Digisign Digest : First magazine for in-store & outdoor digital signages in India

Perspective

Outdu – redefining digital signage in India

The digital signage industry might just be toddling in India, but if market experts are to be believed, it is going to be the next big thing. In a tête-à-tête with G S Sridhar, president and Romen Sood, EVP sales and marketing of Outdu – a Bangalore-based digital signage solution company, DigiSign gets a glimpse of this revolution, which is all set to redefi ne digital signage in India fi rst and then the world.

Roving in the inclinators of Las Vegas’ Luxor hotel is entertaining for most of us. But for G S Sridhar of Outdu, these 20-30 seconds ride in 2003 proved to be a journey of a lifetime… it was a ride that led to the establishment of what is potentially one of the key players in the Indian and International digital signage space – Outdu in November 2007. “For 3 days in a row I used the inclinator at Luxor and saw the same messages being flashed at me each time on screens. These messages had actually become blind spots for me and I imagine everyone else, so I thought if they could display new messages every time then it would remain interesting to viewers,” says Sridhar about the incident. The obvious query arose, why it took four years to reach the customers, to which Sridhar explained, “At that time, it was just a bare thought, and I decided to substantiate it, but it was no child’s play. So, in the last four years, we’ve been extensively researching the industry to find the viewpoint of each of the stakeholders and the best business model to forge digital signage into a full fledged alternative communication medium. Also at that time the very high display and bandwidth prices made it commercially unviable to deploy on a large scale. Luckily for us, now we have technology that supports us, and over time the prices of LCD have fallen to 20-30% of the prices then, retail buzz has gripped the entire India, and we have huge investor interest in the space as well.”

The digital signage industry is picking up fast in India as brands now look to creatively connect with the consumers and tap the opportunity to interact with their targets very close to the point of purchase. Still, there are certain roadblocks, which are hampering the growth of the industry. “Our industry is highly fragmented, there are more than 50 large, medium and small networks in India and more enter every month, there’s no site owner involvement in the screen and not surprisingly the advertising utilisation rate is less than 30%. Lack of good creative content also results in lack of interest,” shared Sridhar.

Other important aspects, which have not been fully addressed, are the size and placement of screens and content quality. To make his point, Sridhar shared, “Many screens are small in size which means that they fail to draw attention. Also many screens locations are definitely sub optimal leading to low viewership. The content being displayed is not interesting or contextual enough to engage viewers.” Having gone through all the pros and cons of the industry, Outdu created a technology service solution, which addresses the issues facing the industry today. And for endusers, especially advertisers, it’s a boon.

G S Sridhar

The solution available as a browser based Web 2.0 service, brings together almost every stakeholder, including screen owners, advertisers, media planners, etc…thus, creating mutual benefiting ecosystem for all stakeholders. “Just as technology enabled coalescing of millions of fragmented intranets into a gigantic network called the internet, so also a technological advance is required to create an ‘outernet’ out of thousands of standalone networks. This technology is dramatically different from that required for powering a single network of a few hundreds or even thousands of screens,” explained Romen Sood.

This technology has got the potential to transform the industry and in just a couple of months, the company has got overwhelming support. “We are creating network of networks, our services are available at a small monthly subscription for screen owners and “pay-onplay” for advertisers. And both can access Web 2.0 service alike,” added Sridhar. “Because it is now possible for even individual site owners to own a portion of the screen, and directly place relevant messages there which will appeal to their viewers, they are far more inclined to place the screens at vantage positions. We are demolishing the concept of a central administrator and handing over control directly to stakeholders,” he added.

The best thing about digital signage is that it is the most local medium of advertisement. It can be used strategically as per requirement. And with Outdu, we just have to plan; all the possible options are available. To explain with an example, Sood added, “Imagine, a local restaurant owner in a city, who wants to advertise only in his immediate vicinity. Today he has no options, but distributing leaflets. Using Outdu, he can choose a few screens that make sense to him and just ship his ad to those. He can do it for a period as limited as 1 day or as long as he wants. And these screens may belong to many different networks.”

And yes! advertising on digital signage is not expensive anymore, it can suit any budget. “With charges ranging from Rs 50 to Rs 150 per day per screen anyone with a budget of even a few thousand rupees per month can advertise multi media content on targeted screens” explained Romen. “Another key problem is availability of advertising content for display. What is good for TV may not necessarily work on digital signage. Also small advertisers cannot spend large amounts on creating advertising. We have identified this as a major hurdle to usage of the medium. And to solve this problem, we are enabling the availability of very economical ways to create multi media content on a large scale for potential advertisers. Besides this there are a host of other services, which will help remove the bottlenecks from the industry including research, certification of appropriateness of the message for display and advanced screen information. It is only when all the ecosystems are in place that the industry will truly flourish. Our solution is aimed at addressing precisely these issues,” Romen further added.

So, this intelligent solution understands advertisers’ requirements and helps in reducing operations cost, while maximising revenues. Outdu’s innovative digital signage creation is revolutionising the Indian digital signage industry and is also providing a jumpstart to all the allied industries.