The Digital Signage Insider
WireSpring's blog featuring tips and analysis from a team of industry experts

POPAI Code of Conduct: Taking a Stand on Digital Signage Privacy

Author: Bill Gerba on 2010-02-08 15:55:46

In the past two months, I think I've seen more articles relating to consumer privacy and in-store tracking and measurement techniques published in major, mass-market publications than ever before. Starting with the Intel/Microsoft digital signage "platform" unveiled at the NRF in early January (which prominently featured gaze tracking and demographic analysis features), and continuing with the World Privacy Forum's recent report on the privacy implications of such systems (PDF format) last week, there's a lot of hype and misinformation surrounding the issue of consumer privacy and the effect that "active" digital signage may have on privacy in the near future. As one of the people who actually instigated this discussion a few years ago, I thought I'd try and set the record straight about what's going on in the industry, what the real concerns are, and what various industry groups are trying to do about it.

A brief history of the in-store privacy discussion

About four or five years ago, a number of companies came to market with products that could analyze live video feeds to see where people were looking (called "gaze tracking") and also recognize certain demographic characteristics of people caught on camera. Many of these companies originally devised their systems for military or civilian security use, and were seeking to adapt it for other purposes. By 2008, some of these companies were courting digital signage networks and software companies to integrate their wares. Their arguments for doing so were fairly straightforward. First, by identifying how many people were looking at a digital sign at a particular time, it would make the screen time that much more valuable for advertisers. Second, by identifying a person by demographic, the network could immediately display information thought to be relevant to that group. But people seemed to be glossing over the privacy implications of the technology, which led me to write an article explaining why digital signage networks must guarantee viewer privacy.

Over time, a number of articles appeared in the mainstream media (including the New York Times) asking whether this kind of tracking should be allowed without providing any notification to the people being recorded, whether its abilities should be restricted in some way, and what the ethical and legal implications of using such solutions were. About 18 months ago, Laura Davis-Taylor of Retail Media Consulting (and now CRI) and I both found ourselves fielding questions from potential customers over whether the ability to use gaze-tracking systems and other methods of collecting in-store demographic data were useful and/or ethical. Lacking sufficient domain knowledge to make an educated statement at the time, Laura and I brought the topic up at a regular meeting of POPAI's Digital Signage Advocacy group in mid-2008. POPAI decided to adopt the issue as its own. Over the ensuing months, I contacted a number of privacy and consumer advocacy groups and experts -- including Pam Dixon, author of the above-mentioned report from the World Privacy Forum -- to learn about the current state of affairs with regard to out-of-home consumer privacy. The field turned out to be much bigger, more complicated, and more riddled with existing laws and loopholes than I ever expected. But after working with the other members of POPAI's Digital Signage Advocacy group, we eventually authored a draft set of best practices for people involved with collecting and using "Observed Tracking Data" (OTD).

In early 2009, I spoke out again about the topic, this time asking if digital signage is invading consumer privacy. By mid-2009, the POPAI best practices document was finalized, and was reviewed by members of POPAI's board of directors, as well as POPAI's strategic planning committee. Dick Blatt (POPAI's President at the time) took the draft document to an informal working session at the FTC, which is the government body that manages most of the legislation surrounding consumer privacy. The FTC folks agreed that our draft was the correct first step toward the kind of industry self-regulation that, if properly managed, would keep members of our industry out of the FTC's targets later on. At roughly the same time, Nathan Purcell of DCSI reviewed a draft of the best practices document with former House of Representatives member Barry Goldwater Jr., one of the primary authors of The Privacy Act of 1974, and a recognized expert on consumer privacy matters. The positive feedback from both government-related endeavors led us to believe we were on the right track.

What are the best practices for collecting and using data?

