SignKontrol: digital signage made for advertising
We entered the digital signage business in 2016 with the idea that displays must be everywhere. One of our first tasks was looking for a digital signage platform. We created a successful VoIP product based on open-source years before, so we explored that way.
- Issues with using Xibo for digital signage
- Challenges with managing digital signage content
- Fine-tuning devices for different environments
- And then COVID-19 came
- Offering our cloud-based digital signage software
Issues with using Xibo for digital signage
Rapidly we found the Xibo Project, a well-known digital signage open-source project with all the parts we needed. Xibo is so good that it covers all possible uses of digital signage: corporate, marketing, education, public, tourism, retail, etc., you name it.
We started offering a digital signage service. Customers paid a monthly fee to post content on their displays, and we took care of the players and scheduled the media they produced.
Our first customers were fast-food restaurants and coffee shops looking for a digital menu solution. We used layouts and widgets to put the menu pictures and filled tables with datasets, including names of dishes and prices. It didn't take too long to notice how limited and ineffective sharing information in that way was. Creating the content was complicated for our customers, and publishing it was complicated for us.
Challenges with managing digital signage content
One of our customers created video clips to show how they prepared their menu dishes a year later. Those videos were more attractive and appealing than tables with names and prices. They also replaced their digital menus based on widgets with images that fit the entire screen.
This approach simplified creating content for them because they used a modified version of their flyers. Publishing just videos and images also simplified our tasks of posting content. However, it still wasn't easy to manage, not as easy as posting content on social media.
At this time, we found an issue, mostly with videos: media preparation. In Xibo, that's not transparent to you. The CMS's responsibility is sending content to your displays, where it is stored and played locally. But content must be prepared to play on Android.
You must be sure the video you want to play is compatible, or you could end up in front of your display watching a black screen. We solved these issues using FFmpeg, an open-source program for handling multimedia files. But it added another layer of complexity to publishing content.
Fine-tuning devices for different environments
Our idea since the beginning was to focus on advertisement. Then we closed a deal to install elevator advertising screens and digital totems in two business towers. We completed the project and started selling ads. Still, we found another issue: connecting a device to the network could be easy, but fine-tuning its configuration depending on the usage and environment was tricky.
A display installed in an elevator, constantly moving, losing and getting an Internet connection in the Wi-Fi signal range, needs different settings than a device with a steady Internet connection. We tested all possible configurations in these environments until we got the best results. Then we created profiles settings to assign displays based on their usage; this added more complexity to our business.
And then COVID-19 came
Then the pandemic came, and our business crashed in a day. It looked like a catastrophe, but it allowed us to rethink our business. We wanted to focus on advertising, but the complexity of our platform lagged us. The CMS targeted people with some computer experience.
Still, we needed publishing content as easy as posting content on social media. And that's what we did; we put all the pieces of software together and created an easy-to-use digital signage platform made for advertising.
Offering our cloud-based digital signage software
We continued our ads business using our new platform and focused on selling airtime, and now we offer our platform to marketers who face the same problems we had, so they can focus on growing their businesses.
