The New Wave In Digital Signage

Feel like you've been hearing more about digital signage lately? That's probably because you've been hearing more from it as well. Marketers and their consultants increasingly are rolling out digital signage networks in which audio is more than an afterthought — networks in which customized, sophisticated sound systems match top quality, high-definition video.

In some ways, development of audio capabilities in this niche is in the same place today that the whole concept of digital signage was in a few years ago. Customers who once needed convincing of the return on investment for digital signs are now asking, “Can I get a side of sound with that?”

At the entry level, AV integrators and designers often have difficulty persuading a prospective digital signage customer even to think about audio.

At the top of the market, continuously evolving systems are straining the definition of signage nearly to the breaking point. Audio and video are working together and separately — interacting and reinforcing each other as well as reaching out to embrace other technologies such as cell phones, PDAs, and RFID.

Thinking About Linking

In museums, department stores, and specialty retail venues, audio systems have been commonplace for years, growing increasingly sophisticated in their ability to direct customized messages in different parts of the store at different times, and measure the results.

“There are lots and lots of stores that have made audio work already,” says consultant Bill Collins, head of Decision Point Research of Cincinnati, a signage veteran as a result of his long affiliation with aka.tv. “Supermarkets are now grappling with the question of how to deploy an effective audio video network. Very few have actually done it.”

Phil Jones, vice president of business development at Innovox Audio in Martinez, Calif., says it's unclear just how much market penetration audio has made in the digital signage environment. “I've seen estimates from the very low percentages to up to 50 percent of all systems that have audio,” says Jones. “It's all over the map. We've seen everything from wildly underpowered systems with very tiny speakers built into the display to systems at airports that have extremely expensive, professional speakers next to the monitors.”

“Right now we are on the verge of a boom concerning audio in digital signage networks,” says Kari Mettala, CEO of the Finnish loudspeaker company Panphonics. “The driving force is content. Content is king. It's expensive to produce, and advertisers would like to use the same content as they use in other electronic media.”

One result, says Mettala, is a call for “all aspects of the content to be on the same level, meaning you need to have a TV-like experience in the grocery store, including the sound.”

A big part of the challenge for vendors, integrators, and others is simply to get clients thinking about audio in the first place. “The hardest part is getting people to believe they ought to spend 10 percent more on a system to have substantially better than minimal audio,” says Jones. “The pitch installers need to make is that digital signage is advertising, and advertising is all about perception. You want people to have a positive perception.”

Linking creative audio to digital signage would seem to unlock an enormous, potential market. To realize that potential, digital signage audio has had to overcome some initial hurdles. Not surprisingly, cost is the first.

“The big issue has been the amount of capital required to light up these networks,” says Ron Blessing, director of corporate development at San Diego-based American Technology Corp. (ATC), which makes a variety of special-purpose loudspeakers and related systems. “It's not trivial. Up until the last generation of product, it has been too expensive to deploy these networks on a large scale.”

For a national chain that might want to equip 2,000 or more sites, says Blessing, it was daunting to face a unit cost of $2,500 to roll out a digital signage location combining video with state-of-the-art audio. “It used to be $1,500 just for the audio system,” says Blessing, adding that list prices for audio systems for displays are now in the $600s and can drop below $500 for large quantities.

Jones suggests that major retailers also have come to appreciate that if you look at the big picture, the cost is not too great to add enhanced audio to a video display. “In one large big-box rollout we did, the loudspeaker was less expensive than the mounting solution for the display,” he says. “However, signage can also involve video walls, projector walls, and the like. Audio solutions for these systems can cost multiple thousands of dollars.”

Avoiding Audio ‘Fatigue'

Another challenge has been that sound can simply get on a person's nerves, especially if there's too much of it, it's too loud, and it hits the ears from two many sources and directions at once.

“In a retail environment, if the staff is hearing the same audio track over and over again, they have some creative ways of making the audio go away,” says Kenneth Gisstennar, vice president of sales at Spinitar, an AV integrator with several offices in California. Jim Hyde, chief operating officer for In-Store Broadcasting Network in Salt Lake City, refers, more gently, to “avoiding the fatigue factor for the cashier.”

A major part of the solution has come with the emergence of highly directional loudspeakers that allow audio content to be focused on very narrow spaces. Blessing says it's a “misnomer to call these devices speakers. It's more like a flashlight beam of sound.”

Mounted 10 feet overhead, a directional speaker can deliver sound to a three-foot circle, so that only a specific customer in a specific place can hear it. Such end users as museums have long grappled with issues of audio clutter in delivering commentaries with their displays, employing tools such as audio “domes” to provide sound that visitors can hear if they are standing in the target space.

