Product News | October 11, 2021

How Clear Digital Media uses relevant content to build an educational digital signage network

Hearing loss is an emotional and chronic condition that affects many individuals. In the US alone, 15% of American adults—approximately 37.5 million people—aged 18 and over report some trouble hearing. In 2011, Clear Digital Media (CDM) was founded by Michele Ahlman and Brad Dodson to help educate these individuals on hearing devices and their benefits. With their roots planted in hearing technology manufacturing, Michele and Brad strived to help hearing care practitioners better educate and inform patients at a time when they were most receptive to the information—in a waiting room.

Addressing a shortage of content

In order to address a gap in knowledge, CDM recognized a need for more education at the point of care. They understood, through experience and feedback from the community, that preconditioning patients on hearing aids pre-appointment or exam was more effective for both the patient and the practice.

Since it first launched, CDM has expanded and evolved into a cloud-based digital signage network that publishes tailored content on behalf of advertisers in the captioning sector, for auditory, hearing and battery manufacturers and other industries related to hearing care. With hundreds of digital signs situated in waiting rooms of hearing clinics across America, CDM’s digital signage network displays customized content that’s viewed by over two million patients per year.

Great content that speaks to patients

For manufacturers, advertisers and clinicians in the hearing loss sector, there’s no better way to reach their target audience than using Clear Digital Media’s Hearing News Network (HNN) situated in waiting rooms across the country. By displaying content to patients as they’re waiting for their appointment, patients are being gently introduced and educated on the different types of hearing aids available and their related costs and benefits, at a time when they are most receptive and interested in the information.

With their in-house team of writers, designers, and animators, CDM’s team not only publishes the content but creates it as well for any advertiser who needs some extra creative assistance. From staff bios that add a personal touch, customer testimonials that add extra confidence, displays with exciting promotions and specials, and even Spanish-language content, most of the messaging that is displayed on Clear Digital’s screens are created by their own experts.

To ensure that the content they create is constantly energizing patients, CDM put in place a patient content review panel that reviews digital videos and signage and provides feedback on clarity and effectiveness. This allows their creative team to continually review and refine their content to ensure that their digital signage network is always pushing forward content that is educational and informative for the millions of patients who view it each year.

The right place at the right time

In addition to delivering relevant and effective content, CDM’s network is also able to deliver content to the right target, at the right place, at the right time. With a majority of baby boomers needing hearing aids at this part in their life, CDM ensures that the message is delivered through a medium that they are comfortable with, in a respectful and non-intrusive way that builds trust and confidence.

With average wait times of 20 minutes or less in waiting rooms, viewers are able to digest and reflect on the content. This ensures that the appointment itself is more focused on testing, fitting and giving more specific information on the device itself, which is better for the patient and more cost beneficial to the practice. With an average sell-through rate of 75%, this method of content creation and delivery is one that works for CDM’s network of advertisers who continually strive for education and trust within their target audience.

Clear digital media & broadsign

As Clear Digital Media continues to grow and build their educational network, they’ve relied on partners such as Broadsign to help streamline their content delivery. Using Broadsign’s automated digital signage software, CDM is able to deliver their customized content and ads to individual waiting room in over 700 locations.

The Broadsign platform also offers a programmatic ad-buying model, which allows CDM to better monetize their ad inventory and give advertisers more opportunities to reach a specific target audience within the hearing health sector.

CDM is excited to evolve their content strategy so that audiences continue to learn and benefit from their display messaging, delivered through the flexibility and innovation of digital out-out-of-home media. By choosing technology-forward partners like Broadsign to help manage their network, Clear Digital Media will continue to empower patients by turning waiting rooms into engagement tools for generations to come.

Product News | October 11, 2021

PATTISON Modernizes its Out-of-Home Technology Stack with Broadsign

Partnership streamlines daily operations and unlocks new revenue potential; enables PATTISON clients to maximize OOH campaigns

Montreal, Canada, April 25, 2024 – Out-of-home (OOH) ad tech leader Broadsign today announced that PATTISON Outdoor Advertising, a leading Canadian OOH media owner, has adopted the full Broadsign OOH technology stack. With Broadsign already providing a centralized hub for its programmatic digital OOH (DOOH) workflows, the expanded partnership now enables PATTISON to dynamically manage and optimize its OOH inventory to unlock previously untapped revenue opportunities. The partnership also opens up new ways for brands to book campaigns on PATTISON inventory with a more targeted, impression-based approach and accelerates the rate at which PATTISON can display client ads across its OOH inventory, spanning urban pathways, residential and office buildings, transit hubs, airports, and other venues across Canada.

