IN DEPTH: Showtime for DOOH as cinemas go digital
The romance between digital out-of-home and the cinema exhibition sector continues, as Christie woos movie theatres with its innovative MicroTiles displays and Canadian chain Cineplex buys digital-signage specialist DDC.
Christie Digital Systems, exhibiting at the Cinema Expo International event in Amsterdam this week, will not only be showing off its digital projectors but also seeking to persuade cinema owners that its MicroTiles – displays that can be combined into almost any size or shape – are the perfect marketing tool for their lobbies.
The firm will be demonstrating MicroTiles in a desk format as seen at May’s Screen Media Expo event in London, as well as a 1x5 array on a column angled at 30 degrees, a 4x1 column format and an 8x4 wall intended for use as an information display in cinema foyers.
Christie believes that the exhibition sector, keen to develop revenue not just from ticket sales but also from catering, special events, premium services and the like, will recognise the potential of digital displays to stimulate business – and the potential of MicroTiles to offer a point of interest in a visually-oriented environment.
“They can either blend unobtrusively into the environment or be sculpted into an unusual geometric shape, and enhance the foyer design aesthetic,” said Richard Nye, EMEA cinema sales director for Christie, a subsidiary of Japanese firm Ushio.
And while digital displays presumably have the same customer-grabbing, revenue-generative power in cinema businesses as elsewhere, there is a further reason why exhibitors are taking an interest in DOOH right now.
Film distribution and projection themselves are rapidly going digital – meaning, in effect, that movies arrive at the cinema as a disk or a data stream rather than on reels of 35mm film.
So, while lobby screens have until recently been unconnected with the big screen in the auditorium, this digitisation raises the possibility of linking them together in premises-wide or chain-wide networks, and selling auditorium and lobby advertising in a single package.
Cineplex: the sequel
In Canada, cinema chain Cineplex Entertainment is following up last year’s purchase of digital out-of-home operator Onsite Media Network with the acquisition of DDC Group International, an Ontario firm which builds digital-signage networks and develops content for them.
The deal is valued at around CAD$3.5m ($3.4m) – roughly twice the sum involved in the Onsite acquisition – and will deepen Cineplex’s commitment to the DOOH market. Unusually among cinema operators, it sells advertising itself rather than contracting it to an agency.
DDC, which recently installed a 320-screen network at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, numbers among its clients such household names as Best Buy, CIBC, Holt Renfrew, Johnson & Johnson and Wal-Mart.
www.christiedigital.com
www.cinemaexpo.com
www.cineplex.com
DDC
www.microtiles.com
Share this article with others
Post to del.icio.us
Printed from http://www.screens.tv/article/111060/IN_DEPTH%3A_Showtime_for_DOOH_as_cinemas_go_digital.html
Comment on this article
Skip to comments
We encourage users to analyse, comment on and even challenge Screens.tv's articles, including the one above - 'IN DEPTH: Showtime for DOOH as cinemas go digital'
User reviews and comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site.
Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site.