The POPAI document is called "Best Practices: Recommended Code of Conduct for Consumer Tracking Research", and you can download the full 11-page document directly from their website (PDF format). In general, we tried to focus on the four or five things most likely to get you in trouble with your local, state or federal government, your customers, or both. If you are planning to collect, store, process or use any kind of surveillance-like data gathering (especially with technology that can uniquely or individually identify consumers, which we'll cover in a minute), then you really need to:

• Disclose data collection methods: Put up some signs, make some pamphlets available, put up a web page. I know that this will be anathema to retailers, but our expectation -- which is mirrored by the FTC's own recommendations to related industries -- is that the more potentially privacy-invading the tracking technique, the more good you can do by plainly disclosing it ahead of time.
  
  
• Get customer consent to be monitored: I know this isn't going to be practical in all cases, but again, giving your clientele a modicum of power inside your venue translates to an improved sense of trust and a stronger customer relationship.
  
  
• Know the difference between unique and individual identification: In short, unique identification means that you can track an individual apart from other individuals as they travel through the venue. Individual identification means that you can take that tracking data and correlate it to a specific person, either via some personal information like a name or address, or via an account number.
  
  
• Allow customers to opt in (or opt out) of more intrusive monitoring practices: Like getting consent, I know this isn't going to be practical or even possible in many cases. But the opt-in (and even more so, the opt-out) is the thing that will keep our industry out of the hands of regulators.
  
  
• Practice cross-channel and cross-domain marketing constraints. This is another area that may get our industry into trouble in the future. Imagine a scenario where a cross-retailer loyalty program can track an individual as he goes from the supermarket to the dry cleaner to an apparel store to a big-box retailer. Such a system would clearly be able to collect a vast amount of personal information. Just as the FTC is currently trying to limit the ability of Internet marketers to track consumer behavior over a large variety of Internet properties, they will certainly try to do the same thing in the real world at the first sign of trouble.

The fact is, there's a lot more to following best practices for consumer privacy than what we crammed into the 11 pages of the POPAI Code of Conduct. A lot of it comes down to common sense. Before you implement a system that shows different ads based on viewer gender, ask yourself whether the ads that show up (or don't) could even remotely be considered discriminatory. Ask whether the techniques used to identify the viewer might be considered invasive. And ask whether a shopper might want to opt-out if they knew what was taking place.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (or: Who will watch the watchers?)

Who's watching the watchers, you ask? My personal belief is that we'll eventually need a fully independent, non-commercial, global not-for-profit organization set up to align shopper and marketer interests. POPAI would be a great choice for this role given its current global presence, non-profit status, and clear interest in seeing the digital signage industry continue to expand and flourish. (For a truly excellent analysis of why our industry needs a non-profit advocacy organization like POPAI at the helm, I highly recommend Ken Goldberg's recent article on the subject.) For now, given the early stage that we're at and the hard time we're having just getting the message out, I think such a move is a bit premature. But rest assured that government and private entities alike are keeping a very close eye on what's going on with real-world consumer marketing programs, and that one of them will ultimately pounce.

So, that's the digital signage privacy debate in a nutshell. If you're angry or upset about it, I guess you can blame me, since I'm as responsible as anybody for perpetuating the discussion. And if you think it's a non-issue, then at least you can take solace in the fact that I'm wasting my time on it.

But if you're the least bit concerned, or you're a major brand or retailer thinking about implementing tracking mechanisms, or you're a company that deals with gaze tracking, RFID tracking, mobile tracking or anything like that, then I highly recommend you spend a few minutes with us at the Digital Signage Expo, where we'll be doing a seminar on the best practices for using observed tracking data. Here are the details:

Opt-in or Opt-out? Navigate the Consumer Privacy Issue for Future Profit
Seminar #S21
Thursday, February 25 at 8-9 AM

Hope to see you there!

What do you think of the new POPAI guidelines? Leave a comment and let me know.

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Is the Digital Signage Industry Still Growing?

