In Store

Digital advertising agency Avenue A-Razorfish wants to bring brand experiences to the "fourth screen"--a screen beyond the silver screen, TV, and computer. The term "fourth screen" is sometimes used to refer to mobile phones, but Avenue A-Razorfish has envisioned something larger: the storefront window.

Customers in shopping centres are having their every move tracked by a new type of surveillance that listens in on the whisperings of their mobile phones. The technology can tell when people enter a shopping centre, what stores they visit, how long they remain there, and what route they take as they walked around.

Minneapolis firm Spyeglass has put a demo on YouTube showing how consumers can interact with a large touch screen. The clips show a viewer touching an element, and dragging it to the center of the screen. It's a nifty trick, but the platform's key may be the laptop that powers the sign. Clearly the screen is programmable, which is where the real future lies. Rather than just drag a screen element, viewers could tap it for more information. In a sense, a billboard whose content consumers control.

Digital Signage Today has published a new how-to guide for those planning for a digital signage network deployment. The guide is titled "Digital Signage Project Planning" and is immediately available for download. Sponsored by Diversified Media Group, this guide tackles the digital signage deployment process from concept development to rollout.

According to a study by Abritron and Zoom Media & Marketing, 80 percent of people exposed to a bar's digital advertising screen remembered at least one of the four ads that played in rotation. This is impressive because: a) 80 percent is a very big number; b) the coveted youth demographic is well-represented; and c) bar patrons are often hard-pressed to recall much of anything.

Wendy's has rolled out a bar-based campaign on the Ecast digital jukebox and ad platform. The idea is that bar-goers will be inspired to think Wendy's when looking for tunes, tap the touchscreen, and get directions for nearby locations. Could be the start of a whole new trend: the burger crawl.

RMS Networks launched a free digital signage software offering on Wednesday that helps operators sell advertising faster and fill unsold slots on their networks. rVue, which RMS said has already been field tested by many businesses, is designed to streamline how ads are placed on digital signage networks and generate performance reports detailing how successful those ads are in playback -- including click through-rates by the outlets and revenue paid by the advertisers for those clicks.