Billboards and Beyond: The A-Z of Digital Screens

and a lot more could be on the way.

B is for bars and, rather improbably, buses. Buses have featured LED
information strips on the insides for a while now and LEDs have also
been used to create special effects on the outside. Now, media owners
are looking to offer more ambitious moving-picture screens both inside
and out. B is also for Baby TV, which offers 80 per cent coverage of
expectant mothers via ante-natal clinics. Bless.

C is for clinics (such as the above), clubs (from the healthiest of
health clubs to the unhealthiest of nightclubs) and cabs. Cabs offer a
captive audience in an intimate environment - so intimate, in fact, that
the size of screen is rather limited. Cabvision is a leading company in
this market. Lastly, convenience stores, a sector that is being
developed by Firebrand Media.

D is for, er, digital outdoor.

E is for entertainment centres - for instance, The Gate in Newcastle,
which boasts restaurants, bars, clubs and a multiscreen cinema. POPtv
has installed eight large-format screens (including holographic
projection technology) in eight locations within the complex, featuring
a programme mainly of pop music videos and advertising.

F is for football grounds. POPtv's Match Day Media transmits a news and
updates television channel (with sound as well as visuals) to 17
Premiership football grounds. Forty-two-inch plasma screens - between 40
and 100 per stadium - are located in the concourse and bar areas behind
spectator stands.

G is for GPs' surgeries, many of which offer POPtv's The Life
Channel.

H is for hairdressers, courtesy of i-vu, and health clubs, courtesy of a
number of companies. Avanti's MVN Gym is basically a high-energy music
video channel with ad breaks featuring specialist health products,
health foods, isotonic drinks and personal training services.

I is for i-vu. See hairdressers.

J is for JCDecaux, which has been selling in-store TV on behalf of
Tesco.

K is for Kinetic's specialist digital planning and buying division,
OneZeroOne, a part of its Destination Media group.

L is for leisure centres, which PH4 covers with a network of plasma
screens. We'd like to tell you more but when we visited the PH4 site, a
notice informed us that it was still under construction. As a
consequence, this entry is, similarly, still under construction.

M is for motorway services and malls. Shopping malls have become a
hugely important component of what's being called the retail channel - a
way to package up a myriad of opportunities from the car-park (or bus
stop) to the check-out till. Avanti Screenmedia and ScreenFX are the
leading companies introducing giant plasma concourse screens to the
country's shopping indoor centres.

N is for no entry.

O is for out-of-home TV, a term fashionable in many quarters until
fairly recently but dropped by media owners when they realised it was
misleading, raised advertiser expectations too much and was therefore
counter-productive. Not all screens offer full video with sound - and
even when they do, few can be used to run existing TV commercials. The
term also fails to convey the increasing diversity of screen-based
out-of-home media.

P is for petrol stations (sold by ATM:ad) and petrol station forecourt
stores (via PH4). P is also for POPtv, one of the most active media
owners in this sector.

Q is for Queue TV, the nickname for the screen-based advertising systems
you see in post offices, courtesy of POPtv.

R is for the retail channel. See shopping malls.

S is for supermarkets. Tesco has led the way here with its much-hyped
Tesco TV, which has been rolled out across 100 stores. Its original
target, however, was 300 stores, tempting some observers to speculate
that its enthusiasm for the project has waned. Advertiser demand was
also poor in the initial stages. Meanwhile, other retailers have also
been moving cautiously. Asda's trial has been modest, Sainsbury's Fresh
TV is still in early trial stages and when Morrisons acquired Safeway,
it ended an existing Safeway trial.

T is for thin-film transistor technology, a high-definition, more robust
version of LCD technology that could see lightweight (and relatively
inexpensive) LCD-type screens rivalling plasma in large-format
locations. T is also for the Tube and in particular Tottenham Court
Road, where Viacom has replaced its paper-and-paste escalator panels
with digital panels, offering simple graphics, animation and continual
copy rotation. In the next year or so, we're going to see all sorts of
new screen formats being made available underground. And not forgetting
Transvision, Titan's network of huge plasma screens in the concourses of
the nation's main railway termini.

U is for universities, where the cash machine advertising company ATM:ad
has built a network to target students.

V is for Virgin Active, one of the chains in POPtv's Health Club TV
network.

W is for West Ham, West Brom and Wigan, three of the football clubs
offering Match Day Media (see above).

X is for X-Ray Spex. These special glasses, which track and record head
movement, were used by participants in the Outdoor Advertising
Association's research into how people react to the presence of screens
in different environments, including gyms, shopping malls, bars, the
Tube, hair salons and railway stations.

Y is for yield - which, from the media owner point of view, is a central
concept where screen-based out-of-home formats are concerned. Even the
simplest static-picture digital panel offers improved yield prospects
because it can be sold to different advertisers across different
day-parts, with the copy switched remotely. So no need to pay
bill-stickers either. Formats with graphics or full-video moving
pictures can also command premium rates, for the simple reason that they
attract more attention.

Z - Sorry,we have to admit that we have been unable to come up with any
legitimate way of ending this piece on the letter Z.