When it comes to making this personalized audio work with a video sales message, though, most of the action today is in the retail environment, says Blessing. Among retailers, those who have devised powerful applications for the signage and sound combinations “perceive it as a significant competitive advantage,” he says. “We still have people out there who are trying to metric the return on investment for their entire video-only network, and haven't even gotten to audio yet.”

Aim the Message

ATC's HyperSonic Sound family of directional speakers has been deployed, for example, at such national chains as Kroger's supermarkets, where In-Store Broadcasting Network provides the combined AV messaging.

“We view audio performance as key to our success with our messaging networks,” says Hyde. InStore Broadcasting relies on HyperSonic Sound technology particularly in areas “where controlling the cone of audio is important, to ensure that the right customers hear the right messaging and to be sure we are not disturbing the staff in the store,” he says.

Audio messages in a large supermarket typically play throughout the store and can be routed to different zones. Video displays also may be located in different specialty areas, such as the pharmacy or flower shop, but the two tools often come together most powerfully in the checkout lanes.

According to Hyde, In-Store Broadcasting typically specifies a speakerless LCD panel above the cashier station, coupled with an HSS speaker mounted nearby. “We use the speakers to direct messages at the second or third person in line,” says Hyde. “When they take a few steps forward to interact with the cashier, they are outside the cone and can't hear the message.”

Messages directed to these customers can promote both “endemic and non-endemic” content, says Hyde. The distinction is between impulse purchases the customer may make at the checkout lane, such as candy or gift cards, and information about products and services they might want after leaving the store. The second category can include movie trailers, promotionals for TV programs, and other messages placed on the network by other paying advertisers.

Either way, once the customer reaches the cashier, he wants no distractions. “We have the challenge of ensuring there is good audio and video delivery at the lane without bothering the cashier, or the customer who is trying to interact,” says Hyde. “Grocery stores are very sensitive about their checkout lanes and want to keep them moving.”

Sound quality also has been an impediment to broader adoption of more ambitious audio dimensions for digital signage. “The sound quality [of directional speakers] is not what you would hope for,” says Jones.

he trade off, he explains, is between the value of controlling and targeting the message and the quality of the audio delivered to a highly specific area. “What you are sacrificing, quite often, is full frequency response,” he says. “Voices tend to sound very thin.”

Chris Oswood, Innovox Audio's vice president of product development, adds that if the goal is for the listener to easily understand speech, that's one thing. “But if the application calls for something more natural sounding, those kinds of systems really are lacking,” he says. “It's virtually impossible today to do very focused directivity and have high quality.”

Blessing believes “the fidelity is improving,” but adds, “This is not a hi-fi music experience. [The system] does not produce a lot of low-end bass, but it's very good for combinations of music and voice.”

Panphonics' Mettala notes in particular that directional audio delivers “very good speech intelligibility. This is the most important thing. It is not useful to play advertisements if one cannot understand the message.”

Opening Minds

In the long run, the biggest obstacle to implementing better audio in digital signage systems simply may be penetrating the minds of clients' marketing executives and facility designers, and getting them to think specifically about audio. “Generally, when we're going through a needs assessment, 90 percent of it is centered on the visual,” says Spinitar's Gisstennar. When it comes to audio, he adds, “either they are not thinking down that road, or else they make assumptions.”

As a result, says Gisstennar, Spinitar must ask the client if it is expecting some kind of audio with the product, and what it has in mind.

Scott Werlein, Spinitar's creative director, says that a lot of times, digital signage is used to repurpose content, such as TV ads, and users just rely on the sound that comes along with that video, as well as the speakers that come with the display.

Once users start thinking separately about audio, they face a variety of decisions about speaker selection, type, and placement. Often, a small, thin speaker can be mounted directly adjacent to the display panel. Whether the speaker goes above, below, or to the side depends on other key decisions concerning coverage angles, ambient noise levels, the acoustic qualities of the space, and other factors.

Audio signals can be delivered easily to displays over the same cable that carries the video or, as Spinitar's Oswood points out, digital audio data can be managed separately. This approach opens up many avenues to monitor and adjust audio levels in response to a variety of environmental influences.

As the tools and uses of digital signage audio expand, attention again is focusing on metrics. Where users once had to be convinced signage displays would pay off, today they're questioning the return on investment on the proposed audio investments. Consultant Collins maintains that the jury on this question is definitely out. “There are important metrics we have not settled on yet,” he says. “How do retailers evaluate the effectiveness of these networks? Can you measure it in a way that approximates the way you would measure something like direct mail?”

Those users that have measured the impact of their audio efforts are rather closed-mouthed about their findings. Still, IBN's Hyde says that, “We believe it's worth the extra effort.”

John McKeon is an independent consultant and writer in Washington. He can be reached at jjmckeon@comcast.net.