Lots Of Sophisticated Display Tech In Taiwan, But Also Some Goofy Content Calls

October 30, 2024 by Dave Haynes

Electronics and displays are a huge part of Taiwan’s economy, so as you might expect, screens are everywhere – maybe not as much as you might expect outdoors but seemingly in most shops and restaurants in busy retail and public spaces.

There are vast underground concourses and malls/food halls in the city center, and one of the great things is a lot of the cafes and restaurants are one-offs or small chains, as opposed to the same coffee, burger, taco and chicken places you see in pretty much every North American food court.

But technical sophistication doesn’t always extend to the people feeding screens with messages.

This (above) is a tiled display on a concourse, and someone decided this file would work just fine on it.

I saw this one outside a couple of days earlier at a transit stop – probably the all-time worst application of content on ad street furniture.

It is really hard to imagine someone putting that together and thinking, “Yup. That’s the ticket!”

Already smallish screen for DOOH ads, and then a landscape video window stacked on a portrait ad window … plus two more text things top and bottom.

You have seconds to make an impression with these things, and loading more into a screen layout, means there is more to present and all of it is smaller. If you are going to ads on street displays, just show the ads full screen! Or the ad and one info strip in characters large enough to actually read.

Nutty.

And then there’s this guy at a Polo store trying to get a three-panel video wall to cooperate … he was at it for a while.

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