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As one of the world’s biggest events for users of screen technology draws close, we look at the benefits to casinos of replacing old-fashioned signs with digital displays
Digital screens are such an integral part of the gaming experience today – simulating mechanical slots and increasingly table games too, announcing jackpots to the world, displaying rules for novice players – that it’s difficult to imagine a casino without them. And now, they’re becoming commonplace off the gaming floor too, replacing signs, posters and other printed material in public places, displaying multimedia content that can be instantaneously changed, and providing opportunities for interaction that were barely possible with static signage.
Like most sectors serving a consumer market, casino operators are using screens to entertain and inform customers, deliver commercial messaging, and develop revenue. The potential of screen media – often called “digital signage” or “digital out-of-home” – is limited largely by operators’ imagination. But rather than just rolling out a screen network because it’s what everyone else is doing, and hoping some fairy dust will rub off on the bottom line, it’s essential to rigorously define the business rationale for digital displays: how they will contribute to broader objectives, whether hard ones like profitability or softer ones like customer satisfaction, and how that contribution will be measured.
For screens can serve a plethora of purposes (although rarely all of them at the same time), and it is a careful definition of purpose that enables other key decisions such as the kind of content that should be shown on-screen, the technology necessary to support this, and the optimal relationships with suppliers.
Meeting with those suppliers, as well as other users, and learning from their experience will be high on the agenda for many of the casino industry visitors to Screenmedia Expo Europe in May (see box). But before we draw up a shopping list let’s consider the general advantages that screens have over printed signage.
Most obviously, they are changeable: they can show moving video, or a rotation of still pictures. What is shown can be altered instantly, or automatically varied according to a set schedule.
They can provide audio as well as visuals (technically possible with static signage, but very rarely done). And they can provide opportunities for interaction with customers, either through the screen itself– these days, generally using a touch-sensitive surface – or through the consumer’s own mobile device. (Again, the latter is technically feasible with conventional signs, but because the sign can’t change in real time, in effect it’s little more than a lead-in to an experience which primarily takes place on the handset.)
Those, then, are the broad reasons for screens’ technical superiority over signs as a means of communication. But how, in practice, do they provide a commercial edge?
Sell, sell, sell
In the casino environment, perhaps the simplest way to gain ROI from screens is by using them to cross-sell and upsell. Promoting the venue as a whole is pointless: by definition, the customer has already made the decision to visit, and their experience will have far more impact on their perception of the casino than any amount of self-aggrandisement. However, now that they are on-site, screens can be a powerful way to nudge them into sampling elements of the offer that they may not have considered, such as dining options, entertainment, retail, spa, and so on.
This requires a deep understanding of the customer and their journey, both through the physical premises and through the day. For example, the patron sitting at a restaurant table is unlikely to be interested in an entertainment event that starts in five minutes, but may be tempted by the dessert special – unless it is breakfast-time, in which case information on events later in the day could well be appropriate, because they are probably still in day-planning mood.
The lady customer in the hair salon is probably not a prime target for sports betting promotions, but will very likely consider spa treatments. The person waiting to check in to the hotel might pay for a room upgrade; but the very same message will be wasted on the same person when they are waiting for their car to be retrieved from valet parking, because the chances are strong that they’re leaving.
We talk here about “a person”, but we don’t mean that the on-screen promotions are actually aimed at named, identifiable individuals. That is feasible to a limited extent if, for example, customers are invited to make their identity known by sending a text message to the screen; and where the casino has a hotel attached, it’s also viable to deliver much the same material that’s seen on public displays via in-room TV with added personalisation, although that’s not normally considered digital signage as such.
And it is possible today for audience-recognition systems, using cameras built into screens, to make a pretty good guess at the gender, age and ethnicity (and intriguingly, although probably irrelevantly for most casinos, body type) of the person standing in front of them. This allows content to be fine-tuned on the fly according to their demographic.
However, though these technologies can certainly enhance the capability of screens to deliver appropriate messages, none of them is essential for effective screen deployment. The key to showing the right content at the right place at the right time is to exploit the casino’s understanding of its clientele, and assess what kind of customer is most likely to be in that location at a certain moment, what they are doing, and what they might want to do next.
Some venues that operate screen networks go further than this in their quest to extract commercial value from the displays, by selling advertising time to other organisations that want to reach a similar customer base. This is quite common in leisure businesses such as gyms, for example, although less often found in casinos, with their imperative of keeping the customer on-site rather than driving them away to other destinations. Probably the best option for casinos seeking to generate revenue purely through the screens, rather than employing them to create sales uplift, is to offer advertising spots to retail tenants. Conversely, this could be presented as a free benefit of tenancy, aiding in attracting and retaining the best retailers.
Nicer queues
Other applications for screens have softer benefits, in that it’s not so easy to discern a direct bottom-line boost, but unarguable that they improve the customer experience. For example, it’s well-documented that dead time spent waiting in queues seems briefer, and less annoying, if there’s a distraction like a screen. This is also an occasion where the casino can expect the display to hold attention for an extended period, perhaps as long as several minutes, and can therefore show longer-form, more detailed content (by contrast, for screens in locations like lobbies or concourses where people tend to be moving about, each content element should only be a few seconds in duration).