Author: Bill Gerba on 2010-01-27 14:46:00

Whether you pose this question to a wide-eyed entrepreneur or a seasoned veteran in our space, it's pretty obvious what the answer will be. In fact, ever since the term "digital signage" gained traction about a decade ago, the hardware, software, services and advertising segments of the market have seen double-digit gains (or more!) every single year. And new reports from Frost & Sullivan, PQ Media and a number of others tell us that that while the rate of increase may start to decline a bit, we should continue to see healthy growth for some time to come. I was thinking about this while studying the web analytics for wirespring.com and this blog's subscription sources -- via RSS, email and plain old web page views. You see, starting in 2005, the blog saw geometric growth in its number of subscribers every year until 2008. Then, suddenly, the growth rate became linear. In searching for an explanation, I noticed something interesting: according to the Google Trends tool, the growth in the number of queries for key terms in our industry has slowed down dramatically in the last year or so, mimicking what I'm seeing on our blog. While I don't think this is a perfect analogue to what's actually going on in the market, it could indicate that we're reaching a critical growth point where hype and volume matter less. Well... maybe.

What does Google Trends say?

Google Trends is a web-based tool that tracks the number of search queries and news articles submitted for various keywords. Although Google is immensely popular, and so many people use it, the main shortcoming of Google Trends is that it can be unreliable for search terms that don't have a huge amount of volume. This latter group includes the vast majority of search terms important to our industry. However, when you plot a few of the popular-enough terms over a couple of years, Google clearly shows a slowing growth curve. Take, for example, these queries for two popular search terms, "digital signage" and "digital signage software". I added the green line to the first graph to show the approximate "best fit" curve, but these are otherwise unchanged from the Google Trends output:




Discarding seasonal anomalies like the year-end slowdown well known to so many industries, search volume actually peaked in 2008, and saw a very slight decline in 2009. I'm sure the recession played a large part in that, but even during the bulk of 2008 there was little change in the search volume for these terms. What's more, the overall news volume at best held steady during that time. This tells me one of two things: either those companies who normally do lots of PR aren't accelerating their actions (probably because determining the ROI for a given piece of PR is very challenging), or, since there are more companies in the marketplace than ever before (which seems true, anecdotally), the average number of releases per company may actually have declined a bit. If you're wondering about those flat lines on the "digital signage software" trend graph, that's because that term just barely has sufficient search volume to register on Google Trends. If you graph "digital signage" and "digital signage software" together, you can see that "digital signage" by itself gets about an order of magnitude more search volume, on average:

Less hype? Isn't that just wishful thinking?

I'm no fan of industry hype, and I suspect everybody knows that by now. So I suppose the above analysis could simply be a case of me wishing that things would change for the better. On the other hand, my company's success depends on the growth and success of the industry, so it's really not in my best interest to think that our growth rate is going to fall off a cliff.

Are there other ways to explain what's happening?

Of course there are, and most of them make things look less dire. For example, since 2007 our industry's main news portals and blogs have become much more popular and professional, so they may be absorbing some of the traffic that would previously have gone to Google. Likewise, there are newsletters, clipping services, magazines and e-zines, and other forms of marketing and news publications that get pushed out to hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people now, which again may be taking some amount of search volume away from Google.

Another explanation is that as our industry matures, we ought to see fewer tire kickers and more serious buyers. On the high end of the business spectrum, these buyers may do fewer and more concentrated searches, or might be turning to other avenues like consultants, trade shows, and partnerships with existing vendors and VARs to learn about products and services. On the low end, mom and pop businesses are probably using a wider variety of search terms based on their particular needs. For example, if people are getting useful search results from a query like "digital restaurant sign" because there are now enough vendors providing that service (and enough articles about it) to make the first web search a success, they might never have the need to do a broader search for "digital signage." Both of these trends -- if correct -- would be great, because they signal the start of our industry's next phase, where solution specificity and bona fide business relationships become increasingly important, making general hype less effective (and thus theoretically less pervasive over time).

What about additional data points?

