ISE Sixteen:Nine Mixer Sponsor Profiles: Screenfeed

January 18, 2023 by Dave Haynes

Integrated Systems Europe is fully back after COVID-era disruptions, and Sixteen:Nine is doing a Barcelona version of the networking mixer it has been doing annually at DSE in Las Vegas for the past decade or so.

The event (sold out, sorry!) happens because of eight great sponsors who help cover the considerable costs. I like to thank and recognize sponsors by running company profiles, and the next one up involves Screenfeed, which has been providing subscription content and content tools to the global digital signage industry since 2007.

This is the third sponsor profile. Earlier ones involved StratosMedia and Esprit Digital.

Q: Can you summarize what Screenfeed does and the main markets it serves?

We like to say we are the dynamic content people. We have been building dynamic digital signage content driven by data since 2007 and we’ve build a number of services and capabilities we make available to anyone in the industry, regardless of their hardware or software.  We just do content and believe we can offer any dynamic content a customer needs. We serve as a tool in the toolbox of software companies, AV/Tech integrators, and end users.

Q: Your company is based in the U.S., but you have had an office for a while now in Amsterdam. Was having a footprint in Europe important to developing business in the region?

Prior to covid we established a business entity and office in Amsterdam with the goal to service our existing customers and expand our sales in Europe. We had a sales director lined up with an offer literally 3 days before COVID really locked down, so we’ve had to that on pause.  We are seeking a European sales director again so anyone interested should reach out.

Q: You recently added new data-driven content capabilities alongside your standard subscription content offers. How does that work and what has been the response from customers?

Thank you for asking. The service is called Screenfeed Connect and it’s entire purpose is to make content projects that are driven by data and logic much easier and thus cost-effective. In the past we have served our customer’s who wanted to accomplish displaying custom designs driven by their own data such as sales, schedules, KPI’s or employee or customer submitted content with custom projects that took 4-6 weeks and lots of money. Many times customers would just decide not to do it.  So we built Connect to allow us, or our customers to quickly connect to their datasource and get a dynamically driven HTML content app running within minutes or a couple hours.

Use cases are displaying employee schedules, leaderboards, calendars, menu boards, directories, progress towards a goal, etc.  Really anything they dream up as it allows you to build your own purpose.

What makes it cost-effective is we have ready-made connections to REST APIs, Calendars, Google Sheets, Excel, Sharepoint, JSON, CSV files and many others. Projects that used to take us three weeks with a designer and HTML developer, now can be done by lunch. Seriously.

Q: What key trends are you seeing in the marketplace? Is content usage evolving?

I see customers getting smarter and more and more wanting things taken care of for them after they cast a vision. We’ve responded by adding content services where customers can simply share their needs and we’ll respond with a combination of our infotainment feeds, creating their Connect content app for them, and sometimes adding some additional custom content so that we can just take care of everything they need.  They find it very convenient and since we’ve been doing this for so long they know they are getting smart content solutions.

Q: You have research that makes a direct connection between the use of subscription content, like news, and the retention of adjacent advertising and other messages. Can you go into a little detail about that?

I can share that in a third-party study run by one of the largest banks in America polled viewers on recall. They found that viewers reported that the most recalled content in the playlist was the weather graphics we provided.  More importantly, the bank message that played directly after the weather was recalled at a 40% higher rate than any other bank marketing content in the playlist.

What this validated for our client was that showing the weather was much more valuable than simply informing their customers. It attracted attention to their screen (which makes it more valuable) and it then helped them amplify their marketing messages to their customers.

Too many people think news and weather is just there to fill time on playlists.  I admit that many of our customers do subscribe just to keep their screens fresh – but there are more and more who understand that giving viewers something they are interested in helps the ROI, in a number of cases by driving more viewership – which makes all the investment in hardware and service more valuable to their company.

Q: Are there any other new products on the way?

Yes.

We are launching Content Services. With this service a customer can ask us: “Can you just take care of all our content?”  And we will!  The service would provide a project manager, access to all of Screenfeed’s infotainment content, unlimited Connect apps designed and created by our team – as well as a set amount of custom content.  We’ve been running this already with select clients and they love it!  We enjoy being closer to the final solution and our customers find our pricing better than they would pay agencies.

A major upgrade to our Social Media offering will be coming, as well.  In addition to new designs and controls we have a roadmap to add LinkedIn, Microsoft Teams, TikTok and Slack to the Instagram, Facebook and Twitter content we already offer.

Lastly, we are showing off a major feature addition for Connect – Conditions. Our customers will be able to create simple or complex triggers to manipulate content on the screen based on data, time, day, weather or player variables.

Q: What do you see as the main reason to be at ISE?

We want to learn more about the needs from our European partners and meet new ones. We feel Europe is a strong area for growth for us.

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Eight companies have stepped up to sponsor (thank you!) – with those funds covering a variety of costs like the venue, food, booze and staffing. The sponsors for the 2023 Mixer are:

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