Posts tagged digital media
Putting your assumptions to the test
Jan 25th
By Francis Moran
In our last post, we looked at Screenreach Interactive’s recent inroads in the radio and television industries, including its appearance on Popular U.K. television program The Gadget Show at Radio Festival, Europe’s top radio industry event, and its new “experience” for long-running U.K. current affairs program Dispatches.
Making a splash at major industry events and with high profile clients demands one thing – a compelling product. But a compelling product can’t be developed in a vacuum; it must address a clear market demand. As we have emphasized time and again, marketing and product development must work together from the get go. To quote guest commentator Ronald Weissman, “Great companies constantly test the market, for validation and feedback.” Read the rest of this entry »
Making waves in radio and television
Nov 23rd
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
In our last post, we caught up with Screenreach Interactive founder and CEO Paul Rawlings on his way out the door to attend the Digital Signage Investor Conference in New York. We explored how the company has developed its target markets, including the digital signage, or “out of home advertising,” market.
It has been a busy month for the company since then as it continues to build market share in the digital signage, television and radio industries.
David Weinfeld, Screenreach’s chief strategy officer, is based in New York. He and Rawlings hit the tradeshow floor together to speak with experts in the digital signage industry to deepen their understanding of how best to serve this growing global market.
“The conference really gave us a chance to get into the shoes of the clients we wish to serve,” Weinfeld said. “As a result, we are making some exciting changes to the product that we think will make a significant difference in how useful and appealing it is to advertisers and digital signage operators.”
Gadget of choice
After New York, Rawlings headed to Radio Festival, Europe’s top radio industry event, where Screenreach was a sponsor. As we explored in the last post, radio is a growing market for Screenreach and it already counts among its customers in the space Bauer Media, which operates 42 radio stations across the U.K.
“Radio Festival was a very interesting experience for us,” Rawlings said. “It gave us the chance to hear some of the challenges facing the industry. One thing we hadn’t realized was just how important research is to the business of radio. Screach offers deep consumer profiling and we have perhaps been underselling this feature.”
Popular U.K. television program The Gadget Show also held a session within the festival which demonstrated up and coming technologies set to change the radio industry. Screach was used by the audience to allow them to vote on their favourite technology from each round and was also voted the winning gadget in the final round.
Making current affairs interactive
Screenreach has also been working with U.K. television network Channel 4 to provide an app for its long-running current affairs program, Dispatches.
The opportunity to work on the show arose through Tom Gutteridge, a member of Screenreach’s board who worked previously as the CEO of Freemantle Media in the U.S. He made the initial contact with Channel 4 through his production company, Standing Stone.
“This is exciting for us as it will be the first time we’ve seen Screach used in this context,” Rawlings said. “So far, many Screach adopters have used the technology for games and quizzes and our trial on Dispatches will really show how versatile the product is.”
Channel 4 will use Screach to give viewers more control over their news consumption. It will provide additional content and information related to the Dispatches program in real time, provide integration with Facebook and Twitter to encourage viewers to chat with each other during the program via their mobile devices, and provide them with a live polling feature.
“With the polls feature, an example would be if the program was featuring a story that refers to trains, we can ask viewers questions such as ‘how many times have you had to stand on a train journey in the last few months?’ for which they will then see an instant poll,” Channel 4’s Vicky Taylor said in a recent interview.
Playing nice with iOS and Android
Back in the office, Screenreach’s development team has been busy working on the Android platform. It’s now possible for a user to install the Screach app on a tablet device, running either iOS or Android, and engage in a multiplayer experience with other users.
Previously, the only way a user’s smartphone could interact with a tablet was through Wi-Fi synching, AirPlay (synchronization between iOS devices), or through devices with matching operating systems, such as an iPhone and iPad.
With the latest development, an Android tablet can be used as a travelling game board, and people can interact with it through Screach using either an iPhone or an Android device.
Taking stock
For Rawlings and his team, the past month has provided valuable lessons about the importance of refining the current product messaging depending on the needs of specific market verticals.
“This is very exciting for us,” he said. “It means that our continued development opens windows of opportunity that we previously had not foreseen. If we think back to a year ago, so much has changed. One of the favourite sayings in the office is ‘do you want to see something cool’ which is followed by a group gathering around someone’s desk to see something we couldn’t even have imagined the week before. This makes it a very exciting product to work on.”
This is the third article in a continuing monthly series chronicling the growth path of Screenreach Interactive, a startup based in Newcastle upon Tyne in England’s North East. Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows users to create real-time, two-way interactive experiences between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. We invite your feedback.
Digital signage: Telling the right story to drive customer acquisition
Nov 17th
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
When we caught up with Screenreach Interactive founder and CEO Paul Rawlings, he was in the midst of packing for a trip to New York, where he was booked as a panellist for the Digital Signage Investor Conference.
Digital signage, a so-called form of “out-of-home advertising,” delivers video content, advertisements and messages to specific locations at specific times on static or touch screens, often in combination with movement detection and image capture technology. According to one recent industry forecast, the market is growing at a compound annual rate of 40 per cent, with 22 million digital signs expected to be deployed world-wide by 2015.
