Blue Billboard increases scalability with Xibo Signage and Sony BRAVIA Professional Displays

Blue Billboard is the largest independent DooH advertising provider in the South East of England. With a rapidly expanding digital signage network that reaches over 12 million consumers every month, Blue Billboard is trusted by independent local, national and global businesses and councils.  Blue Billboard delivers engaging, innovative and targeted retail DooH advertising using high-quality digital signage solutions.

The Challenge

As Blue Billboard’s digital signage network started growing at an exponential rate, they identified that they required increased control over their displays once deployed onsite. Network maintenance was becoming expensive and time consuming as it required onsite visits in order to carry out simple changes.

Blue Billboard was using Android displays with standalone media player hardware. With their growing network, ease of screen installation and management became a key requirement, and a separate Set-Top Box (STB) doubled the power and labour requirements, making it time consuming and costly. SLA uptime was also being affected as outages could not be resolved as quickly remotely. Given the network growth it was becoming very challenging to deliver at the rate needed without a simple setup process. This is when Blue Billboard started looking into displays with not only System-on-Chip capabilities but remote device management and zero touch provisioning.

The Solution

Blue Billboard has been using Xibo’s digital signage software solutions since their business started in 2020. They had also used Sony BRAVIA Professional Displays across their network however, at that time, there was no native integration between the Sony System-on-Chip solution and Xibo.

In August 2024 Xibo and Sony partnered to combine Sony’s Cloud API and Zero-Touch Provisioning (ZTP) with Xibo’s software solution to make it quick and easy for businesses to deploy, scale, and manage their entire signage network remotely. The integration allows non-technical users to deploy, scale, and manage their displays and signage remotely from the Xibo CMS. This eliminates the need for tools such as remote controller operations and USB sticks, dramatically reducing the effort and cost of system integration.

Blue Billboard needed to implement a twenty-five screen DooH advertising network, for a local council in Surrey, who was looking for advertising across a large city centre. This was the perfect opportunity for Blue Billboard to implement Sony BRAVIA Professional Displays (FW65BZ35L and FW55BZ35L models) with system-on-chip using the new Xibo and Sony Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) integration. Blue Billboard worked with Theravada to design and install the custom infrastructure required for the project, including surrounds and totems.

“I was impressed at how simple the process is to set up and deploy new displays. ZTP removes several steps, and the functionality is improving all the time.” Justin Howard, Technical Director - Blue Billboard

The Benefit

Moving to Sony BRAVIA Professional Displays SoC devices with ZTP integration through Xibo enabled Blue Billboard to deploy more screens faster than before, enabling the rapid scaling of their DooH network and delivering an increased revenue. Blue Billboard has been able to provision devices quickly and efficiently, manage them remotely and improve overall network uptime and reliability.

“We're excited to introduce the first global deployments featuring our cutting-edge Cloud API and Zero-Touch Provisioning solutions. These tools not only enhance cloud-based device management but also revolutionise large-scale screen deployments and partner application installations with a simple QR code scan. Our solutions are transforming the professional display industry, streamlining the workload for CMS partners and system integrators.”  Yigit Erol - B2B Partner Development Manager - Sony Europe B.V.

Why Xibo and Sony?

Blue Billboard chose Xibo and Sony as their Digital Signage providers for the following reasons.

• Cost Effective
• Rapid Scalability
• Remote Device Management
• Zero Touch Provisioning

Download the full Blue Billboard case study here

For more information on how to install and manage Sony Bravia system-on-chip (SOC) devices and utilise the new remote device management and zero-touch provisioning API, read our updated Sony Bravia installation guide.