The Digital Place-based Advertising Association (DPAA) has partnered with Montreal-based digital signage software developer BroadSign International to develop a new standard for interoperability across the digital signage sector.

Dubbed the Digital Signage (DiSi) Standard, the project is intended to establish a common understanding of software platform capabilities across various digital signage network operators, system providers and content producers, so as to help digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising better realize its full potential.

“Content producers require an intuitive way to understand the features, formats and application programming interfaces (APIs) available to them in digital place-based networks,” explains Brian Dusho, CEO of BroadSign and board member of DPAA. “DiSi is being developed to establish a common language among players in the industry.”

The process began by capturing an up-to-date snapshot of the current state of the DOOH industry. Earlier this year, a questionnaire was distributed via e-mail to members of DPAA, software-as-a-service (SaaS) customers of BroadSign and the client database of Exponation, which manages the annual Digital Signage Expo (DSE). To avoid skewing toward larger networks, BroadSign sponsored further research among other industry members at large, then donated the results, to help ensure DiSi can apply to all groups involved with digital signage.

The studies found, for example, more than 50 per cent of media campaigns incorporate audio content at some point; and 45 per cent of respondents’ screens use touch-based interactivity, but only 26 per cent ever incorporate gesture-based interactivity.

“We’re learning a lot,” says Dusho, “and these results will affect the standard.”

DPAA’s technology committee plans to publish the first four standard levels by the end of this year, followed by a fifth in 2014.