Providing a near real-time ad scheduling workflow comprising advanced optimization and prioritization tools, the Broadsign platform is helping PATTISON reallocate time previously spent on manual campaign pacing and adding daily plays to bump up the delivery of low-pacing campaigns. Broadsign’s optimization engine works on a play-by-play or impression level based on each campaign’s goals, and enables PATTISON’s sales team to easily find more available inventory, even in high sellout periods. With the updated OOH platform, PATTISON can now easily customize campaigns to align with client needs. Since beginning its rollout of the new platform in early March, it has powered OOH campaigns for some of PATTISON’s largest clients, including Holt Renfrew, Lotto Quebec, McDonald’s, and Tim Hortons.

“In evaluating our options, the Broadsign tech stack quickly emerged as the best fit, especially for our ad-serving needs. It lets us maximize yield and revenue potential while ensuring pDOOH campaigns can be seamlessly executed based on client goals, with little to no manual intervention,” shared PATTISON Director of Digital Innovation Jessica Littlejohn. “Our digital product offering has never been more robust than with Broadsign at its core, and our team has more time to do what we do best – understand and help our clients achieve their objectives.”

Echoing Littlejohn’s sentiments, PATTISON President Steve McGregor, added, “The support the Broadsign team has provided along the journey has been instrumental in helping us to achieve our business goals and prepare for our next phase of growth.”

“PATTISON is an industry trailblazer with a reputation for always being one step ahead of the curve. It was one of the first media owners to offer full-scale programmatic DOOH and advanced audience-based targeting options,” shared Maarten Dollevoet, Chief Revenue Officer, Broadsign. “PATTISON’s commitment to evolving its digital toolset to prepare for the next wave of OOH is inspiring, and we’re excited to partner with them to help them reach their goals.”

About Broadsign

Broadsign empowers media owners, agencies, and brands to harness the power and reach of out-of-home to connect with audiences in ways unlike any other advertising channel. More than 1.5 million static and digital signs along roadways and in airports, shopping malls, retailers, health clinics, transit systems, electric vehicle charging stations, and more run on Broadsign, reaching audiences at multiple touchpoints throughout the consumer journey. The Broadsign Platform helps media owners such as Outfront, Pattison Outdoor, Global, and Intersection streamline business operations and maximize revenue opportunities while enabling marketers and agencies to more easily plan and execute dynamic OOH campaigns that resonate with audiences. Brands spanning AB InBev, Disney, FanDuel, H&M, Honda, HP, Johnson & Johnson, KLM, Uber Eats, Sea-Doo, Samsonite, and many more have run successful programmatic DOOH campaigns enabled by Broadsign technology. https://broadsign.com

About PATTISON

PATTISON Outdoor Advertising, a division of The Jim Pattison Group is Canada’s largest Out-of-Home advertising company. PATTISON Outdoor helps brands and businesses harness the power of Out-of-Home advertising by providing the most comprehensive range of products, markets, insights and customer support services. With its roots reaching back to 1908, PATTISON has been providing innovative solutions for Out-of-Home advertising opportunities with products ranging from traditional billboards to transit, digital, airport, residential, office, and street level formats. PATTISON is headquartered in Toronto, Ontario with over 25 sales offices across the country, providing advertisers unmatched reach and coverage with products available in over 200 markets coast to coast.

Product News | October 11, 2021

What’s new in the Broadsign Platform: Sophisticated targeting, creative management and UI improvements

Spring has finally sprung, which means fresh air, greenery, and, most importantly, fresh updates to the Broadsign Platform. This season we are bringing you sophisticated targeting tools, streamlined creative management, and major UI improvements to make the campaign planning and management process for directly-sold campaigns as seamless as possible for campaign planners.

Why does this matter? While the activation process for digital out-of-home (DOOH) may only require a couple of minutes, the campaign planning and management process often requires much more time. Discovering available and relevant inventory, collecting data to prove the medium’s effectiveness in meeting campaign goals, and managing campaign creatives are all time-consuming tasks.

The new spring updates introduce a new level of automation that not only reduces the time and complexities of getting DOOH campaigns out the door but also helps make out-of-home (OOH) a competitive and attractive medium for buyers. Let’s dive in!

Sophisticated targeting tools that find the best inventory

We don’t believe granular targeting should be just for programmatic buys. That’s why media owner campaign planners who plan, execute, and monitor directly-sold campaigns through the Broadsign Platform now have access to the same flexibility and comprehensive targeting capabilities as online and programmatic media buyers.

