We've recently introduced "Proof of Playback" (also called proof of display) capabilities for StrandVision Video, Gold and Platinum digital signage packages. It tracks any page, photo, video or database shown through your StrandVision Digital Signage system on your normal digital signage displays, your embedded digital signage and your Web site and screensaver displays.
"Proof of Playback" is crucial if you want to sell digital signage advertising or demonstrate that you are showing vendor notices under cooperative business marketing agreements. It's also great to certify that you've shown certain legal and employee notices, such as insurance or healthcare announcements. You can also track public service announcements for community relations reports. There are dozens of other uses that could potentially apply to installations.
"Proof of Playback" also presents a convenient way to measure the length of your entire digital signage loop simply by tracking the number of times your first page is displayed each hour and dividing that into 60.
As always, our approach is simple. Log into your user account. Once logged in, select "Modify Pages" from the "Signage" tab.
From here you can click on "Proof of Playback" in the left frame to see all selections or select any of your existing pages.
The "Proof of Playback" menu selection brings you to a new "Proof of Playback" page. From here you can specify what you want to track on the page. You can select the page itself or specific images, videos or databases by scrolling down the page and checking the appropriate choices.
The first three categories track each time the page, image or video is shown, while the database tracking feature tracks each time any piece of database information is shown.
That's it! Click "Save the Setting" under the section you're using and StrandVision "Proof of Playback" will begin counting in about a couple minutes.
Of course, we've also added reporting capabilities.
Once again, log into your account and go to the "Reports" menu heading section and select on the Proof of Playback.
Each item that you have enabled has its own listing by date that shows the display results for all displays (signage, Web and screensavers). The system reports the total time that it was on the screen per hour (shown in hh:mm:ss format) followed by the number of times it appeared (in parenthesis). Totals by day and hour are also calculated if more than one row or column is reported.
If you decide to track an RSS feed that has varying display times (some scrolling news stories are longer than others), "Proof of Playback" automatically adds the individual times to give an accurate total.
Date | 10 am | 12 pm | 01 pm | 03 pm | 04 pm | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
01/05/2010 | 0:03 (2) | 0:03 (2) | ||||
01/06/2010 | 0:06 (1) | 0:06 (1) | ||||
01/14/2010 | 0:12 (2) | 0:12 (2) | ||||
01/15/2010 | 0:24 (4) | 0:24 (4) | ||||
01/25/2010 | 1:18 (13) | 0:06 (1) | 1:24 (14) | |||
Total | 0:24 (4) | 0:12 (2) | 0:06 (1) | 1:21 (15) | 0:06 (1) | 2:09 (23) |
You'll notice that the "Proof of Playback" does not show results during non-business hours ("Night Mode") since pages are not displayed during that time period.
Details that were used to create the summary report can be exported in .csv format to be used by Excel and other spreadsheets for graphical presentation or further analysis.
That's "Proof of Playback!" Give it a try even if you don't need it today. It's a great new tool that will come in handy sometime. And, best of all, it's immediately available to qualifying subscribers for free!