Dwell time is an often used term in the world of websites such as this one, where site owners want people to stay as long as possible on their website, generally in the hope that they will become fans / customers / etc, we do the same and this ultimately is the reason why many people blog.
However dwell time in the context of digital signage screens and their ideal placement generally means ‘How long does an audience dwell around the screen such that they can see the content playing on that screen?’
So harking back to the last article we did on screen placement – we discussed ‘Time of Exposure’. Now although time of exposure should form some sort of basis for an optimum content length, dwell time should form some sort of basis for the ‘Loop Length’.
Loop Length is the length of the content playlist before the playlist goes back to the beginning and starts again. Why is this important and how does it fit in with ‘Time of exposure’?
The key to understanding Loop length is the acronym OTS – Opportunity to See. Most marketing experts will say that in order for a piece of information, whether that is advertising or informational, that piece of information has to be seen by the viewer(s) more than once.
Again as a another real world example (dated but still relevant). The dwell time at the major train stations in London is on average (excluding major issues) 16 minutes. So the Loop Length is 8 minutes, which means that the OTS (Opportunity to See) is twice.
So in summary look at the dwell time in your screen locations, and ideally it should be used when working out your loop length of content and how many times you want viewers to see repeat information.
