Five years ago, the Pro AV industry was moving towards personalized digital displays and social media marketing. However, no one could have predicted exactly how much the market would grow and how Big Data and Analytics would drive it.

Industry leaders congregated in Las Vegas this week for DSE 2019, where the latest innovations were on full display. MarketScale caught up with more than one dozen of these experts for a three-part podcast series on the state of digital signage.

On the first installment of ‘Transforming the Experience’ is Rich Ventura, Vice President of Strategy for NEC Display Solutions, Bart DeCannes, Founder & CEO of Sophatar Personalized Displays, and Penn Arthur, co-founder of Inhance Digital.

On the first installment of ‘Transforming the Experience’ is Rich Ventura, Vice President of Strategy for NEC Display Solutions, Bart DeCannes, Founder & CEO of Sophatar Personalized Displays, and Penn Arthur, co-founder of Inhance Digital.

If DSE proved anything it is that digital signage is in businesses across all sectors, and retail remains a strong beneficiary today. One advantage that e-commerce retailers have had historically is access to shopper behavior. Digital signage is helping brick-and-mortar locations close this gap on their online competition.

“The overarching goal is to overcome the disadvantage that has existed in brick-and-mortar compared to e-commerce, and overcoming that with digital signage in mobile,” DeCannes said.

All of this data has helped retailers build much more comprehensive portfolios on their customers and potential shoppers. With this much data collection comes some concern about the fine line of digital privacy and what is fair to track.

“We have this conversation of saying ‘Just because we can, should we? Just because I can target someone, should I be targeting them? Just because I can use this data to do this, should I be doing this?’ We’re now at the stage of ‘Why Aren’t We?’,” Ventura said.

Enter ALP, Analytics Learning Platform, a model that looks at data and is able to drive content based on demographic information towards age, gender, location, and even weather. There is also a version of ALP Pro that adds in variance reporting on whether the content is actually driving based on location and demographic information and if a user is running the right marketing for the right demographic.

“Our initial goal was to take the best from film and visual effects and the best from the video game industry, and put those two things together to help companies that have high science and high technology to really better explain their products, better sell their products, and better explain the science and complexity behind their solutions, and we have done that. We have been doing it for 22 years,” Arthur said.

Read more about Transforming the Experience at DSE here.