And, of course, if the screens can be used to advertise products or services available at the front of the queue, there’s a double benefit – sales uplift, plus improvement to the customer experience. For this reason, digital menu boards are becoming popular in fast-food and self-service restaurants.
Another soft benefit is way-finding. Casinos tend to be large establishments with complex layouts, and while conventional signage and maps can help the customer with orientation, screens – particularly interactive, touch-enabled ones – can do much more. For example, they can highlight routes between two spots selected by the customer. They can be updated in real time to reflect issues like out-of-service elevators, or retail and food-service opening hours, showing only what’s currently available to the customer. They could even, integrated with a casino management system, display which Blackjack tables have vacant seats, which slots have not paid out a jackpot for the longest period, and so on – like any large business, the casino will hold in digital form vast quantities of information that it can leverage to improve customer service in a way that would be impractical with printed signage, but is easy with digital screens.
For instance, the digital signage specialist Signs4U has developed an interface that links gaming jackpot controllers to the multimedia management system from C-nario. “Now the system is able to display jackpot data, which is retrieved from various jackpot controllers. This real-time data is fed into the system and converted into a graphical, fully configurable jackpot meter,” the firm says.
Further uses for screens include safety and emergency messaging; regulatory compliance (for example, through displaying nutrition information on digital menu boards); and employee communications (either through displays in staff-only areas, or using the public-facing screens in parts of the facility when they’re closed, although this will not always be possible for 24-hour casinos).
And that only scratches the surface. Anywhere that the casino needs to communicate anything more than the very simplest, never-changing information to its patrons, there is a strong chance that screens will achieve that more effectively than conventional signage, as long as the ROI – hard or soft – justifies the investment.
The numbers
Ah yes, that investment. How much are we looking at? The answer – of course – is that it is impossible to give a definitive budget figure, because screen networks vary so much in their size and complexity. For what it’s worth, the U.S. digital signage software provider WireSpring recently published some startling calculations which indicate that over a period of years, by far the bulk of the cost of running a screen network lay not in technology, but in staffing (including content production).
Granted, WireSpring based its modelling on a hypothetical network with one screen in each of 100 different venues. The casino is much more likely to have 100 screens in just a single venue, so tech support and admin, for example, will be less demanding than in WireSpring’s example. However, its figures still give a general impression of where the money goes.
Installing and then operating the network for three years would cost around $1.8m (or some $16 per screen per day), according to the firm, with more than $1.4m of that going toward staffing. Just $372,000 would be spent on technology, with the single biggest items being management software and tech support, followed by screens and media players. Installation, player software, project management and screen mounting would be smaller costs.
Let’s look at each of those technology elements in turn. The screens themselves are usually commercial-grade LCD devices (much more durable than the TV in your sitting room), less often plasma or LED. All the big screen manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, NEC, Philips, Panasonic and so on are actively targeting this market.
3D is, naturally, the fad du jour although it has to be said that acceptable glasses-free 3D is not yet here for most applications. Touch-sensitivity may well be a trend with more staying power, helped in large part by the spread of smartphones – consumers increasingly expect to be able to touch a screen to manipulate the content it displays and call up other content. Indeed, as Italy’s Worldtrade, a distributor for display brands including General Touch and Winsonic, puts it: “LCD liquid crystal panels, like all touch solutions, are an integral part of our daily lives.” And it was not surprising that at the recent Enada trade show in Rimini, Worldtrade’s slick display of touchscreens was one of the most visually enticing in the entire event. If they can attract supposedly cynical gaming insiders who just can’t resist touching them, imagine what reception they’ll get from consumers.
Media players are, essentially, small dedicated computers which do the same job as a DVD or Blu-ray player – actually playing out the video and audio to the screens. Depending on how the network is configured, one media player may be required for each screen, or it may be possible for a single player to serve a few screens. There’s a multitude of specialist manufacturers.
Management software is used to control the whole network – for example, scheduling what is shown when and where – as well as for monitoring that everything’s running okay. This is a very fragmented market with a large number of (mostly) small suppliers, although there are a few big names like BroadSign and Scala.
The capabilities of the management software are fundamental to what you can and can’t do with your network, in many respects more important than the actual screen hardware, so it’s vital to get a handle on what’s available – all the more so because the software supplier, or their reseller, will very likely end up as the casino’s partner in designing and developing the network.
Some management systems include rudimentary tools for creating content, but more sophisticated material such as moving video or animation requires specialist software, much the same as for film or TV production. There’s a growing number of agencies dedicated to producing content for digital signage, but larger casinos, in particular, may find they already have the expertise in-house.
Finally, don’t overlook the peripheral bits and pieces like screen guards, screen mounts and cabling. They won’t make a network successful if the concept, the content or the management software are wrong, but they are essential to keeping it running smoothly – and bringing its benefits to both your business and your customers.
