Praevar, BrightSign Partner On All-In-One Outdoor Displays Aimed At Retail, SMB Markets
September 9, 2024 by Dave Haynes
Toronto-based specialty display manufacturer Praevar has started marketing what I think is the first large-format outdoor-rated display to have a BrightSign media player built into it, with the two companies aiming the solution at the small business market.
Praevar has been making high-brightness transit shelter and totem displays for years for DOOH media companies, shopping center groups and other large customers who bring a lot of scale. I’ve know these guys forever and while not all that noisy as marketers, they’ve won a lot of business with major media companies on the backs of their engineering pedigree.
The idea with this solution, says the company, is to meet a market need for a turnkey product that doesn’t require a lot of knowledge about digital signage and digital out of home networks, and their enabling technologies.
“Many smaller retail operators order large displays in enclosures for store advertising, but when they unbox and power them on, the screen shows a technical message about the operating system. Without digital signage experience, these retailers don’t know what to do next,” says Ralph Idems, Praevar’s CEO, in a press release. “Our collaboration with BrightSign solves this challenge by giving them a ready-to-go solution that’s easy to learn and operate.”
It also empowers retailers to extend marketing reach outside the physical limits of brick-and-mortar stores to window-fronts, sidewalks, concourses, and plazas of retail and mixed-use environments.
“Like our partners at Praevar, we see a growing need for larger, flexible screens with integrated digital signage capabilities that empower retailers to give consumers the information they need, whether indoors or outdoors,” says Misty Chalk, BrightSign’s VP Sales for the Americas.
Silicon Valley-based BrightSign is mostly known for its distinct line of little purple media play-out boxes, but it also has an SoC board player that can snap into a hatch in specific flat panel display (like NEC) and BrightSign also has them in BlueFin’s small retail marketing-centric displays. The company also has them in a series of indoor flat panels for Moka, a commercial display offshoot of Chinese manufacturing giant TCL.
BrightSign already has a reputation for reliability, but a big attraction to an SoC version, versus a standalone player that could be tucked into a typical outdoor display enclosure, is the absence of cabling and connectors. They’re called points of failure for a reason – things come loose or degrade – and removing those possible failure points tends to mean less sh*t happenss.
GDS has been building outdoor DOOH displays with Brightsign built-in for many years used in advertising and quick service restaurant drive-thru menu boards.
https://www.brightsign.biz/about/press-events/gds-now-available-with-brightsign/
Hi Robert … thanks for the comment. I always try to hedge some one my observations with “I think” since it is so hard to stay current with who has and does what!