Like most sectors serving a consumer market, amusement operators are using screens to entertain and inform customers, deliver commercial messaging, and develop revenue. The potential of screen media – often called “digital signage” or “digital out-of-home” – is limited largely by operators’ imagination. But rather than just rolling out a screen network because it’s what everyone else is doing, and hoping some fairy dust will rub off on the bottom line, it’s essential to rigorously define the business rationale for digital displays: how they will contribute to broader objectives, whether hard ones like profitability or softer ones like customer satisfaction, and how that contribution will be measured.

For screens can serve a plethora of purposes (although rarely all of them at the same time), and it is a careful definition of purpose that enables other key decisions such as the kind of content that should be shown on-screen, the technology necessary to support this, and the optimal relationships with suppliers.

Meeting with those suppliers, as well as other users, and learning from their experience will be high on the agenda for many of the amusement industry visitors to Screenmedia Expo Europe in May (see box). But before we draw up a shopping list let’s consider the general advantages that screens have over printed signage.

Most obviously, they are changeable: they can show moving video, or a rotation of still pictures. What is shown can be altered instantly, or automatically varied according to a set schedule. They can provide audio as well as visuals, and they can provide opportunities for interaction with customers, either through the screen itself – these days, generally using a touch-sensitive surface – or through the consumer’s own mobile device.

Those, then, are the broad reasons for screens’ technical superiority over signs as a means of communication. But how, in practice, do they provide a commercial edge? As Net Display Systems, provider of the Pads Professional digital signage software with clients including casinos, leisure centres and theme parks, puts it: “Especially in the gaming and leisure industry, digital signage elevates the experience for clients to a higher level, as it provides cutting-edge technology to enhance interactivity and optimal customer service.”

Sell, sell, sell

Perhaps the simplest way to gain ROI from screens, especially for larger venues, is by using them to cross-sell and upsell. Promoting the venue as a whole is pointless: by definition, the customer has already made the decision to visit, and their experience will have far more impact on their perception than any amount of self-aggrandisement.

However, now that they are on-site, screens can be a powerful way to nudge them into sampling elements of the offer that they may not have considered, such as catering and retail facilities, or loyalty programmes. This requires a deep understanding of the customer and their journey, both through the physical premises and through the day, so that the most attractive and appropriate promotions are offered at the right time and place.

On-screen promotions are not usually aimed at named, identifiable individuals. That is feasible to a limited extent if, for example, customers are invited to make their identity known by sending a text message to the screen; and it is possible today for audience-recognition systems, using cameras built into screens, to make a pretty good guess at the gender, age and ethnicity (and intriguingly, although probably irrelevantly for the amusement business, body type) of the person standing in front of them. This allows content to be fine-tuned on the fly according to their demographic.

However, though these technologies can certainly enhance the capability of screens to deliver appropriate messages, none of them is essential for effective screen deployment. The key to showing the right content at the right place at the right time is to exploit your understanding of your clientele, and assess what kind of customer is most likely to be in that location at a certain moment, what they are doing, and what they might want to do next.

Some venues that operate screen networks go further than this in their quest to extract commercial value from the displays, by selling advertising time to other organisations that want to reach a similar customer base. This is quite common in leisure businesses such as gyms and bars, for example, and frequently it’s done by signing up to one of the national out-of-home screen networks operated by the likes of Lord Sugar’s Amscreen, or Addirect, a firm which specialises in putting screens in washrooms (where, at least in theory, consumers have few distractions).

Nicer queues

Other applications for screens have softer benefits, in that it’s not so easy to discern a direct bottom-line boost, but unarguable that they improve the customer experience. For example, it’s well-documented that dead time spent waiting in queues seems briefer, and less annoying, if there’s a distraction like a screen. This is also an occasion where you can expect the display to hold attention for an extended period, perhaps as long as several minutes, and can therefore show longer-form, more detailed content (by contrast, for screens in locations where people tend to be moving about, each content element should only be a few seconds in duration).

And, of course, if the screens can be used to advertise products or services available at the front of the queue, there’s a double benefit – sales uplift, plus improvement to the customer experience. For this reason, digital menu boards are becoming popular in fast-food and self-service restaurants.

Another soft benefit is way-finding. In larger establishments, while conventional signage and maps can help the customer with orientation, screens – particularly interactive, touch-enabled ones – can do much more. For example, they can highlight routes between two spots selected by the customer. They can be updated in real time to reflect issues like out-of-service escalators, or retail and food-service opening hours, showing only what’s currently available to the customer. Many businesses hold in digital form appreciable quantities of information that could be leveraged to improve customer service in a way that would be impractical with printed signage, but is easy with digital screens – whether in the gaming area or other parts of the venue.

For instance, the digital signage specialist Signs4U has developed an interface that links gaming jackpot controllers to the multimedia management system from C-nario. “Now the system is able to display jackpot data, which is retrieved from various jackpot controllers. This real-time data is fed into the system and converted into a graphical, fully configurable jackpot meter,” the firm says.

Further uses for screens include safety and emergency messaging; regulatory compliance (for example, through displaying legally required information); and employee communications (either through displays in staff-only areas, or using the public-facing screens in parts of the facility when they’re closed).

And that only scratches the surface. Anywhere that you need to communicate anything more than the very simplest, never-changing information to your patrons, there is a strong chance that screens will achieve that more effectively than conventional signage, as long as the ROI – hard or soft – justifies the investment.

The numbers

Ah yes, that investment. How much are we looking at? The answer – of course – is that it is impossible to give a definitive budget figure, because screen networks vary so much in their size and complexity. For what it’s worth, the U.S. digital signage software provider WireSpring recently published some startling calculations which indicate that over a period of years, by far the bulk of the cost of running a screen network lay not in technology, but in staffing (including content production).

Granted, WireSpring based its modelling on a hypothetical network with one screen in each of 100 different venues. Amusement businesses are likely to have significantly smaller networks, so tech support and admin, for example, will be less demanding than in WireSpring’s example. However, its figures still give a general impression of where the money goes: around 80 percent on staffing and content, the rest on technology, where the single biggest items are management software and tech support, followed by screens and media players. Installation, player software, project management and screen mounting are smaller costs.

Let’s look at each of those technology elements in turn. The screens themselves are usually commercial-grade LCD devices (much more durable than the TV in your sitting room), less often plasma or LED. All the big screen manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, NEC, Philips, Panasonic and so on are actively targeting this market.

3D is, naturally, the fad du jour although it has to be said that acceptable glasses-free 3D is not yet here for most applications. Touch-sensitivity may well be a trend with more staying power, helped in large part by the spread of smartphones – consumers increasingly expect to be able to touch a screen to manipulate the content it displays and call up other content. Indeed, as Italy’s Worldtrade, a distributor for display brands including General Touch and Winsonic, puts it: “LCD liquid crystal panels, like all touch solutions, are an integral part of our daily lives.” And it was not surprising that at the recent Enada trade show in Rimini, Worldtrade’s slick display of touchscreens was one of the most visually enticing in the entire event. If they can attract supposedly cynical gaming insiders who just can’t resist touching them, imagine what reception they’ll get from consumers.

Media players are, essentially, small dedicated computers which do the same job as a DVD or Blu-ray player – actually playing out the video and audio to the screens. Depending on how the network is configured, one media player may be required for each screen, or it may be possible for a single player to serve a few screens. There’s a multitude of specialist manufacturers.

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