Digital Signage Statistics Suggest Digital Signs Better for Recall than TV

Author: Bill Gerba on 2004-10-03 20:55:50

Somebody pointed out this interesting article about Wal-Mart TV over at Brand Autopsy which points a finger at a study done by Wal-Mart TV administrator Premier Retail Networks (I've blogged about PRN before, specifically in "PRN: A Digital Signage IPO Story"). The bloggers think that PRN might be cooking their statistics a bit. This is the quote that really bugs them:

"[T]he average recall of a brand advertised on Wal-Mart television is 66%, compared with 24% for brands advertised on in-home television."
("Wal-Mart Adds In-Store TV Sets, Lifts Advertising", Wall Street Journal (Sep 22, 2004)

While that stat might be a bit hard to swallow, and vendor sponsored "research" studies should always be taken with a grain of salt, I don't think that we can entirely discount this number, as much as traditional advertisers with strong positions in video and print marketing might want to. Indeed, PRN's work with ACNielsen sort of corroborates research done by Arbitron for digital signage provider Coolsign (blogged about in "Dynamic digital signage drives sales & improves brand recognition says research firm"). If you recall, they found that:

"[M]all patrons were 1.56 times more likely to recall advertising for a specific specialty retail store chain after viewing CoolSign displays, and subsequently, 40 percent more likely to purchase from that chain."

Now I'm not saying that two research reports sponsored by some of the bigger players in our industry qualifies as solid, accountable fact, however the results do seem to compliment tangentially related research trends noted by others. For example, USC Annenberg School's Center for the Digital Future, which has been publishing a well-regarded survey of Internet usage in the United States for four years now, notes that on average, use of the Internet has increased to 12.5 hours per week for those who actually use the Internet. At the same time, though, television viewership (for adults, at least), has dropped, as has newspaper readership. (all of these statistics are in their excellent 10 Years, 10 Trends report). Similar results have been found by other research firms. In fact, it's gotten to the point where advertising and media companies have started to wake up and take notice. Fortune ran a superb article about this recently, titled Nightmare on Madison Avenue, where consumer disenfranchisement, TiVo, and the Internet are all named as challenges that marketing firms must overcome in the near future.

While stats from PRN and Coolsign might remain contested for a while, I think it's becoming harder and harder to ignore the successes that digital merchandising techniques like interactive kiosks and digital signage have been having.

And always the marketing plug: WireSpring's solutions for kiosks and digital signs are optimized for many situations, like retail TV and digital merchandising. If you have any questions about any of this, feel free to submit your thoughts using the green box above, or simply contact us.