I’m not sold on the idea of digital signage marketplaces when it comes to selling software and gear, but where I do think it can make some real sense is for packaged-up content and creative.
Subscription content has clearly worked well for thriving companies like Screenfeed, and I think selling creative can work when the buyer has a really good sense of what they’ll get, as opposed to pay us $____, we’ll do a brief and storyboards and you’ll eventually get something you’ll hopefully like.
Rise Vision has been building out a marketplace for two or three years now, as a means of monetizing the otherwise free CMS it has been developing and support for years now. What caught my eye are packaged content/experience themes that are a bit like finished WordPress themes you’d buy off an online marketplace like Envato’s ThemeForest.
The idea is that an end-user who decides to go with Rise Vision for a CMS can go into the marketplace and effectively buy the content experience they want and need – like a donor wall.
For $2,750 USD, a user just buys the theme – sends in the pix and information it wants conveyed – and the Rise Vision creative services team pulls it together and delivers a finished product that works out of the zip file (or however they do it).
That number might seem like a lot, but an interactive donor wall experience developed from scratch by an agency or contractors in North America – at least – would likely cost several multiples of that $2,750 … and then someone has to get it to work happily with whatever the CMS platform may be.
I like the concept and the design is very good – though the staff photos from East Somewhere General probably won’t look as good as a bunch of A-List actors and actresses.
Insteo is building out its own store, which has some similarities but is also quite different – packaged up functionality apps, but editable by the user and not specified to one CMS.