If it were up to me, I'd have to say that yes, the digital signage industry is growing. It doesn't take a $1,500 research report to notice the huge number of screens being placed in virtually every conceivable out-of-home space these days. However, when it comes to the volume of research being conducted over the Internet, I'm less sure. It seems possible to me that we may have plateaued, in which case we might not see another big spike in activity until a) the economy improves, b) some technical innovation is made that significantly lowers the cost of entry, or c) something dramatically increases the amount of attention that our technology and medium receives. The question is, which of these things will happen, when, and what will be the driving force behind them?

Is the market for digital signage still growing? If so, how quickly, and what's driving that growth? If not, what do you think will spur the next wave of development in our space? Leave a comment below and let me know!

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Intel, Microsoft and the Open-Standards Digital Signage Platform

Author: Bill Gerba on 2010-01-19 13:04:05

At last week's NRF show, Intel and Microsoft introduced a new prototype design that they're calling an "open-standards platform for digital signage." As summarized in this nice writeup from eWeek, the platform consists of Intel-based hardware, Microsoft-based software, and a bevy of peripherals like holographic film, large touch screens, and cameras for detecting a viewer's age, gender and ethnicity. The idea that titans like Intel and Microsoft would bother dabbling in an industry as small as ours perplexes me. That they'd refer to it as "open-standards" leaves me wondering if they speak English as a first language. So, I've spent some time thinking about Microsoft and Intel, why they've decided to do what they did, and what it could mean for our industry.

A standard by any other name...

Microsoft. Open standards. Microsoft. Open standards. They just don't go in the same sentence -- unless featured in the minutes of an antitrust hearing and separated by a clause like "is once again subverting." Whether ignoring the W3C or convincing Congress that their closed-source, undocumented Office formats are "open", Redmond is far better known for their "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy for dealing with competitive products than their non-domineering work on truly open standards -- which they've admittedly done quite a bit of. The case here seems less nefarious so far, though, given that there are about 50 digital signage companies actually working on open standards for interoperability, and we've never heard the merest whisper of desire from either MS or Intel to join. In short, I think using the phrase "open standards" is basically just a marketing ploy.

Given that Microsoft's main contribution here is the Windows operating system, I don't see how the software component of the platform differs much from the $30 copy of Windows 7 that comes on the $500 PCs my customers frequently buy -- which they end up reformatting with our Linux-based software, anyway. But then it's possible that all of the snazzy functionality that Intel's Paul Otellini showed off only runs on the $200 Windows 7 Ninja Elite version (or at least a non-OEM copy of Windows Embedded Standard 2011), which would partly explain Microsoft's eagerness to jump into our industry. The rest of the software might as well be off-the-shelf from any of the myriad vendors already servicing our industry. Perhaps there really is something new and remarkable about their offering, but if so, they're having an awfully hard time articulating it.

Did I mention $500 PCs?

Considering that your options for a computer CPU are -- for most intents and purposes -- limited to just two competitors (Intel and AMD), it's a little surprising to see that both of these firms are bothering to engage our industry. On the other hand, much like Microsoft trying to get you to buy a higher-end Windows license, it makes sense for Intel to look for ways to compel high-end business applications like digital signage to use bigger, faster, more expensive processors whenever possible. To wit, Intel's Core i7 processor is an absolute beast when it comes to performance, and given the complexity of the application that they were showing off, was an apt choice. But all that performance comes at a price. A quick scan of newegg.com (one of my favorite e-tailers) shows that the lowest-priced Core i7 costs about $280 in small quantities. Meanwhile, I have clients who are seriously considering large scale deployments using $300 computers equipped with $25 Intel Atom processors (albeit heavily aided by powerful-but-cheap NVIDIA graphics processors). Will such a machine do camera-aided identification? Probably not. Will it render flawless HD video, animations, web pages, and text crawls? Yup. It will even handle touch screens, gesture recognition, and holographic projection. For 99% of the market, that's more than good enough.

