For Just $4,000, Get A Digital Signage Market Report From An Industrial Park In Florida

April 12, 2018 by Dave Haynes

This is my regular reminder to anyone looking for market research on the digital signage hardware or software industries – MOST of the research reports out there are garbage.

This morning’s Google Alerts scrape of news stories that come up under “digital+signage” has four headlines about market research reports on displays and software. The photo above is the corporate headquarters of one of the research firms – a down at the heels industrial park in Deerfield Beach, Florida – the kind of place you roll into to get auto body work or buy plumbing supplies. It is very likely HQ is a mail slot or $50/month virtual office. The 1-855 number is shared by several “research” firms.

The Asia-Pacific HQ is Pune, India – where many to most of these “research” companies are located. This one, amusingly, appears to have its offices in a hotel.

Your other clue that this stuff is junk, whipped together by analysts with only a passing idea of what they’re writing about, is the summary section of news releases. In this one, Cisco, Advantech and Marvel are listed as top manufacturers in a report on the Global Digital Signage Display Market. None of them even make displays.

Buyer beware … and editor beware – I still see some idiots (sorry, but most accurate term) copying and pasting these research reports and presenting them as credible and newsworthy.

IHS and FutureSource do credible research in this space, as do one or two others. The rest is done by research factories that generate positive reports on anything that moves, hoping someone is stupid enough to drop $4,000 on their findings.

  1. The amount of visibility Google News and Google gives this “racket” is embarrassing. I don’t see them quoting some new lowest price for Viagra by some bizop as relevant news. They rely on PR Newswire more and more as their “laundered” reputation.

    I used to let them post kiosk market reports on the LinkedIn group for Kiosk Industry and then grade them publicly on the spot (usually as a D- or worse). Now it is deprive them of any oxygen and encourage/publicize legitimate research. Frost and Sullivan just released a new study on Kiosks. I would be glad to share some market data with you.

    Craig

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