Failures in the digital signage arena lead to very public displays that can damage you brand image, and provide general overall embarrassment. There are several ways that downtime can be costly.
Lost revenue due to lost sales or transactions; If your digital media project is part of a transaction system, any downtime means loss of direct sales revenue. Lost revenue due to undelivered advertising; If your system delivery paid advertising, your revenues go down when that advertising is not delivered. Costs for on-site service calls; On-site service calls are very expensive. A 2009 study by the Aberdeen Group calculated the average on-site service call at $276*. If your system is in a hard to reach location, that cost can skyrocket. Loss of customer loyalty; When your potential customers see your name associated with technological failure, your corporate image suffers.
Additional costs may include personnel time required to manage the service interruption to identify, diagnose and schedule a fix, as well as time to contact clients and explain the issues.
We have taken and received a number of examples of Digital Signage failures. We are collecting them in a Digital Signage Fail Pintrest page. This first one I took while rushing through SFO to make a connection. The second was at the Secaucus Transfer Station for NJ Transit. From time to time we will post other interesting fails here.