  Consequently, both Microsoft and Intel face an uphill battle here. They need to convince not only solution providers, but also their cost-conscious customers, that there are tangible benefits to be had by going with a beefier processor and more expensive software. And as somebody who's been working in this industry for about a decade now, I can tell you that price is simply the most important factor for the majority of buyers. So unless Intel and Microsoft can show a truly remarkable ROI with their digital signage platform, they're facing a very tough sell.

What does it all mean for our industry?

Needless to say, as a purveyor of digital signage software (Linux-based, no less), I was initially a little concerned to hear about this new "Wintel" offering. However, given what Intel and Microsoft are really pitching here, I think this platform will ultimately turn out to be less of an offering to end customers, and more of an integration point for those looking to do digital signage-like activities inside of their already-customized Wintel enterprises. Kind of like how Cisco often bundles its digital signage players with its routers and other networking equipment.

Now, on the other hand, if Intel or Microsoft really did decide to get serious about our industry, it could be a big wakeup call for many of us in the software game, as well as many of the second-tier hardware integrators that build custom media players for digital signs. Likewise, one or both could join the POPAI Digital Signage Standards Group and bring some much-needed big company perspective. However, given that the combined sales of digital signage software and media players is still well, well south of ten digits, I don't believe either of these firms can justify a real investment in the marketplace any time in the near future.

What do you think about the Intel/Microsoft "open-standards platform" for digital signage? Is it all hype? Is it just more of the same? Or is it something truly revolutionary? Leave a comment and let me know!

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Tracking Digital Signage Trends: 3 Dubious Predictions for 2010

Author: Bill Gerba on 2010-01-07 15:42:18

Happy New Year, all. Though the holiday season may have come to an end, the digital signage prognostication season is in full swing right now, with predictions for the coming year and top 10 lists dominating our news outlets and blogs. I decided to get out of the prediction business a number of years ago, since apart from not wanting to give away my business plans, I'm just no good at guessing what the future holds. Thankfully (or not), there are plenty of other people out there who are more than happy to fill endless web pages with lists of all the new, game-changing, paradigm-shifting events that they expect to see in the coming months. To my eye, some of these predictions look really good. But some... don't. Let's investigate three of these supposed digital signage trends in more detail.

Dubious Prediction #1: VUKUNET will let AV integrators make big money from DOOH advertising

Gary Kayye is a highly-respected AV industry guru, and a genuine, honest, straight-shooter to boot. While he only touches on digital signage stuff occasionally, I tend to agree with most of his assessments as they relate to the AV industry. So I was pretty surprised to see that one of his predicted game-changers was none other than NEC's VUKUNET, which is essentially a network aggregation service in the vein of SeeSaw Networks. To somebody unfamiliar with SeeSaw, Adcentricity, BookingDOOH, rVue, or any of the myriad other booking and aggregation services out there, something like VUKUNET might sound pretty interesting. But considering that aggregators with bona fide media people running them and dedicated exclusively to ad sales on DOOH networks are struggling, I can't possibly fathom how an electronics company that caters to IT and AV groups can make such a service work. Even more so if NEC really plans to target AV dealers. Remember, if you've never sold ads before, there's a very high likelihood that your ad-funded network will fail. I'm talking about a 96% failure rate, based on a sample size of over 600 companies. That's a pretty clear trend, if you ask me. I know a lot of AV folks haven't heard this statistic, and might not want to believe it even if they have. But it's the sad truth, and will probably be the thing that prevents VUKUNET from achieving any serious penetration into the ad market -- perhaps even killing it before the end of 2010. I certainly have no vested interest in this being the case -- we sell through the AV channel, and if VUKUNET was successful it'd probably help our sales. But unless the folks at NEC have some serious tricks up their sleeve when it comes to ad sales, they face a significant uphill struggle with their new service.