With our new targeting tools*, you can now filter your inventory by location and key points of interest (POIs), enabling campaign planners to find the most relevant inventory for each campaign at the click of a button. You now also have access to an intuitive map visualization that displays your inventory with quick filtering by area, support for bulk location uploads, and setting radius parameters.

These additions to the Broadsign Platform not only cut down on the manual work required for inventory discovery but also provide your team the opportunity to be more of a strategic partner to buyers.

For your sales team – who juggle multiple responsibilities, like business development, client relations, creating proposals, negotiating deals, and overseeing campaign execution and performance – they can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time advising buyers on the effectiveness of OOH and its complimentary effect with other mediums. For your campaign planners – who often juggle multiple campaigns at once – they can plan and set up campaigns a lot quicker, freeing themselves to focus on more critical tasks.

*Disclaimer: For sophisticated targeting capabilities, you must be fully migrated to the Broadsign Platform and be located in the following supported countries – Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America.

Simplified creative management and centralized campaign planning

Media owners juggle multiple campaigns and creatives at the same time, and without the right tools, the creative management process can become complex and stressful for your teams. Our new creative management tools now allow you to create, edit, manage, and assign campaign creatives with ease. On top of that, you’ll also be able to push your campaigns live – all within a single unified workflow through the Broadsign Platform.

In this update to the Broadsign Platform, you can now manage creative bundles for each of your campaigns directly through a new web-based workflow, eliminating the need to go through the Broadsign desktop tools. This enhancement provides your team with greater flexibility by allowing them to access and manage their campaigns from any location at any time.

We think you’ll also love how intuitive and easy-to-use the campaign planning tools are to adopt. Users of all technical proficiency levels can quickly learn and use this streamlined approach to create and manage campaigns with ease.

Additional management tools for an improved user experience

Along with comprehensive creative management and targeting tools for directly-sold campaigns, additional tools and UI enhancements have been added to improve the usability and user experience of the Broadsign Platform:

The Guaranteed Campaigns module is now fully integrated into the Broadsign Platform

We’ve fully integrated the Guaranteed Campaigns module, formerly called Broadsign Direct, into the platform interface. This consolidation allows you to more conveniently manage campaigns, packages, and settings directly from the Broadsign Platform, eliminating the need to visit the original stand-alone application.

Inventory package accessibility

Access inventory packages effortlessly through the platform’s updated navigation bar, enhancing efficiency and ease of use.

Centralized settings management

Administrators can now adjust and manage all necessary settings for digital and static inventory, user management, and more directly within the platform’s web-based UI through a centralized hub for control and configuration.

Campaign monitoring enhancements

With the newly implemented progress indicator, real-time monitoring of campaign pacing is now possible, giving immediate insight into campaign performance. This allows for quick adjustments to be made, as needed, to meet campaign goals effectively.

Search functionality and filters

An improved search mechanism, complemented by additional filters like campaign, client or contract names, enables quicker and more accurate campaign retrieval, saving time and improving workflow.

Dashboard customization

Tailor the platform’s dashboard to meet individual needs, ensuring that the most relevant and important information is always front and center.

Want to know more?

Here’s a short FAQ to provide you with some answers to some questions you might have regarding our latest updates:

What do I need to do to prepare for the update?
There’s no need to do anything to prepare for the update. It will be applied automatically to your Broadsign Platform account.

Will all my users have access to creative management?
Admins automatically have access, and we’ve also created two new creative user roles which would also have access, if granted. Take a look at our documentation for more information on roles.

Will this affect any of my API integrations?
No, there will be no impact on the use of APIs or any integrations.

Will the update affect my existing campaigns?
No, the update will not affect your existing campaigns.

Will I still be able to access the original Guaranteed Campaigns (Broadsign Direct) interface?
Yes, however only by using this URL. The Broadsign Platform will now no longer redirect you to the old interface.

Will https://direct.broadsign.com still work?
Yes, however we highly encourage you to use the new Broadsign Platform moving forward as new features and improvements may only be accessible there.

Interested in testing out these new features? Book a demo today

Product News | October 11, 2021

Maximize your travel and tourism campaign with billboard and out-of-home advertising

Spring is here – which means summer travel is on the horizon for many of us in the Northern Hemisphere. For advertisers, it’s time to gear up campaigns aimed at targeting crowds set to depart on fun-filled travel adventures.

According to the first UNWTO World Tourism Barometer of the year, by the end of 2023, the number of people travelling internationally rose to 88% compared to pre-pandemic rates, with an estimated 1.3 billion international arrivals. The travel industry expects a full recovery by the end of 2024.

