Seenspire Launches Pay-Per-Screen, All You Can Eat, Digital Signage Content Subscription Plan

March 21, 2018 by Dave Haynes

The guys at Belgium-based subscription content service Seenspire have launched what they’re calling the first ever pay-per-screen pricing plan for the digital signage industry, with unlimited access to Seenspire’s cloud-based content library of 250-plus feeds.

The new plan applies a monthly fee per screen, done on a sliding scale that reduces the fee as networks add more screens. I am going to assume the metric of screens, used  here, is really about playback devices, as it is hard to count networks that might have one player driving 20 screens through signal distribution gear.
You also have to trust the customer is being straight about that.

“Our customers are battling for audience’s attention. Access to automated, fresh digital signage content is essential,” says Seenspire Director Samuel Mekonen. “This is automated content done in a brand-new way, with a pay-per-screen, not pay-per-feed, plan that helps our clients manage costs for their growing signage network – whether for five or 500 screens.”

The new pricing model, says a press release, is a monthly cost of $27 per screen, billed annually, which decreases as the number of screens increases. For example, at 50 screens, the per-screen subscription price is reduced to $19 per screen.

I assume these are US dollars.

Seenspire’s feeds range from news and weather to sports and lifestyle, and are licensed from media partners like Reuters, AFP and Sky News Arabia. The company also taps into material from independent content creators and data providers to add variety – combining hyperlocal content (news, weather, etc.) with agency-grade visual presentations.

Seenspire says its pay-per-screen plan is “inspired by wider industry trends into subscription-based services, to satisfy the content consumption habits of modern audiences. It enables integrators and marketers to automate up to 80% of their content playlists.”

“Every content piece has a finite mileage,” says Mekonen. “For powerful digital signage, diversity and freshness are essential. And we also offer unique branding capabilities – so brand-relevant content is displayed alongside brand colours and logos.”

Very interesting. By comparison, the big player in the digital signage content subscription business is Screenfeed. It charges a monthly per player, per feed. The base rate is $8/month, so if you buy three distinct feeds – like news, sports and local weather – that in general terms is $24/month. They also do bundles with multiple feeds that results in significant discounts.

Seenspire is proposing here that $27 would get you three feeds like that, plus everything else it produces, which represents some 250 feeds. I’d imagine this is easier to explain and sell for Seenspire, as well as track. For end-users, it would easier to budget if what gets used where varies at all.

Both companies do a really nice job on the look and feel of their content feeds, so there’s not a compelling argument around low-cost equals low quality. Both companies are run by great people, though when I think of it, all the content/data feed people are terrific to deal with.

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