Dynamax Technologies is to provide its POV software to Clear Channel Outdoor to create an over-arching service that will allow centralised campaign booking and management for the outdoor giant’s inventory in nine European territories. The deal is expected to later be extended to Clear Channel’s operations outside of Europe, SCREENS.tv has learned.

The first stage of the deal, which follows more than a year of testing the POV software and competing systems by Clear Channel, will see POV installed at a network centre where it will be used to coordinate digital, non-digital and mixed campaigns across Europe. Individual territories’ local management systems will not be replaced by POV but will interface with it.

The deal is expected to have particular impact on Clear Channel’s sites in airports, public transportation, and malls (like the one pictured).

Clear Channel’s decision is not only a significant boost for Dynamax, which already counts Titan Outdoor UK among its clients and has just taken its first formal steps into the U.S. market – it also marks a notable foray by a screen-media firm into the world of non-digital outdoor, underlining the increasing importance of digital to the outdoor sector as a whole.

In what may give it a similar foothold in the North American outdoor market, digital-signage software provider Scala earlier this week said it was acquiring Canada’s Market Information Services, which offers management and analytical tools for non-digital outdoor.

Visitors to 51 (and counting) bars, pubs and restaurants in Boston, Massachusetts are using their mobile phones to interact with a text- and picture-message-enabled signage system called BarCast.

Launched by a Boston-based company of the same name, the service uses technology from another local company — Aerva — which has previously supplied a text-message version of its software to Digipub, an Irish company that supplies cellular-interaction signage systems for bars in Ireland.

Sanjay Manandhar, Aerva’s chief technology officer, told SCREENS.tv that the technology behind the Digipub project in Ireland, which started life in 2003, has been enhanced for the BarCast network, which has proven very popular with patrons in Boston. Interactive features include picture uploads and voting by text message.

“The service is popular in the Boston area mainly, I think, because of the number of universities here. BarCast users tend to be young people who are used to using their mobiles to interact with each other, so interacting with a signage system to leave messages for other patrons is a natural evolution,” he said.

Rather than offer a complete signage system to clients, Manandhar said that Aerva is a software supplier providing signage companies with a interactive solution they can offer their customers. “We make money from three sources — as do our intermediaries: firstly from the sale of the software, secondly from the ad revenue and thirdly, and most importantly, from a revenue share on the text messages sent from the patron’s mobile,” he said.

Manandhar added that Aerva does not sell advertising, but leaves that task to intermediaries.

“We’re now looking to expand our interactive signage systems to other cities across the U.S.,” he said, adding that the company is also looking for more partners and will be exhibiting at Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas on 27 and 28 February.