For Screenreach, it’s an industry ripe for the Screach app.
Meet Screenreach Interactive
Oct 26th
By Francis Moran and Leo Valiquette
We first encountered Screenreach Interactive and its founder, Paul Rawlings, several months ago when we featured Jon Bradford, the man behind U.K. startup accelerators The Difference Engine and Springboard.
Rawlings and Screenreach completed the first cycle of The Difference Engine’s 13-week program in 2010. When we asked Bradford for an example of a successful graduate from that program, he was quick to sing Rawlings’ praises.
“He was not proprietary about his ideas, he was very open to new suggestions, new directions and wasn’t wedded to, ‘Look, this is what I’m doing and I’m not going to listen to anybody else,’” Bradford said.
“I think having an open mind, being able to listen, to react in a positive fashion was probably the making of him. He was also not very selfish about bringing in other team members, making sure he had a good team around him beyond the program itself. One of his mentors (Sam Morton, pictured right in the photo below with Rawlings) became one of his members of staff.”
There was no doubt in our minds that Rawlings is a man with an open mind. He has, after all, agreed to share with us Screenreach’s evolving story, warts and all, in the hope that there will be insights and lessons learned here that will resonate with other entrepreneurs working to bring their technology to market.
What is Screenreach?
Screenreach’s flagship product, Screach, is an interactive digital media platform that allows a brand to create a real-time, two-way interactive experience between a smart device (through the Screach app) and any content, on any screen or just within the mobile device itself. Using Screach, the smart phone can become a game controller, quiz answer pad, a voting and polling tool, a bingo card, a roulette table or a number of other things to engage and interact with consumers.
“The cool thing about it is that it allows you to profile your users to learn more about them and measure your ROI, and to also reward consumers for interacting,” Rawlings said. “It allows you to bring your ad, event, TV program or radio show to life by allowing your consumer to interact with you straight from their smartphone.” Read the rest of this entry »
The Coolest Stuff in Digital Media: Checking Out Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone
May 5th
I’m often asked at IDC what the coolest technology is that I’m seeing in Canada from tech startups. In the Digital Media space, and in Toronto specifically, a good place to source out hot new digital media technology is at Ryerson’s new Digital Media Zone (DMZ), which officially opened on April 7, 2010 (http://www.ryerson.ca/dmz/).
Located on the 5th floor overlooking Yonge-Dundas Square, the DMZ connects Ryerson students, graduates and alumni from different disciplines to take digitally inspired concepts and make them real solutions and marketable products. Ryerson’s President Sheldon Levy explained that Ryerson does not take a stake in the technology being developed; instead it provides the space and equipment for students to test and try their ideas in a safe environment supported and funded by the school.
The result? Some pretty cool and marketable technology. Examples include: Read the rest of this entry »
Top 4 questions you should ask about digital media metrics
Apr 21st
One of the wonders of our digital world is the ability to measure anything. The challenge remains in making sure that the appropriate indicators are being measured and that the data is correctly interpreted.
The opportunities and challenges of audience measurement were discussed at the most recent iLunch – The Face of Demand presented by Interactive Ontario.
The conversation evolved into a best practices guide for offline and online audience measurement and cross-platform conversion between traditional and digital media.
Paul Bernier of Advisio spoke about Google Analytics and other traditional web measurement tools. He emphasized that despite the overabundance of data it is important to distinguish which metrics are relevant for a particular site. Read the rest of this entry »
iPad will revolutionize publishing – someday
Jan 29th
v1.0 shows platform still a work in progress
By now, even my disconnected mother sitting on a beach in Florida has heard about the iPad. And while geeks debate the name, whine about its lack of a memory card slot and USB port and slice Apple a new one for once again handing AT&T a golden egg, I find myself thinking about my mom, and whether her world changed a bit yesterday.
See, she reads books. Lots of them. She’s also a technophobe who views her laptop with a curious mixture of fear and indifference. 
Publishers tend to appreciate folks like my mom because she drives demand for their wares. Unfortunately, printing books is a complex, expensive and often messy business. As the record industry discovered in the 1990s, the Internet is changing the way we consume this content, and the industry would like – indeed needs – to transition my mom and everyone like her into an electronically distributed reality.
But in the absence of a realistically usable device or form factor – no, she’ll never read a book on her Byzantine-for-her laptop – that simply wasn’t going to happen. Amazon’s Kindle showed us the possibilities, but despite its pioneering success in defining the e-book reader market, it’s failed to break out beyond a niche product for cash-flush book lovers. It isn’t, and probably will never be, the reader for the rest of us. Read the rest of this entry »
iPad traces new direction for print media
Jan 28th
With all the hype and hoopla of yesterday’s unveiling of the much awaited Apple iPad, it was surprising to note that Steve Jobs had not uttered the word magazine. 
Yet this is the one industry where Apple’s take on the e-reader will have its largest impact. Long before its debut, tech pundits have already predicted that the iPad would take the publishing industry by storm just as the iPod had with the music industry. Read the rest of this entry »
