Changing consumer habits, particularly among younger demographics (the teens and young adults that drive retail sales), and improved technology have reached a point where it can be said that digital signage as an advertising medium has truly “come of age” as a marketing vehicle. “The digital signage market has finally reached a stage where all the enabling technologies – both on the hardware and software sides – are firmly in place,” writes Sanju Khatari in Digital Signage Magazine.

Digital signs driven by sophisticated, highly responsive and measurable digital advertising software have become a fixed part of the advertising and marketing landscape as audiences, particularly younger audiences, have been drifting away from traditional print, radio and TV media in favour of digital media. While much of the demise of traditional media marketing is attributable to the rise of the Internet and the growing importance of online advertising, at a more basic level consumers are not spending as much time at home in front of the television or reading the daily papers. There has been a shift to out-of-home advertising, and the digital sign industry is leading that shift.

“The advertising industry is going through a phase of uncertainty,” Ms. Khatari notes. “Consumers, particularly those in the younger demographics, have completely changed the way they receive their information and interact socially. In addition to spending considerably less time on traditional media, namely TV and print media, end users are often completely avoiding TV advertisements and infomercials using TiVOs and DVRs.” These technologies allow users to skip through advertisements entirely.

This has prompted many companies marketing their products to focus on TV and print media for corporate-level branding, while shifting specific product promotion onto in-store or other out-of-home media options – such as the narrowcasting networks that are ubiquitous in doctor’s offices, office lobbies and public transportation. Moreover, in-store narrowcasting networks provide further opportunities for product advertisements right at the point where consumers are making their purchase decisions.

Changing consumer habits have come at a time when the digital signage industry emerged from its infancy. The digital advertising software that drives the digital signs and narrowcasting networks we encounter everywhere from fast-food outlets to Times Square has been increasingly refined to allow advertisers to hone the content and messages shown to the targeted audience, while the metrics that define the effectiveness of the marketing message have been developing apace. Most importantly, the costs of providing the large screen high definition and LCD monitors has been dropping, making digital signs affordable in locations with smaller target audiences that were uneconomical before the prices of monitors began to drop.

Perhaps the biggest challenge that companies and marketers face in responding to the drop in traditional media share is how best to quantify the effectiveness of digital signs. “In order for advertisers to invest in digital signage they need measurement of the audience and a system that is clear, reliable, actionable and comparable with other media and their metrics,” notes Ms. Khatari.

The best digital advertising software provides the metrics that allows users to quantify the results of in-store digital signs with their inventory software and sales tracking software. Narrowcasting networks, such as those seen on gas pumps, in airlines or in office lobbies, are increasingly working with market research companies such as A.C. Nielsen to improve their metrics and to monitor and improve the effectiveness of their marketing reach.

Properly deployed, digital signage provides companies with a unique and essential marketing tool that has come of age to reach their target audience as they shift away from traditional media.

More signs of the uncertain times ahead for traditional media in this country have emerged over the past few weeks.

Belo, which owns newspapers like the Dallas Morning News, the Providence Journal, and the Press Enterprise, as well as owns and operates 20 TV stations, said Oct. 1 it was splitting its holdings into two companies: The New A. H. Belo Corp., dedicated to the print properties, and Belo Corp., which will run the TV business.

Then E.W. Scripps said it would take a similar path Oct. 16 when it announced that it would break into two companies: E.W. Scripps Co., which will consist of about 20 newspapers and local television stations, and Scripps Networks Interactive, consisting of Home & Garden Television, the Food Network and Shopzilla.

At about the same time as the Scripps announcement, McClatchy Co., the third largest newspaper company in the United States, said its quarterly profits dropped 55 percent for the third quarter, a result of a weakening advertising market.

It’s clear traditional media companies are suffering a significant decline in readership and advertising lineage. Many of the dollars once spent on newspaper ads are being redirected into emerging new media like the Internet as media consumers increasingly log on to online sources to catch up on their world. Hence, companies like Belo and Scripps are separating business units into stand alone companies to cordon off the drag on their revenue and sustain shareholder value and interest.

These are among the largest media companies in the nation. If they aren’t impervious to the change brought on by new digital media, it’s unlikely other traditional media companies will be able to continue down the same path they’re on without making some course corrections along the way.

To be sure, Internet advertising is taking a sizeable bite out of the dollars once devoted to traditional newspaper, television, radio and magazine advertising. Another emerging digital media competing for its piece of the ad budget is out-of-home advertising, and more specifically out of home video advertising on digital signage networks.

In late January, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) formally launched with the mission of helping to provide standards and best practices for the newly emerging slice of the advertising industry. It was created by many of the largest out-of-home video advertising networks to remove impediments to the growth of the new ad medium.

One of the chief missions of the group is to help advertisers and those who run out-of-home video advertising networks work together “to plan, buy and evaluate the effectiveness of these mediums,” said Mike DiFranza, president and general manager of Captivate Network, one of the 10 companies that founded the group.

The contrast couldn’t be more apparent: On the one hand, many traditional media are scrambling to restructure so they can decouple business units with the potential to be profitable from those suffering from the re-allocation of advertising dollars to new digital media. On the other, a group like OVAB has emerged to help the fledgling medium of out-of-home video advertising build the advertising “street cred” that traditional media long ago mastered.

While it’s a long shot, perhaps there’s an opportunity for traditional media and emerging media, like out-of-home video advertising networks, to help each other. Why shouldn’t traditional media integrate out-of-home advertising networks into their media offering? Certainly, they have the ability to generate content for the medium, they have the relationships with local businesses to both sell the advertising and secure locations for new signs on the network, and they have well-established market research resources to assist in building new audience measurement metrics. Conversely, why shouldn’t emerging new advertising markets welcome the participation of tradition media, which can leverage its strengths to assist the new medium in its maturation?