Acuity Omnimedia

We also offer Digital Signage.

If you are not familiar with the term Digital Signage you are not alone but almost certainly you have seen digital signage and have been marketed to using digital signage. In some major metropolitan areas digital signs have reached a point of near saturation. Even in the more rural areas of mid Michigan digital signage is quietly taking a toe-hold in big-box retailers, highway billboards, and less frequently in small businesses who are realizing that digital signage can help them reduce budgets for printed materials. They have also learned the power of tapping into the most productive advertising market available to them..the customers in their own store.

Highway billboards are probably the most recognizable form of digital signage today. If you have ever driven a stretch of interstate with three or four lanes going each way (meaning lots of cars) you've seen at least one new-fangled billboard that shines brightly with a vivid, computer generated image that changes about every 6 seconds. Alternatively, if you have spent any time in a big-box retailer such as Walmart or Best Buy you have seen video monitors suspended from the ceiling showing advertising and merchandising messages. McDonald's has recently launched a nationwide digital signage system that is one part digital menu board and one part merchandising display.

So clearly Digital Signage is a productive tool for large corporations and franchises that can use their deep pockets to gain yet another advantage over the individual entrepreneur and make it just a little harder for the small business to be cost competitive. Right? Wrong!

There is no arguing that large corporations have figured out the power of this medium before the small business has but the large corporation is at a very significant disadvantage. Their large! They have hundreds or thousands of locations. To make their digital signage solution work they require very expensive, highly complicated systems. Yet they still do it because they can see the value in reducing printed materials, creating a green-environment signage, and most importantly they do it to reach the most ripe advertising market they have available to them. their own customers.

Smaller businesses have a clear advantage over the large franchise when it comes to digital signage. With fewer locations to coordinate and usually a much smaller geographical area to cover the small business owner can capitalize on digital signage technology that is a fraction of the price paid by the big-box. Hey small businessman, how many times do you get to pay less for something than your corporate Uncle Sam (Walton, that is) pays for the same thing?

In fact, it's quite possible that a small business could launch an effective digital signage system with no out of pocket cost if you happen to have spare PC and video monitor around. Even if you don't have these things the plummeting cost of flat panel monitors combined with the increased availability of simple, low-cost media players means that a digital signage start-up budget could be less than $500. Programmed with the right content a shop owner could return their investment in as little as one to two weeks. You can be sure that's a much faster ROI than the one the corporate Goliath is getting.