Three Ways Digital Signage Software Can Add Value To Digital Out Of Home

May 28, 2018 by guest author, sixteenninewpadmin

Guest Post: Balaji Kamineni, Zeetaminds

An ideal Digital Out Of Home Network irrespective of the size should be managed without any manual human intervention. Once the signage network is set and running, there should be few or no reasons for an operator to go on site.  As important as the entire hardware setup, equally important it is to choose a perfect signage software to manage the network.

Balaji Kamineni

With the digital signage software features listed below, it not only eases the management of the network but also attracts brands to advertise on the DOOH network.

Most essential features to be provided by digital signage software can be categorized into three types, depending on the value proposition it delivers.

1. Attracting brands to advertise on your network

• Proof Of Play Reports: Brands always appreciates proof of the Ads being shown on the network of displays. Providing Reports to the brands by showing proof for their Ad slot gives leads to transparency and thereby a greater confidence to become a loyal customer.
• Audience Measurement:  Many brands would love to have stats on the number of viewers and their reactions to it. Capturing these figures will provide an extra hook point for brands to show greater love on DOOH as a medium for advertising.

2. Reducing human intervention

• Live Preview & Monitoring: Without this feature, it’s almost impossible to know if the system is running perfectly. There might be cases when the display is switched off and the media-box is ON. In this situation, it’s only by having a live preview with monitoring feature one can know if the display is actually running or not without the need to send an operator to all the location. Basically, this feature gives a heads up if and when the system is not running properly; if the media is stuck, if there are pop-ups and if the display is blank.
• Remote ON/OFF: Remote ON/OFF is one extraordinary feature that makes the network completely autonomous and sets it running without human intervention. This feature ensures optimal functioning of the display and hence increases the lifespan of the display significantly.

3. Making the management of displays efficient

• Multi-User Access Control: Single user access is a red flag for DOOH. One cannot rely on single Admin to manage and operate a network all the time.  Digital Signage CMS having multi-user access helps in delegating and providing varying levels of control with different roles like Content Uploader, Broadcaster, Admin etc. This makes the management of bigger networks efficient by having Standard Operating Procedure. Role-Based Acces provides control at any scale. It also helps in creating zones and making the management of each zone of displays independent.
• Media Replace: More often than not, an Ad needs to be replaced with a new media from the same client or the slot might be given to a new client. In any case, having this option comes in handy as it is a one-step process rather than going to each and every display to repeat the same procedure of adding.
• Media Expiry: Majority of the promotions come with an expiry date during the time of upload itself. So, being able to set expiry for the media at the time of upload adds value. The user can add the expiry date immediately during or later after the upload is done.  On the day of expiry, the media file will be removed automatically from all the displays it got associated with.
• Other feature sets:  Features like Display Sorting, Media File Expiry Date, Layout replication, display grouping, easy search both by name and file type etc will make the difference between spending hours on the CMS to a few minutes.

The above list of features is not exhaustive, yet it provides the best elements needed for DOOH operators for running their network successfully.