By Brice McPheeters and Mike Neel
When speaking to someone they have never met before, people tend to adjust their choice of words, their tone and even their choice of topics based on the perceived mood, level of interest, patience and age of that person. Often, such traits are immediately perceptible, at least to most members of society, and they function as cues to inform how best to proceed with spoken communications.
In other words, people use their senses to measure certain traits in their audience, then tailor their communications based on those measurements. To whom one speaks informs how one speaks.
Today, this human ability to observe and adjust is being recreated through technology and integrated into digital signage platforms. With such examples as camera sensors and facial detection software, digital displays are being equipped with the capability to automatically pick up on people’s cues.
In turn, digital signage operators and, especially, content managers are using the collected information to help adapt their communications efforts, so as to increase the likelihood of successfully engaging with their audience. As such, audience measurement technology has the potential to transform the medium.
First, however, it is important to explore and understand more about what audience measurement technology is, how it can be implemented and why it is important to digital signage.
Moving beyond one-way communications
Analytics can be collected for large crowds in busy environments.
The main motivation for measuring certain traits of the audience of digital signage is to measure the medium’s performance, so as to maximize its potential.
At its core, digital signage exists to communicate with an audience, so any assessment of the effectiveness of its performance will naturally be framed by the nature of that audience. For years, however, the ability to grasp who makes up the audience was elusive.
In part, this is because digital signage has almost always been a one-way communication medium, simply displaying content for the audience to look at. If network operators wanted to learn anything about how well their content was performing and who was looking at it, they had to go stand next to one of their displays and take notes firsthand.
Today, on the other hand, when audiences look at a measurement-enabled screen, the network takes these notes on its own. Through the use of sophisticated computer vision algorithms, facial detection hardware and software, and advanced camera sensors, all embedded within the display, an impressive amount of audience data can be gathered.
The characteristics recorded by these technologies can include a viewer’s mood, gender, age and dwell time, among other traits. This information is stored and can be accessed through a dashboard, either in real time or after the fact, and its level of accuracy has become truly remarkable. By gathering demographics-based data, these measurement technologies are able to provide a highly valuable ‘snapshot’ of the audience for digital signage.
In one example, a retail store owner assumed his lunchtime shopping crowd was mostly older women, only for audience measurement data to show the majority of people who looked at his in-store digital displays between 12 and 2 p.m. were younger men. This discovery was immensely valuable, as it helped the owner know better how to target on-screen content.
