Are there gender specific differences in the way we look at visual content? Eyetrack Shop finally answers quantitatively the question of how men and women might view digital signage messages in different manners.

There were smaller differences than you might expect but check it out for yourself.

We will tell you one fact from the study: by studying one Reebok ad that showed a mostly naked woman wearing only shoes...well, women spent most of their time staring at the shoes and you probably think you know what the men zero'd in on....

Wrong! Men went straight to the face and spent 40% more time there than women did...carefully studying the face before moving on...

Which proves unequivocally this much: men aren’t interested much in shoes. So the money you spend on shoes, girls, is to impress your friends not the sweetheart.

And the money your customers spend on digital signage displays now may be impressive but it’s the eye-tracking software that will catch the looks in the future.

Go Eyetracking Study

This is the fourth part in a series about getting started in digital signage for ProAV dealers. Read the first part on our website here, the second part here and the third part here.

Jay Martin, Director of US Sales for X20 Media points out that poised between the technical and the business side there is a paradigm that is often overlooked -- the customer’s content plan. According to Martin, “the integrator has to be the consulting entity that helps them decide that.” He further asserts that before choosing the technology, integrators need to help the client figure who what information they want to put in front of their viewers. “What form is it going to take?” asks Martin. “Will it be PowerPoint? Video? Text? Stills? Is it a retail menu? Is it all of the above, intermixed? Until they determine what this content plan is, you’re taking a stab in the dark!”

For that reason, Martin puts that first and foremost when meeting with integrators and their clients. He explains that once you determine your content and your target audience, that’s how you’ll determine which advertising model will work. Says Martin, “Advertising is a key component and if you’re an ad network, you don’t really want a huge capital expenditure at day one.” He suggests that if you do go down the advertising route, consider leasing to reduce the client’s cost to a monthly revenue model, and if you’re not advertising, talk about setting up and installing as fixed costs. In all cases he advises integrators to talk about technological scalability. “Does the client want ten displays or ten thousand? That will determine the platform you select.”

This is the third part in a series about getting started in digital signage for ProAV dealers.

As we’ve progressed along this series about getting started in digital signage, we’ve covered aspects of the technical and business sides of the category. In this installment, we’ll examine the need to find the right vendor partners.

Dave Haynes, Digital Signage expert, pundit, and owner of Sixteen:Nine explains that part numbers and lengths of cable and electrical are the easy part. It’s Haynes’ position when he coaches integrators that before they look at any technology they have to go through the exercise of figuring out what the objectives of both their clients and themselves are. Haynes says, “Until you have that really clearly defined, you can’t go to the next step, which is building a strategy.”

This is the second part in a series about getting started in digital signage for ProAV dealers. Read the first part on our website here.

In our initial installment, we began by discussing some of the technical considerations, and the need to partner with the right technology vendors. While that’s a large subject that we’ll revisit again, even more important is learning how to effectively sell the end product.

What Dave Haynes, digital signage expert, pundit, and owner of Sixteen:Nine hears over and over from people who are on the vendor side is that when working with the AV channel, education is the huge issue. “It’s not so much a question of training with regard to ‘How do we do this?’”, he says. “It’s more to do with ‘How do we sell this?’”

Haynes’ point is that rather than lacking technical know-how, AV integrators need to learn how to frame the business opportunity, and express to prospective clients the value of digital signage and its applications, such as sales, awareness, and safety. The bottom line, says Haynes is what can be done with it that will generate real ROI, both for the dealer, and for their client.