The Complexities of Digital Advertising

Digital screens offer myriad benefits to convenience retailers, but first they need to be turned on.

May 10, 2022

Digital Screen Advertising in a Convenience Store

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ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Digital screens are an indisputably effective way to advertise your promotions, market products and build a strong brand. Of course, they’re only effective if the screens are playing the correct content, in the right place, at the right time. While this sounds like an easy enough task, many convenience retailers struggle to consistently check these boxes.

“Not being able to deliver the right content to the right screen, or even determine if screens are turned on are symptoms of not having the right software tool to do the job,” said Rick Sales, CEO of Abierto, a digital and engagement solutions company.

Distribution across a retailer’s multiple screens gets complicated. For example, it’s common for not all products to be available at all stores. However, retailers often lack the ability to selectively advertise, plus the metrics to report performance to senior leadership and vendor partners.

Technical fumbles can make the difficult task of managing screen displays even more complex.

“Many retailers are using antiquated digital signage software that was not designed to manage multiple displays in multiple locations running different collections of content. Additionally, these software products generally cannot let you know if local events like loss of connectivity or power are preventing you from displaying ads at your store.” Sales said.

It is not uncommon for retailers to approach Abierto with a complex network of displays looking for a better way to manage their content. One retailer had a number of screens down across its stores and, before partnering with Abierto, had no way of knowing if and what displays were running. But now, after working with Abierto, the customer receives status updates on its displays to ensure that they are functioning and displaying the right information.

“A retailer may want to know what’s playing on all their beer cooler screens, for example, and with Abierto’s capabilities, they can verify each beer cooler screen or the entire group of beer cooler screens to make sure the content is up to date and each one is functioning as it should,” said Sales.

So, what exactly is Abierto’s capability that allows such transparency and organization for display screens? Find out in part two of this series in Thursday’s NACS Daily.

This is the first installment of a two-part NACS Daily series on using a content management system to verify digital screen status and content. Learn more about Abierto’s OPEN.CMS.

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