Dubious Prediction #2: Content will be a top priority

I disagree with a couple of the predictions made by industry veteran Keith Kelsen. But rather than pick apart his whole list (or focus on something too easy like the notion of 2010 as a "tipping point" year), I want to call attention to Keith's very first prediction -- that content strategies and discussions will "dominate the launch of new networks and the re-thinking of older networks." Oh, how I wish that would be true. There's no excuse for the poor content still running on so many networks today -- especially when there are so many digital signage content resources and repositories available. However, despite great conceptual gains, poor economic conditions have limited the adoption of new (and frequently labor-intensive) best practices this past year. While many people predict that 2010 will be better, the proof is in the proverbial pudding. Consequently, the focus this year will be the same as it has been in past years -- making money any way possible. Advertising networks will continue to sign up with multiple ad sales services (despite Ken Goldberg's excellent analysis of why that might be a bad idea), experimenting with different formats that allow them to sell inventory that advertisers might actually be willing to buy. Meanwhile, the vast majority of non-advertising-oriented display networks -- whether they be for corporate communications, trade promotion or other kinds of general messaging -- are run by people or groups that have many responsibilities, not just managing their digital signs. While that's certainly fine, these people are pressed for time and tend to be budget conscious, and most of them won't have the time or money to get trained or outsource production to digital signage experts. Consequently, I expect 2010 to be another year of slow, gradual evolution, not revolution, towards better content on digital signs.

Dubious Prediction #3: Retailers, brands and agencies will dedicate a lot more resources towards measuring the sales lift from digital signage spots

Matt Schmitt has just started posting Reflect Systems' top 10 predictions for 2010, but I'm already afraid that they're going to be far too optimistic about business conditions and the general state of readiness of retailers, brands and agencies. Will these groups pay more attention to digital signage than they have in past years? Yes, I think they pretty much have to. But that's mostly because they paid very little attention in the past -- so they can only improve! Now, many people who know me will readily call me a pessimist (I think I'm a realist, but I also know that's the classic pessimist's defense). But if you take a broad view of the business climate -- not just our little niche, but everybody that feeds into us -- there just isn't a lot of justification for the kind of massive spending that would make us top-of-mind for agencies, retailers and brands. Our part of the media mix is still too small to be interesting to most agencies, buyers and planners. It will take more than a year to change this. So once again, I expect a gradual evolution of their acceptance and understanding of us.

If you've made it through this article and all the pages it links to, and you still want to read more predictions, I highly recommend the list that Barnaby Page put together at SCREENS.tv. His points are concise, demonstrate a strong understanding of the global market, and, in my opinion, reflect reality. Of course, the folks I mentioned today aren't the only smart people in the industry, so I'd love to hear what our readers think.

Do you have any predictions about what we'll see in the digital signage market during 2010? Leave a comment and let us know.

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The Top 10 Digital Signage Insider Articles of 2009

Author: Bill Gerba on 2009-12-28 13:09:51

Unless a Hollywood-style disaster manages to destroy the Earth in the next few days, Friday will mark the start of a new year. While it might not be as climactic as Y2K (remember partying like it was 1999... when it actually was 1999?), for many people the year 2010 will bring change and mark important events. Here at WireSpring, we'll soon be celebrating our 10 year anniversary. Despite making me feel uncomfortably old, this milestone gives me a great sense of satisfaction. The market has changed dramatically since we set out in early 2000, and somehow along the way we've managed to roll with those changes -- and occasionally even use them to our advantage. In fact, this blog started WAY back in 2004, and ended up being an early and accidental "innovation" that has helped us grow personal and professional relationships for years. After thinking about that some more, I decided to take a look through our web server's logs to see what people have been reading, and which of our articles have been the most popular this past year. (These are the articles that got the most page views during 2009, regardless of which year they were originally published.) I've listed the top posts below, and I think you'll agree that while the list is a bit peculiar, it underscores just how broad and diverse our industry -- and the companies and disciplines that feed into it -- really is.

Let's start the countdown...

#10: Is Wal-Mart's in-store TV network really more effective than TV?

Let's face it: love 'em or hate 'em, Walmart's actions frequently define and dominate whatever industry they're playing with at the time, and that's certainly true within the digital signage community. Between giving PRN their big break, forming the Saatchi & Saatchi X agency to manage in-store marketing activities, and launching the new Smart Network this year, Walmart has given us great examples of what to do and what not to do over the years. So it's no surprise that people want to find out whether they know what they're talking about.

