Analyze This! - Industry News on Digital Signage Analytics

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There was a time when installing digital signage meant putting promotional content on a big screen regardless of whether or not viewers were paying attention. It was also the time when we had only a vague idea about the return on investment and viewers’ sentiments towards those installations. Not only was traditional, non-interactive content delivery poorly adept at generating engagement, it also failed to even offer a technical means for analyzing that engagement in the first place.

Those archaic days are now gone.

Today, digital signage means interactive engagement.

Today, advanced interactive technologies like touch, RFID, sensors, tangible objects, and gesture recognition are up for grabs, and thanks to advanced software platforms like Intuiface making those technologies accessible to even the non-technical, the limit of what we can do with digital signage is limited by only our own creativity.

Particularly in the world of retail, an increasing number of brands are putting effort into marrying interactivity with digital signage in the pursuit of a seamless phygital experience that delivers the benefits of both the digital and physical worlds. Customer expectations for a more authentic experience is also challenging businesses to excel at proactively delivering what customers are seeking with solid knowledge of their preference and history along different omnichannel touchpoints. This is where analytics comes in.

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What gets measured, gets managed

As a thought leader and the founder of modern management, Peter Drucker once said, what gets measured, gets managed. No one can argue that this adage applies to any business project. Unfortunately, the lesson is often overlooked.

As mentioned earlier, technology in support of gauging the performance of digital signage installations has long been either non-existent or unable to provide an accurate measurement.

But the world has changed and we are seeing a shift in the paradigm. We are now capable of knowing exactly what’s being done at the screen, who’s doing it, and possibly even why. How is this possible? Take a good hard look at all the interactive technology we have in our hands today. What do you see? A sensor, a means of capturing (sensing) information through those interactions.

Read our blog article “The Experience is the Sensor”

As Intuiface’s Chief Evangelist Geoffrey Bessin has expressed, if target audiences are at the screen, expressing their preferences and interests through their interaction, and that information can be collected, isn’t there value to be mined here? Insight not just about their actions, but about their influences like the environment (time, season, weather), demographics (age, gender), location (store, in-store) and more?

When supported by advanced digital signage analytics software like Intuiface Analytics, we can now turn digital signage into a sensor that captures information on all the important activities that happen on or around the screen.

This collected data about user behavior is the basis of insights that answer questions about not only the audience but also the installation’s performance. With this insight decisions can be made about the installation itself (good location? the right content?), the audience (their preferences and interests), and the business at large.

Remember? What gets measured, gets managed.

But hold on, collecting data is not everything

In the world where nearly everything is just fingertips away, customers can be impatient and unforgiving when it comes to the brand experience. Building and maintaining loyalty for a brand depends highly on the quality of customer-brand interactions. Statistics prove it.

• 91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands who provide relevant offers and recommendations (source: Accenture)
• 80% of customers are more likely to purchase a product or service from a brand who provides personalized experiences (source: Epsilon)
• Consumers with an emotional connection to a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value, stay with a brand for an average of 5.1 years vs. 3.4 years, and will recommend brands at a much higher rate (71% vs. 45%). (source: Motista)

Today, recognizing the implication of big data, a handful of digital signage software and analytics solutions are dedicated to collecting an unmeasurably large amount of data. As it happens, with the contribution of flourishing mobile traffic, cloud computing, and digital interactions propelled by smart technologies like facial recognition and multitouch digital signage, the global big data market is projected to grow to $103 billion by 2027, more than double its size in 2018 (Statistica, 2019).

Be careful! Collecting a large data set is not the goal, it’s only a means to achieving better digital signage performance and customer satisfaction. How we “process” data is just as important. There are three other considerations that should also keep solution providers up at night.

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• Unactionable data is just as bad as no data at all.
• Solution providers have the responsibility to explicitly disclose and gain consent for their collection and use of personal data.
• The quality and fitness of insight derived from data can vary depending on the efficiency and accuracy of reporting.

Eyes on Analytics News

The history of customer data analytics itself goes far back in time. But analytics technology applied to interactive digital signage is fairly new. Here at Intuiface, as we stand on the frontlines of progress in the world of digital signage, we celebrate the increasing presence of Analytics in our industry. In that spirit, we’d like to highlight the significance of analytics in the signage world by sharing a few eye-opening news articles.

Click on the titles to find the original articles.

How digital can save brick-and-mortar retail with customer experience objectives

Published on MARTECHSERIES

NEC talks how to make digital signage pay off

Published on Digital Signage Today

McDonalds orders up customer service analytics shakes up fast food

Published on TechTarget

InfoComm 2019 Trends to Follow Closely on the Floor

Published on Commercial Integrator

Looking at the future of indoor digital signage

Published on Digital Signage Today

Why retailers are betting big on predictive analytics

Published on TECHWIRE Asia

Top 5 benefits of using digital signage analytics to boost your business.

Published on the Frisky