Sainsbury’s rolls out entertainment kiosks to 100 stores

Gigantic UK retailer Sainsbury's, who I primarily know because of their large and very publicly acknowledged digital signage network, has deployed entertainment kiosks to their 100 largest retail stores, along with more traditional ad-driven digital signage. As aka.tv tells us:

The service, on trial at eight locations since June 2005, will be installed and operated by Retec Interface, which has signed a three-year deal with Sainsbury’s said to be worth in the region of £5m ($8.7m). Advertising will be sold by Retec using the London-based retail-media specialist ABC Media.

The system allows customers to access a range of features on music, games, books and films via four to six interactive touchscreens located in a store’s Entertainment Xtra zone. Meanwhile, three large plasma screens are also employed to attract customers to the area and show more general advertising and promotional material.

The mixture of interactive and non-interactive content in-store is still fairly unique, but I certainly expect to see more of this sort of thing coming about in the future. In any case, go read the aka article here, as it has much more information.