Digital Outdoor Signage – Captive Audience Advertising

By | September 27, 2010

Digital outdoor signage goes under a number of names, but “captive audience advertising” conjures up a terrible image in my mind, a little like brain washing. But let me highlight how this is being done successfully.


When ever you go to a transportation hub you are there and to some degree you are captive, especially when you are waiting to be called to your gave for the plane to your destination, here you try to relax and notice the ads on the large format screens in the departure halls, guess what they are marketing products they have in the duty free stores.

Vehicle Digital Signage.

These vehicles are either trucks or lorries and have large video walls on them, they normally park in areas that are known for being gridlock during rush hour, this means that when every one is going no where, they will get bored but if they see some form of information or commercial they will be willing to watch just to waste away the time sat in traffic, this way the marketing company gets the information across to you during the time you are captive, in the nicest of ways.

Doctors and hospital waiting rooms.

Just visiting the doctor can be traumatic enough, however imagine you are waiting for the results of some tests you have had done, you see a screen and you start watching the commercial so to take your mind off what you are worrying about, this is excellently deployed in children wards in hospitals as most often than not the stay in hospital will be the first the child has had away from home and this could leave them feeling vulnerable, so showing commercials mixed with cartoons is perfect to settle the child into unfamiliar surroundings.

Car wash.

You will probably think this is crazy and it could be but some companies who are deploying digital outdoor signage at car washes, so when the motors are having their vehicles cleaned the driver can be entertained and see ads for local restaurants, auto stores.

To do this they are using flat panel televisions with LCD monitor enclosure, these LCD monitor enclosures provide the protection from the pressure washers if an accident occurs, safeguarding the television and the media player inside the LCD enclosure.