Making the most of Captive Audiences

While providing information and advertising on a display is commonplace, getting people to view the content is a challenge. Some locations, however, provide ideal environments for using digital signage displays, especially when the audience is captive.

Captive audiences provide ideal locations for outdoor digital signage

Captive audiences are those areas where people are forced to wait for services. Doctor’s surgeries, pharmacies and other waiting rooms are good examples. In these locations, other than flick through a few old magazines, people have little else to do.

Providing content in a waiting room is increasingly common as screen integrators understand the value of a captive audience and know that if they place content here, there is a good chance it will be viewed.

Of course, the content needs relevancy. There is little point in advertisers using a screen in a pharmacy of doctor’s surgery to promote the local car dealership or pet store, but providing health related content does have benefits, and not just to advertisers.

For surgeries, communicating health advice to patients is often challenging. While leaflets and posters do have some effect, using a digital signage screen provides more engagement, and often in these locations, mixing the surgery’s content with advertising enables the surgeries to pay for the screen and provide the content for free.

Advertisers are willing to pay high prices for captive audience locations as there is often a clear demographic. An advertiser knows that health related content in a surgery of pharmacy is going to be relevant, so the advertising will be more effective.

Even in outdoor locations it is possible to find captive audiences. Transport hubs, such as rail stations, cabstands and bus terminals are ideal places for outdoor digital signage, although finding demographic relevancy is much harder.

Any location where people are waiting in line makes a good location for a digital signage display: outside cinemas, ballparks, theatres and ice rinks are all locations where an outdoor digital signage display is sure to get an audience.