Not to make too big of deal of this, as I know it has nothing to do with digital signage, but a few weeks ago I wrote about the very cool ad campaign (in my opinion) used to promote Sony picture’s District-9.

I posed the question: Will this ad campaign translate into the record breaking opening weekend Sony is hoping for?  Well, the results are in and as you can see District-9 took in top honors for its opening weekend.

Not bad, but I have to think the bigwigs at Sony were probably hoping to at least match the success of G.I. Joe, which opened the previous weekend at $54.7M.

What do you think? Was the ad campaign not effective or is the total addressable sci-fi audience just not as big as Sony thought?

Perhaps Peter Jackson should stick with hobbits?

-Matthew Olivieri

Arbitron recently released their, “Out-of-Home Digital Video Display Study 2009” (Can’t we all Finally agree on the single term, “Digital Out-of-Home” already and just move on? ) the purpose of which was to benchmark the size and profile of the national audience to digital video displays in the United States.

The study asked 1,666 U.S. residents, aged 18 or older, whether or not they had seen a digital video display in any of 17 different venue types in the past month. Venues included Gas Stations, Elevators and Restaurants (to name a few).

The results were impressive.

“Of those who recall seeing digital video displays in the past month, 76% noticed seeing them at multiple venues. Digital video displays in retail locations alone (including grocery stores, large retailer/department stores, drug stores, shopping malls or convenience stores) reach over half (53%) of American adults in an average month. DOOH video displays at gas stations and movie theaters each reach over 1 in 5 U.S. adults per month.”

OK, cool.  But just how big of a victory is this study for our industry?

From an ad sales point of view, I think it is fairly substantial; Arbitron confirming what many of us already believed to be true.  However, being that I am very metric driven, I think we are still in the process of “crossing the chasm” and a long way from gaining the ‘early-majority’ buy in we all want.

Nonetheless, “Hunger finds no fault with the cooking.” Therefore, until such a time comes when widespread measurement tactics are accepted, I will gladly take any neutral 3rd party efforts from credible sources people recognize like Arbitron or Nielsen.

What do you think?

-Matthew Olivieri