Cisco Digital Signage helps Romanian shopping mall increase revenues

Cisco has announced the deployment of Cisco Digital Signs at Unirea Shopping Centre, one of the largest retail complexes in Bucharest. At Unirea, Cisco Digital Signs, part of the Cisco Digital Media Suite (DMS), is used to provide a centralised streaming of graphics and video over the Internet Protocol (IP) network to 85 wide-screen displays located across the mall.

With three floors of shops and another floor devoted to food and entertainment, the shopping Centre attracts on average 40,000 people during weekdays and 55,000 people on weekends.

The Cisco Digital Signs solution is used to run in-mall advertising for tenants. It helps the mall operator create a differentiated offer, retain a rental premium, and generate new revenue streams.

The Cisco Digital Media Suite is an integrated business video platform consisting of a comprehensive suite of applications for the transfer of interactive video content. Unirea selected Cisco Digital Media Players, which deliver content to the digital signage systems and provide standards-based video codec support, and the Cisco Digital Media Manager, which manages content and creates and schedules playlists.

Cisco Digital Signs supports the scalable, centralized management and publishing of high-quality content to digital signage displays. The system runs on the mall's Cisco local area network (LAN), which includes Cisco Catalyst 2960 and 3560 Series Switches.

Probitas, a Cisco Premier Certified Partner in Romania, designed and installed the Cisco Digital Signs solution at the Unirea Shopping Centre.

Carmen Adamescu, president and chief executive officer, Unirea Shopping Centre, said: "Unirea stores are keen to advertise their products, and in-mall advertising is probably the best way to reach customers in a targeted way.

Digital signage is a win-win, as it helps our tenants grow their sales, whilst it has great potential to generate advertising revenue for the mall. It's a good example of how we can use the latest technologies to differentiate our offering and to maintain our position as the best mall in the country."

Alexandru Zamfir, executive director, Information Technology & Communications Division, Probitas: "The Cisco Digital Signs solution at Unirea is the first implementation of this particular Cisco technology in Romania, and Probitas is proud to be the partner who accomplished this important step. The solution is based on IP and runs over the existing LAN. It is very flexible and easy to manage, and it provides the foundation on which we can build new high-quality multimedia capabilities."