Friday, June 27, 2008

A2a Media draws digital sign curtain with $3.8M funding

By Efrain Viscarolasaga

Over the years, visually based advertising networks have gradually migrated to smaller displays, from billboards to televisions to computer screens to the third screen: mobile devices.

But A2a Media Inc. in Boston is using new technology from a pair of German companies to go the other direction — to make video-enabled displays hundreds of feet tall — potentially covering entire buildings. In anticipation of a busy summer, the company has landed $3.8 million in funding to make its first projects come to light.

The company was founded in 2006 after officials secured the North American license for “Mediamesh,” a stainless steel and light-emitting-diode (LED) curtain developed by metallic fabric manufacturer GKD AG and digital-sign company Ag4 Media Facade GmbH, both based in Germany. The tandem lit the first digital media facade using Mediamesh last December at the Palazzo dell’Arengario, in Milan, Italy.

A2a Media’s funding comes from Waltham-based W2 Group, a media-based holding company formed by local marketing executive Larry Weber and others, and is aimed at getting the firm’s first deployments up and running. However, A2a Media president, former architect and real estate developer Andrew Melton, said that since the Milan project was launched, interest in the company’s outdoor media product has increased here in the United States.

“Architects, who never want anything to be covering up their work, are now starting to look at the mesh as a way to  highlight their work,” he said.

Executives expect to announce a handful of domestic deployments in the coming months, though no details were provided. According to Kevin Bealieu, vice president of media and technology, those projects will take about four to six months to go from order to installation.

Melton and his team, which also includes Brian Schuvart, formerly of Boston-based digital advertising firm Digitas Inc., plan to get revenue through two models. Initially, the company will focus on third-party sales, with customers such as stadiums and casinos installing the curtains on their own buildings and, after training, controlling the content on the screen.

In the future, however, executives hope to create their own network of displays, generating a recurring revenue stream through advertising as well as offering public-broadcast options for services such as “Amber alerts” and other public-safety announcements.

While the market for facade-based displays has yet to be analyzed in depth by research firms, the “digital signage” display market is growing steadily. According to a report from Arizona-based DisplaySearch LLC published last year, the market, which would include technologies such as Mediamesh, could reach $3.5 billion worldwide by 2009, up from about $1.5 billion last year.