Convergence: Time to see the wood for the trees

In between broadcasting and digital signage, there's a wide area that's completely unpopulated by business ideas and revenues, and yet, the technology is there to create a media platform that's potentially massive. I'm not going to go into too much detail here because that's likely to give away too much information that I normally charge people for; but think about it for a minute: broadcasting and digital signage are converging.

Up to now, I've always said that there are (at least) two models for digital signage: Adaptive Ultra Narrowcasting and Digital Poster Replacement. I still think this is true, but I think that the former will subsume the latter. In other words, I think that the "TV Channel" idea is even applicable, in an extreme way, to digital poster replacement, as well as everything else.

Now, what I don't mean here is that conventional TV content is always suitable for digital signage. I don't even think that people regard digital signage playlists as the same as a TV channel. It's more to do with scale and scalability.

When you have a small digital signage network, it's a bit like a coconut. Just like a planet, it has a gravitational pull, but it's so small, you wouldn't notice it - to the extent that you might as well ignore it.

But when an object is big enough to have it's own gravitational field, then you really do have to take notice of it.

And that's what I think the model for digital signage will be, ultimately. I think there will by huge networks, with aggregated and syndicated content, but (with technology help from the broadcast industry) there will be localised insertions of ads and data that will give the best of both worlds: relevant content, but delivered on an industrial scale, to millions of players.

At that point, the "gravitational pull" on advertisers and other contributors becomes too big to ignore.