Happy with the results from your TV, radio and print advertising? Ever feel like you aren't getting the bang for the buck you envisioned?

Maybe you should consider rethinking your media mix. The concept of an advertising media mix is straightforward: Since no one magazine, newspaper, Web site, or broadcast outlet is likely to zero in on your target customer, choosing a variety of media based upon their ability to reach your desired demographic is more effective.

One of my favorite places to shop in town reserves a parking space closest to the door for its employee of the month.

That retailer, like many businesses, knows the importance of small, regular gestures that publicly recognize employees. Such kudos build employee loyalty, inspire excellence and motivate workers to perform at a high level month after month.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to spend a day in the yard raking up the last of my fall leaves. Not wanting to lose my belt-clipped cell phone during the process, I removed it, placed it on the counter and did my best to corral the leaves that ultimately would fill 23 yard bags.

After completing my chore, I went to retrieve my phone, but instead of finding it on the counter where I had left it, I found it submerged in the dog's water dish at my feet.

It's no secret digital signage to this point has been a child amid grown-up media outlets. But a couple of signs have emerged that indicate this new medium may be reaching -if not maturity- at least adolescence.

While its boosters have long proselytized the medium as a powerful complement to other in-store promotional techniques and messaging, dynamic signage in the retail environment has remained "well poised," "an emerging voice," and other euphemisms for not mainstream.

Last week, another sign that dynamic digital signage is entering media adolescence emerged with the announcement that global information and media company VNU and the In-Store Marketing Institute will jointly launch a new service to help marketers better understand how to reach and influence consumers while they shop.

A key component of the effort is the measurement of the audience for a new array of in-store marketing vehicles, including digital signage, television and radio, shelf talkers and other point-of-purchase displays.

Sometimes you can learn a lesson from a big brother, and that seems to be the case when you consider large billboards -commonly referred to as outdoor advertising, or OA for short- and their smaller plasma and LCD siblings in the retail environment.

Consider the case of an advertising forecast for 2007 from Watchfire Digital Outdoors. Makers of outdoor digital signage that's every bit as large as a conventional billboard, Watchfire Digital Outdoors does for outdoor advertising much of what conventional plasma and LCD digital signs do indoors.

The U.S. Census Bureau's recently released "Statistical Abstract of the United States" reveals interesting statistical trends about a variety of aspects of life in this country, including where spending stands for out-of-home advertising in comparison to other popular media like newspapers and broadcast television (Section 27 Accommodations, Food Services and Other Services, Table 1261).

"Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?" Those words, made famous by the artificially intelligent computer HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" resound in my ears every time I think about the topic of this week's article: virtual assistants.

For those of you too young to recall, HAL was the artificially intelligent computer aboard Discovery in the film that attended to the myriad of details requiring oversight as the ship's crew made its way to Jupiter.

Well it appears that the 800-pound gorilla Google has set its sights set on the digital signage market.

The New Scientist Web site broke the story earlier this month that the search-engine company has filed for a patent on a way to divvy up ads on a network of electronic signs. The ideas seems to be to give retailers and others a simple way to organize an advertising campaign to promote inventory on, for example, a digital signage network display or displays near their stores in a mall.

I recently received an email from a friend that made me think about how important accuracy is when communicating on a digital sign and how difficult it can be to attain.

The email said in part:

"I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is that the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

Imagine you were an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. On a clear day you look to the earth below at the exact moment your celestial home zips over Manhattan. As you gaze down at the New York City borough, you are stunned by what you see: an enormous sign covering about 75 percent of the landmass of the borough reading "Come Home Soon! We Miss You.