Two local companies are teaming up on the premise that the future of advertising to some degree lies in digital billboards and LCD television screens displaying information in retail stores.
Ariel Way, a Vienna-based technology firm, announced Wednesday it had acquired a 10 percent stake in FaceTime, a D.C.-based new-media advertising firm that established itself last month.
Financial details of the arrangement weren’t disclosed.
The two companies plan to work on a growing niche of advertising known as digital signage, where messages are sent via a network, frequently over satellites, to digital screens. The format has become popular particularly among large-scale retailers, which can update their in-store advertisements electronically from a single location.
Ariel Way got its start building networks for other corporate purposes, such as company training videos, CEO Arne Dunhem said Wednesday.
“So digital signage is something like an extension of our previous work,” Dunhem said. The firm’s clients have been based in the U.S. and the U.K., and are largely in the automotive and banking industries, he said.
FaceTime, meanwhile, is positioning digital signage as just one of the new-media advertising options its firm will offer to clients and will track down potential clients for Ariel Way’s network as part of their partnership, CEO Todd Mason said.
Digital signage has been most appealing to the retail industry and medium-sized businesses, according to Mark O’Brien, executive vice president of SpectraRep, the digital signage arm of consulting firm BIA Financial.
Major corporations are starting to see its appeal, he added.
“The challenge is getting over the initial startup costs,” O’Brien said, which can range from $10,000 to millions of dollars for networks and equipment.
The falling costs of high-definition LCD screens, however, is making the format more affordable, he added.
