With 1,200 shops and a myriad of attractions, it is challenging for visitors to the Dubai Mall to find exactly what they are looking for. The mall’s digital display network helps them navigate the massive building with directory information, while providing announcements of upcoming events at the mall’s atrium, ice rink, and other areas. This information is combined with advertising that is targeted to specific network sites. All of this is combined with call to prayer (CTP) notifications for mall guests four times a day.

Such a large and complex installation presented unique challenges — not the least of which is the sheer size of the sprawling installation. It was important for the Dubai Mall staff to automate as much of the process as possible, while maintaining full control of the network and being able to override any action at any time.

The mall staff needed to render and automatically distribute the correct version of the highest quality HD content, formatted to accommodate the different shapes and the various sizes of screens in multiple areas, and regularly preempted content four times a day during business hours, to deliver a call to prayer notification.

X2O Media in action

Working with systems integration firm AVI-SPL, X2O Media delivered a powerful, yet easy-to-use platform for the installation. X2O Media’s Xpresenter provides a browser-based portal for campaign management that automatically generates playlists based on advertising campaign requirements, combining advertising content with other videos and distributing the playlists to players at up to eight display areas, each with multiple screens. Intelligence built into the playlist templates ensures that the correctly formatted video will play at a given site, and at the scheduled time and frequency. If performed manually, this task would take a significant amount of time and effort.

Xpresenter integrates directly with the Dubai government’s CTP notification system to automatically override both audio and video currently running and replaces it with an appropriate image and the external audio feed. As the timing of each prayer time varies daily, the automated system ensures that the CTP occurs at the correct time at every period without any staff intervention.

Incredible displays for an incredible mall

X2O Media was instrumental in creating a digital signage network that perfectly matches the Dubai Mall’s unique needs while minimizing staff workload. With the browser-based X2O Portal, users don’t need to spend valuable time formatting each content stream for screens of various shapes and sizes. The X2O Portal automatically generates playlists for specific advertising campaigns and targets them to specific players and screens. The X2O Media approach results in a fully synchronized and polished approach to displaying content across all the wondrous areas of this truly impressive facility.