Google, Beacons and Digital Signs

sixteen nine lydle interviewDave Haynes at Sixteen Nine has a fascinating podcast interview with Chris Lydle, Google lead for digital signage and kiosks.  Lydle says Google doesn’t want to compete in developing a content management system for digital signage but that it wants products like Chrome, Android and Eddystone to be used as the backend infrastructure for digital signage.  Some highlights from the interview

On Google Eddystone Beacons:  

beacon“One of the big challenges that we hear from customers all the time is that they just don’t get the downloads on the apps that they would like.  So one of the key features of Eddystone is the ability to have an app-less experience.  The text shows up like an SMS experience…It’s the ability to go over the top without requiring an app to be installed.  I was around in the dot com bubble of the 90’s and one of the things we always focused on was how many clicks it took users to get to a particular spot…One of the use cases I see for this is advertising.  A sign is promoting a movie and you walk up to the sign and the sign says if you want to like this on facebook you get updates about the movie…One click.  Take action now…Eddystone allows context to get to the right apps.”

Is there any reason why a display ad in Adsense couldn’t show up on a digital sign?

“It makes a lot of sense doesn’t it.  At this time I can’t really comment on what we’re doing.  But it makes a lot of sense…Our ad serving capabilities now are very much predicated on real time delivery to one person…that’s not necessarily a perfect fit for signage…People are used to buying ad words based on demographics.  That’s not something we have ready to go at this point for digital signage but it’s something that everybody wants.  What I hear from people more than ever, all the Google customers is, I want to be able to do signage in the same way that I do my online.  I want to be able to flight my in store stuff at the same time as I flight my online stuff.  I want to be able to marry the analytics across all those things.”

Insider’s take:

  • The Eddystone app-less beacon holds promise.  The business case for beacons and outdoor will be limited so long as you have to download an separate app for a sign to interact with you.  People keep very few apps on their phones.  Most apps are deleted within days of install.
  • Adsense and digital signs.  Make a note.  Don’t think we’ve heard the last of that.

You can listen to the 36 minute interview by clicking here.


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