Digital Signage Advertisements - Showing Up in Restrooms
Digital signage can be used in a wide variety of locations to promote a product & to get your company's name better known. Currently, trials are being done on the success of dynamic media advertisements within the restrooms of public venues, such as airport terminals & sporting complexes. In the study, lavatory mirrors are equipped with digital signage players, which will play advertisements until they detect an approaching viewer. Once a visitor approaches a sink or mirror, the media displays shrink down & move to a corner of the mirror. Ads are displayed in the top corner of a mirror, so that visitors are still able to view themselves while they wash their hands & freshen up. The digital signage advertising displays do not seem to take up the entire mirror, but rather utilize the space up top, which is typically unneeded.
While there are no final numbers or complete analysis yet, preliminary studies have shown that the advertisements are in fact effective. Our guess is it has to do with the capturing an audience member's full attention in an area previously free of advertisements & media clutter. True, we've had poster ads in bathrooms for many years now. Sometimes it's appreciated to have something to read while occupying a bathroom stall or while waiting in line; however it's concerning to think that digital advertisements are going to intrude in that one peaceful moment when you are washing your hands before exiting back out into the world. Picture this, you're at a baseball game. There are advertising billboards throughout centerfield & all across the scoreboard. You go & get a soda & some snacks, there you see more advertisements. Even in the program book you bought for 20-something dollars, there are pages after pages of ads. It is in between innings so you decide to run to the restroom, a place of solitude & peace. Now as you walk in, you are bombarded with large-size digital graphics staring at you from where mirrors used to be. Is it too much to ask for a simple mirror so I can check to make sure I don't have hotdog stuck in my teeth? If I was interested in watching advertisements during a baseball game, I would have stayed home. And to think, the company is hoping to expand their project into dressing rooms & point of purchase deployments. I'm thinking that if this continues, we are all going to become numb & immune to such advertisements in general. I see these ads working now because it is a new venture, in place that used to be quiet & innocent.
As you can see from the video, not very many people looked at the advertisements. And we can guess that these gentlemen are not paid participants in a scam because of the uneasy glares at the camera. Our question is, do these mirrors play sound as well? How unpleasant would it be to have a loud commercial playing in the background when you are trying to escape the craziness for a few moments? Women, as portrayed in movies, typically use a restroom to bond with friends & to have discussions they may not want the opposite sex to hear. Will we be required to scream overtop of annoying advertisements or will we lose these bonding moments for good?
As you can see, we are not fans of the bathroom digital media advertisements. While we typically keep opinions to ourselves, letting you, our readers decide for yourselves, this is a personal issue about which we feel strongly.
