The 3rd OVAB Europe conference, which brought together 230 professionals in the digital signage business, was held in Munich on last Wednesday.

The session was opened by OVAB President, Dirk Hülsermann, who listed the various obstacles that the sector must overcome in order to become a billion euro industry:

- Lack of confidence and credibility by both agencies and advertisers

- Lack of standards e.g. audience measurement, proof of play etc…

- Lack of research and studies on the sector

- Fragmentation of the market (even though there are early signs of consolidation in the USA

and the UK)

- The need to move from being a business driven by technology to one focusing on becoming a media : “the media is the motor – that’s what creates advertising – income which in turn helps networks and the hardware and software sectors needed to support them, all to grow.”

Consequently, the OVAB Roadmap will include setting up an Agency Advisory Board, during the first semester of 2010, and the Proof of play standards committee will publish its guidelines at the same time.

Amongst the other presentations which impressed us were those by:

- Klaus Striebich, Managing Director Leasing ECE. The German group has deployed, via its affiliate, ECE Flatmedia, 800 screens in shopping centres managed by the group. The system is service orientated, with content mainly concerned with the centres themselves and showing relatively little advertising.

- Doris Braune from Infoscreen discussing moving images in outdoor advertising – read details here;

- Christian Vogel from Wall AG, who presented his group’s digital signage activities – read details here;

- Jens Ohlig, Director of Analytic Consulting at Nielsen Media Research, who presented the results of the first survey by OVAB Europe on the impact of an in-store digital signage network on sales – read details here;

- The Industry Measurement conference – read details here.