will, in the same day, release reports on the global markets for absorption chillers, housewraps and renal cell carcinoma drugs, then perhaps those reports shouldn’t be given what ends up being equal play with the truly meaningful, context-rich stuff.

And what does something like $13.8 billion industry by 2017 actually mean to your business anyway, other than an impressively huge  number to put on a PowerPoint slide? Anything???