Amidst Manhattan’s flexible-face signs, banners, blade signs and neon, a series of electronic digital signage (EDS) displays are mounted on street-level subway entrances. The small, full-color, LED videoscreens, which are networked to function as an electronic, changeable-copy sign system, are placing a new face on outdoor advertising.
Known as the Digital Street Network (DSN), the EDS video-advertising system comprises 80 LED, video displays distributed throughout Manhattan’s West Side, from uptown to Lower Manhattan. The technological and media expertise of several companies have converged to create the first, urban, outdoor, EDS network in the United States.
The convergence was proposed by Urban Display Network (Las Vegas), which owns and operates the networking system. Lighthouse (Science Park, Hong Kong) provided the videoscreens, and Clear Channel Outdoor New York (New York City) sells and forwards all representative advertising to Urban Display Network for posting on the DSN system, which has been operating since January 2004 in Manhattan.
Lighthouse’s 3 x 6-ft., 6mm-pitch, LVP-0620 displays provide 2,000-nit brightness. Outdoor EDS screens typically require a higher brightness (5,000 to 7,000 nits), but many DSN screens are deployed among Manhattan’s tall buildings, where shadows increase the signs’ visibility. To ensure survival in the New York City street environment, a Lexan™ polycarbonate sheet has been placed in front of each LED sign face.
Although a few Lexan sheets marred by graffiti have been replaced, the displays have survived remarkably well. The DSN’s self-diagnostic feature alerts UDN when an electronic sign within the network falters. UDN can then update the sign and bring it back online as an advertising display.
Clear Channel Outdoor’s president, Tim Spauning, explained the efficiency of the DNS system. “It transmits the same advertising image to a wide urban area, giving you the best advertising exposure to the greatest number of people at the same time. For example,” Spauning continued, “DNS street-level subway locations allow us to interact with two audiences -- pedestrians who are just passing by in the midst of their errands and a second group who’s entering the subways. Either way, just about everyone passing these signs sees them.”
Rex Williams, Urban Display Network’s CEO, said that his company saw video advertising’s outdoor potential, bought the LED screens, supporting computers and servers, and offered to collaborate with Clear Channel Outdoor, which had a marketing relationship with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, which manages the city subway system.
The EDS screens are installed in a series of strategic, streetside, subway entrances. Williams explained that Clear Channel Outdoor books the advertising; Urban Display Network manages the content, and both companies share the revenues.
Scheduling
The sign-scheduling package defines the electronic network’s performance. Williams chose WebPavement software to manage and schedule DSN’s content. Williams was impressed by the package’s “good reporting and logging features for billing purposes.”
Also, it supports third-party advertising and prioritizes scheduled playback. Additional features include default play lists, various image and movie-format support, and heightened security measures as it displays advertising messages.
”Most importantly,” Williams said, “we collaborated with WebPavement to customize their software for our own special needs. Our concerns included our ability to micro-manage the playback frequency of our advertising spots and also develop a more enhanced security net over the system.”
Williams said the DSN’s running time of a display’s advertising loop was timed to be 10 seconds a spot, with a six-spot limit, which creates a self-repeating, 60-second loop. “We actually spent a lot of time to decide the final running time of the advertising loop. Our feeling was that our national advertising clients, who are co-sharing space with other advertisers, would want to be seen as often as possible, and once a minute seemed like the right amount of time to represent that idea,” Williams said.
Clients receive complete exposure on all 80 screens simultaneously. Once time is purchased on the DSN, the spot is sent to Clear Channel Outdoor in New York City. Clear Channel reviews the ad copy and sends it to Las Vegas.
Williams observed, “Ninety percent of the time, the ads are formatted to our specifications. Sometimes we finesse the art to make it conform to our design and operating standards.”
DSN uploads the finalized spots to the scheduled playlist and transmits the finished creative, via the Internet, back to Manhattan. The system’s sign content is distributed via a Verizon wireless connection to each EDS screen, which is fitted with an omni-directional WiFi Plus Ultra M antenna. The WiFi Plus signal’s unique triangulation penetrates the urban density of buildings, cars and other obstacles to provide a continuous sign presence on each screen, according to Williams.
Network benefits
DSN is presently the largest, outdoor, EDS network system in the United States. Williams noted that EDS screens are creating a paradigm shift in the design and distribution of outdoor advertising.
”The billboard industry is typically very slow to move to new technologies,” Williams said. “For example, it took the industry quite few years to shift from handpainted signs to vinyl-covered billboards. Now, every media company installs its billboards using the preferred vinyl approach.”
Outdoor, electronic-sign networks have emerged as a bridge between the previous static, posterboard displays and their electronic-billboard counterparts. While electronic billboards are establishing an outdoor-advertising presence along major highway routes, DSN has the same electronic-advertising impact (changeable-message copy, day-part message assignments, video animations, etc.) as it appears within a single metropolitan region.
Other DSN advantages include:
-- Reduced costs. Smaller LED screens reduce acquisition and installation costs within an urban landscape.
-- Pedestrian focus. Urban deployment of electronic advertising also shifts the installation process away from highway locations, where municipal sign codes are incorrectly concerned about moving-message signs as a potential traffic disruption. In urban-core locations, where street-level, EDS screens are focused on pedestrians as a direct audience, municipal sign codes and oncoming traffic become less of a market-entry barrier.
-- Increased marketing range. Smaller electronic signs can fit into a greater range of urban spaces, including off-road locations, and develop a far-reaching electronic-marketing footprint within a single, metropolitan area.
“Clear Channel is the leading outdoor-advertising company in the United States, and most of our outdoor advertising is more in traditional urban environments,” Stauning said. “We started looking at new sign technologies to adopt for our mainstream markets, to not only enhance the advertising process, but also to attract new clients to outdoor advertising.”
He added that electronic signage is still new to many city officials, and, therefore, potential installation of a high-tech, EDS outdoor system is by no means an automatic assumption. Some city municipalities are concerned that moveable-message signs may interrupt local traffic flow where the system is installed. However, Clear Channel has found that informed advertisers and city officials quickly see EDS’s benefits. Stauning foresees future deployments in mall or airport terminals, “where potential sign locations can have their greatest advertising effect on their passing pedestrian traffic.”
Williams noted that the billboard industry is examining DSN’s potential as a companion advertising system. “Once an electronic-billboard network generates more revenue than its static counterpart,” Williams said, “then you’ll see more media companies setting up their equivalent, electronic-advertising networks as well.”
Furthermore, Stauning says DSN can be easily exported to other cities, where their licensing agencies would examine the network’s benefits. But Stauning noted, “DSN is the future of electronic, outdoor advertising, and this is how we get there.”
Louis M. Brill is a journalist and consultant for high-tech entertainment and media communications.
