| Digital signage networks are powerful communications tools, but to get the most out of them requires proper monitoring, content management and control.
Digital signage networks are enticing to marketers, advertisers and large institutions because they offer exceptional reach and wrest control away from traditional gatekeepers, thus collapsing the distance between the communicator and the medium.
So much for the highfalutin talk; let's get practical and take a journey on the road to succeeding with digital signage networks. If digital signage networks are to achieve these lofty goals, they must offer certain fundamental capabilities, including making it simple to manage content, monitor playout, detect network faults, diagnose problems, control individual monitors and override playout schedules to issue emergency messages in times of distress, such as weather events, fires and other catastrophes.
The first stop on this journey is the content management server. The content management server provides a network operations center (NOC) with access to every, or targeted, digital signs along the network. Rather than manually communicating point-to-point, addressing one digital signage player after another sequentially from a central location to distribute media and playout schedules, the content management server pushes out new media and schedules to targeted players over a LAN, WAN or VPN as instructed by someone with administrative rights -often long after that person has left for the day and is snoozing away in bed.
Depending upon the application, it may also be necessary for the content management server to accommodate hyperlocal content playback on specific monitors, which, for example, may share the same general geography. Imagine a university with a digital signage network. A content management system could serve media files and playlists for all but a single onscreen area to ensure consistency of messaging across campus. However, in that reserved onscreen space hyperlocal content regarding individual schools, colleges and departments could playback messages tailored to their needs. |
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