For the first time in Australia, a team of experts from America, UK and Australia will come together to discuss and present the future of digital signage in this country.  The n.gage Digital Signage Forum is open to everyone to attend with one-day sessions being held in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland in May.

 
After conducting its own industry research in Australia and New Zealand amongst retailers and brands, n.gage uncovered that 71 per cent of respondents were willing to look at media, proprietary or hybrid digital signage models at retail if they could understand the return on investment. However, 86% of respondents felt Australian digital signage companies, on the whole, were not addressing digital signage from their required holistic business viewpoint and bring them a total solution from network through to content and content management.
 
n.gage will address all areas of digital signage, answer all questions and assist brands, retailers and network owners with information for every step of planning, managing and evaluating successful digital signage networks and content.

With less than 2 per cent of Australian retailers currently employing digital signage, the interest has suddenly stepped up as companies worldwide, including Australian retailers, increasingly attribute digital signage to significant sales uplifts at the point of purchase.

Andrew McIntosh, Managing Director of Digital Signage Group and the network owners of News TV, Liquor TV as well as proprietary networks commented: “The results we are seeing here in Australia are phenomenal, but brands and retailers are not up to speed with the power of content. One liquor brand provided us with awful content and the sales still rose by 23 per cent. We took the same content and applied the right retail messages for that environment and sales rose 157 per cent.  In proprietary network situations, we’ve seen consistent basket rises of 5 per cent, which has a major impact on the bottom line for large retailers.”

“We have done multiple cost matrixes to prove that digital signage is now comparable to the cost of printing, distributing and merchandising printed point of sale. However, the major difference is that digital point of sale has 100% compliance, immediate content control, better recall, increased sales and brand cut through.  It’s the future of point of sale in Australia,” he concluded.  Indeed, Frost & Sullivan has forecast that the Australian digital signage industry will grow to AUD$58.4 million by 2013 as more retailers and brands test and roll out successful networks," McIntosh said.

The n.gage Digital Signage Forum will also tackle subjects such as media versus proprietary networks and use case studies to highlight what models work where, and why.  Speakers from Imperative Group in the US and UK will cover its own case studies such as Walmart and talk about why it was forced to pull a media based digital signage network and replace it with the now hugely successful Walmart proprietary network.

Addressing future trends, n.gage is also bringing out an expert in the integration of social media with digital signage and one of Australia’s leading content creators, phdcreative, will be leading discussions on content creation that uplifts sales as well as its effective content management and measurement.

All speakers are highly accessible through keynote speeches and more intimate deep-dive sessions to answer more specific company digital signage issues.

To book a seat at one of these events, visit www.ngagewithus.com