Feb 19 2010
NEC Display Solutions of America, a leading provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, today announced it will showcase the deep capabilities of its VUKUNET universal ad-serving platform for digital signage February 24-25 at the industry’s largest trade show, Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas.
Tutorial stations in the NEC booth will be available to walk digital out-of-home (DOOH) network operators, interested industry partners and members of the advertising community through VUKUNET’s sophisticated profiling and planning workflows that are designed to more easily connect networks and advertisers.
NEC will also have members of the VUKUNET team on hand to explain the features of the system, and the benefits for all stakeholders in the DOOH advertising marketplace. VUKUNET takes a lot of work and cost out of the media placement process and, uniquely, the ad-serving platform provides substantive referral revenue to AV resellers, systems integrators and digital signage software vendors who get their network clients involved.
Since the service was formally launched in November 2009, more than 100 DOOH network operators have registered to make advertising time slots available to the VUKUNET media transaction service. The VUKUNET team also has been aggressively raising awareness in the advertising community.
“We’re very happy with the response we’ve received from network operators,” said Pierre Richer, President and COO of NEC Display Solutions of America. “While this move from NEC came as a surprise to some, we expect a lot of support and enthusiasm once our industry partners and friends have the opportunity to come by our booth and see what VUKUNET is really all about.”
The completely Web-based VUKUNET platform introduces the first universal ad scheduling, playback, reporting and payment engine to an industry that has had almost no interoperability or standardization across literally hundreds of solutions providers and operating networks. By necessity, much of the current process is manual, costly and time-consuming.
VUKUNET’s network operator platform and its sister ADVUKU booking platform for agencies were conceived and designed specifically to address the way advertising agencies approach media buying, making it significantly easier for both the buyers and networks to run digital place-based media campaigns.
Network operators register on VUKUNET and profile their network and availability for third-party advertising. Media planning companies register on ADVUKU and use its services to locate and sort networks that meet their audience, timeframe and budget requirements. The media planners can then create an offer that goes directly to networks, stating what they want and what they are willing to pay. Or the planners can use an RFP (Request for Proposal) system for the entire front-end process.
The VUKUNET platform schedules the agreed-to campaigns and distributes uploaded and approved ad spots. Using instructions from the central VUKUNET servers, a patent-pending software widget installed on the network’s existing media player PCs responds to time-based scheduling instructions and takes over the full-screen on command.
Using industry-standard media players, VUKUNET’s player runs its ad schedule and then minimizes itself. The player does not stop or have any interaction with the network’s own digital signage playback engine, and does not conflict with the incumbent signage software.
The VUKUNET platform represents almost two years of planning, design and development, with extensive and ongoing support from Detroit’s Campbell-Ewald, one of the biggest ad agencies in the U.S., and Chicago-based Project Leadership Associates, a Microsoft Gold certified business and technology consulting firm.
Richer stressed the project is continuing to evolve and has the support and interest of NEC globally.
NEC will also be meeting with resellers and systems integrators about its free Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) content management system. The VUKUNET CMS is free to companies that opt-in to the VUKUNET ad system, as well as networks that use NEC displays for their screen networks or other applications.
VUKUNET is part of the NEC Display Solutions of America booth (No. 1805, just inside the main entry) at this year’s Digital Signage Expo, being staged Feb. 23-25 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The exhibit hall is open on Feb. 24-25.