By James Nebeker
Display Kit, the digital out-of-home display solution from Radius Networks, is perfect for tons of reasons. The power and simplicity of Chrome OS as the backbone, the convenience and control of the online dashboard, and the flexibility of all the different supported content types are some of the obvious arguments for using Display Kit as your digital signage platform. But there are a number of other more subtle ways that Display Kit is better than the competition. In this post I’ll highlight my three favorite Display Kit features and how they make it the best digital signage product around.
1. DoubleClick Integration
Google’s DoubleClick ad platform powers much of the online advertising ecosystem and reaches millions of users every day. It’s a powerful and proven way to reach potential customers online and connect with them. Display Kit has built-in integration with DoubleClick, so you can use the same platform to deliver traditional online ads as well as ads in the so called “out-of-home” world. All you have to do it set up an “ad unit” in DoubleClick and then add the corresponding information to Display Kit. Once Display Kit is hooked up, you can manage your orders, creatives, etc. in DoubleClick and the Display Kit app will connect to DoubleClick and retrieve the content in real-time. Display Kit is the first and only digital signage platform compatible with DoubleClick, so if you want to break out of the browser and reach people in the real world, it’s the only way to go.
2. Seamless Bluetooth Low Energy Beacon Support
One of the shortfalls of billboards, banners, and digital signage screens is that it’s difficult to connect to passers-by and engage with them with your content. That’s different now with the existence of smartphones and the advent of Bluetooth proximity beacons. With Display Kit, you can attach a BLE beacon signal to any piece of content. When that content is shown on screen, the Display Kit player sends out that beacon signal which can then be detected by nearby smartphones. That means you can extend the outreach of your content and you can provide more context and value to the content on screen. For example, you can advertise your app or product on screen and nearby users can receive the related information directly on their phones instead of having to type in a URL or scan a clumsy QR code. All you have to do is input your beacon identifiers in the Display Kit dashboard, they can be set uniquely for each piece of content or you can specify a single beacon for each player that will always be transmitted. The Display Kit player app can broadcast multiple beacon transmissions simultaneously, so each piece of content on screen can have its own beacon associated with it. Additionally, Display Kit supports all major beacon standards, so you can set up an advertisement with any beacon use case using all the industry standard beacon formats including Eddystone URL, Eddystone UID, iBeacon, and AltBeacon.
3. Easily Create Multi-Frame Content
Most digital signage screens consist of one piece of content that fills up the entire screen, whether it’s a video, image, or something else. With Display Kit, you can create a custom multi-frame display that shows as many pieces of content you want in the layout you choose. After you specify the size and position of each frame, you can add your own CSS styles to further customize the frame however you like (e.g., add a border, give the frame a circular shape). When building your display, each frame you add gets its own playlist that it cycles through independently of the other frames. With different content templates like image, video, and ticker you can build pretty much any kind of display you can think of. Once you have the perfect display layout, you can easily duplicate it to re-use the settings with different content or to tweak things for a different use case.
Next Steps
If any or all of these features sound better than your existing digital signage solution or you’re just getting started and you want a powerful and easy way to deploy and manage an array of digital signage screens, check out our Display Kit info page or contact us to get started.