#9: Budgeting for a Digital Sign or Electronic Sign Network

Budgeting articles made a strong showing in this list, as you'll soon see. And why not? With so many people citing cost as a major factor in considering whether to implement a digital signage network, there's still a strong need in the industry for reliable pricing data. This article is the grandaddy of them all, hailing from way back in September of 2004, and pushed us to establish the annual pricing guide as a tradition here at WireSpring.

#8: Making great digital signage content: A quick reference guide

Our series on content creation best practices continues to draw plenty of visitors from around the world -- despite the fact that several companies have copied our content wholesale and are passing it out as part of their presentation materials (without attribution, the jerks). This handy reference guide gets updated every time we add a new article to the series.

#7: Focus on shopper marketing to improve store experience & ROI

Shopper marketing has been a buzzword for a few years, although it means different things to different people. For some, it's a full-cycle marketing program encompassing in-store marketing, in-home branding, trade promotion and more. For others, shopper marketing exists only within the store. With so much confusion surrounding the term, people are scouring the web -- including itty-bitty digital signage blogs like this one -- for any information they can find on the subject.

#6: Using in store advertising to win the First Moment of Truth (FMOT)

The "First Moment of Truth" is another buzzword that people in the marketing world have really been pursuing for a couple of years now, and is again something unfamiliar enough to force them to research on the web. And as we've learned, digital signage can certainly affect the first moment of truth, making it last longer and feel stronger.

#5: Five visual merchandising tips for your in store network

Retail digital signage installations often take the form of a bunch of screens tacked onto existing retail fixtures wherever the host venue will allow -- and not necessarily where they'll work best. More progressive venues know that merging digital signage best practices with tried-and-true visual merchandising techniques will help them derive greater value from their networks.

#4: An Updated Budget for Digital Signage Hardware and Software

Yup, another budgeting article -- this time, from 2008. Like all of our annual pricing studies, this one has a link to our master pricing article so that readers can see how things have changed over the years.

#3: 15 Digital Signage Blog, News, Magazine and Forum Sites You Should Be Reading

Once upon a time, ours was one of about three or four blogs dedicated to digital signage and/or interactive kiosks. Today there are literally HUNDREDS of sites, magazines, blogs and social media feeds devoted to these topics. Some are really good. Some are... not. This article lists a few of the high-quality sites that I use to keep up with the latest news and trends.

#2: Digital Signage Cost Estimates and Price Guidelines

ANOTHER pricing article elbows its way up to #2 on our top 10 list, further highlighting the industry's desire for dependable pricing information. This page is actually our master pricing article, which contains links to every pricing analysis that we've done over the years. That's cool for a couple of reasons: first, readers can easily peruse each article to get a feel for overall historical pricing trends. And second, since we cover different elements in each year's article (like content costs, staffing costs, and other non-capex things like that), it gives people an easy way to go through all of those estimates from one place. Plus, it has a pretty interesting comment thread.

And our #1 article is...

#1: Electronic Billboard Pros, Cons and Safety Information

Despite the fact that we derive practically no revenue from electronic billboard software, we have a couple of blog articles devoted to the cause, and they seem to attract a lot of visitors. Electronic billboards are big, and apparently make a big impact on people. That's probably why this article has been viewed over 10,000 times this year, has nearly 70 comments, and gets more every month.

Wishing you a great 2010

Congratulations! If you've made it all the way through this article, you probably have some free time at work today, so enjoy it! If you're reading this from your ski chalet whilst on vacation... what on earth are you doing? Turn off the laptop and get outside! And of course, we here at WireSpring wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

Finally, I'd like to extend a big thank you to everyone who took the time to read our articles and contribute to the conversation during this past year. We look forward to bringing you an ample supply of thought-provoking, fun and useful articles in 2010.

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