Despite the pressure of inflation, a recent study by Hilton reveals that consumers plan to spend more on travel in 2024. Kevin Jacobs, Chief Financial Officer and President of Global Development at Hilton, says, “Even with ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty, travel demand has remained strong as consumers continue to prioritize the value of experiences and connections over things.”

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) and billboard advertising enable travel and tourism brands to elevate their advertising campaigns, targeting key demographics and initiating contextually relevant dynamic campaigns that adapt to audiences on the move. Here are some effective ways advertisers can leverage the medium in their upcoming summer campaigns.

Think outside the airport

Airports present many opportunities to engage audiences in a high-dwell time environment that ranks high for perceived brand value compared to other media channels. While they’re a great way to reach travellers in a purchasing mindset, they shouldn’t be the only location you consider when planning your campaign.

With OOH, advertisers have the unique opportunity to capture the attention of audiences dreaming of being elsewhere. This can mean activating OOH ads in subway and train stations, roadside billboards and bus shelters during commuting hours. These ad placements are sure to catch the attention of workers on their way to the office who are already considering where to spend their time off.

Billboards and OOH advertising around university and college campuses are a great way to market to summer break-bound students where they live, study, work, and play. The advertising opportunities on campus are endless, from DOOH screens in high-traffic areas to campus transit and street furniture, allowing brands to create impactful campaigns that promote summer travel, enticing students with exciting destinations, special offers, and memorable experiences.

A new survey from Nationwide Travel Insurance reveals that 91% of Americans plan to travel domestically this year, with 60% saying they will likely make the trip by car. With this in mind, there’s never been a better time to consider roadside advertising, like billboards, to boost brand awareness and inspire travellers. For example, local attractions like amusement parks, restaurants, or entertainment venues can use billboards strategically placed near highways to capture the attention of passing motorists and promote unique experiences available in their vicinity.

Visit Gainesville places roadside displays along I-75 to encourage drivers to Stay, Dine, and Explore Gainesville, Florida

Drive audiences online

The insights from Hilton’s global traveller survey underscore the importance of online booking convenience, with 80% of respondents emphasizing the need for seamless digital booking experiences. Real-world OOH ads can capture consumers’ attention and guide them toward taking action online, like visiting a company’s website or social media pages, reaching out to a travel advisor, or making reservations through a third-party platform.

For example, a hotel chain looking to promote its loyalty program could activate OOH ads strategically placed in key tourist locations or near business districts, featuring benefits like discounted room rates, complimentary amenities, and personalized offers. By prompting consumers with compelling visuals and clear calls to action, these OOH ads can drive traffic to the hotel’s website or mobile app, encouraging travellers to explore and book accommodations online.

Through mobile retargeting strategies, advertisers can target individuals exposed to out-of-home ads by geofencing relevant locations, effectively reconnecting with these audiences through mobile devices or other online platforms later.

Expedia promotes its travel booking platform during commuter rush hours

Leverage programmatic DOOH for greater, more contextual impact

Programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) allows advertisers to connect with audiences in real-time with contextually relevant content, helping drive brand awareness and purchasing decisions through engaging displays.

Through pDOOH capabilities like data triggers, advertisers can engage with audiences based on location, weather, time of day, current events, financial data, and more. Using weather-based triggers, for example, a tourism board can promote indoor attractions like museums, art galleries, or shopping centers to tourists during a rainy day. Alternatively, they can highlight outdoor activities like beach outings or boat tours on sunny days.

An airline advertising international flights can customize promotions using financial triggers based on currency exchange rates. Suppose the exchange rate of the destination’s currency is particularly favourable against major currencies like the US Dollar (USD) or Euro (EUR). In that case, the airline can run promotional campaigns targeting travellers from countries where their currency has a stronger purchasing power, highlighting discounted fares or special offers on flights to these destinations.

Aruba Tourism Authority leverages real-time weather triggers to promote its sunny destination across Chicago, Philadelphia and NYC

By leveraging platforms like digital billboards and transit advertising, advertisers can engage with audiences in high-traffic areas, capitalize on seasonal travel trends, and create memorable brand experiences that resonate with travellers. The ability to deliver contextually relevant messages, adapt campaigns based on real-time data triggers, and target key demographics makes OOH a valuable tool for advertisers looking to maximize their reach and influence during the summer travel season.

Interested in getting started with programmatic DOOH this travel season?

Explore curated audiences in our Travel & Tourism package here!