Proof of play: knowing what played on your screens and when

Proof of play is a record of every time a layout or media item played on a screen, and for how long. In Casty you switch it on for the layouts or media you care about, then run a report showing the number of plays, the total time on screen and when each item was first and last shown, for whichever screens, venues and dates you pick. It's how you show a supplier their promotion ran, and how you check the schedule did what you meant it to.

Who it's for

Anyone with a stake in what's on your screens will, sooner or later, ask whether it ran. That might be a drinks brand that has put money behind a summer promotion in your pub, or head office wanting to know that every branch ran this week's offers. Proof of play gives you an answer with numbers in it.

It earns its keep when nobody's asking, too. A schedule with dayparts, a couple of campaigns and the odd priority event can do something you didn't intend, and the report shows what really happened on each screen.

Switch it on before you need it

Proof of play only records while it's switched on, so turn it on before a promotion starts. There's no going back to fill in last week.

For a whole layout, click Design, then Layouts, and click the edit icon on the layout's row. Tick Enable Stats Collections at the bottom of the Edit Layout window and click Save. The Stats? column in the layouts list then shows a tick for every layout that's recording.

For a single image or video, click Library, then Media, open the item's menu and click Enable Stats Collection. Set it to On and save. This records every play of that item wherever it appears, which is what you want for an advert that sits in three different playlists.

Layout level answers "did the weekly offers screen run?". Media level answers "how many times did the brewery's video play, across every screen?". You can switch on both.

Screens also need stats collection switched on in their player settings. We set that up on Casty players, so it shouldn't need any thought from you. If a report comes back empty for a screen that should have played something, email us with the screen's name.

Running the report

Click Reporting, then All Reports, and click View Report on the Proof of Play card. Then set the filters:

• Range is the period. Last Week means the last full week, and Custom Range lets you pick dates.
• Display and Display Group can stay on all screens, or you can pick the ones you want.
• Layout, Campaign or Media narrows it to particular content.
• Type is Layout for whole layouts, or Media for single images and videos.
• Group By adds the plays up by Display, Display Group or Tag. Leave it on None to see every row.

Click Apply. Each row shows a layout or media item on a screen, the campaign it played in, the Number of Plays, the Total Duration, and when it was first and last shown in the period.

Group By comes into its own with more than one venue. Set it to Display Group and you get a total for each venue's group, which makes the branch that didn't run the offer easy to spot.

Getting the numbers out

Click CSV above the table to download it and open it in any spreadsheet. Print prints the table, and Columns chooses which columns show. For a supplier, the CSV is usually all they want: the item, the screens, the plays and the time on screen.

There's a Schedule button on report pages as well. It sets up reports sent by email, which aren't available on Casty, so run the report whenever you need it.

Seeing the plays over time

Two more reports use the same records. Summary by Layout, Media or Event shows one layout's plays day by day, as a table or a line chart, and a gap jumps straight out (the Tuesday the window screen was off, for instance). Distribution by Layout, Media or Event shows when in the day or week a layout plays, grouped by hour, by day of the week or by day of the month. That's the one for checking that the lunchtime offer really is playing at lunchtime.

An example from the Casty demo

In the Casty demo, Northgate Store in York runs weekly offers on the window screens of its branches. A dynamic display group picks up every window screen by its tags. Proof of play is switched on for the Northgate Weekly Offers layout before the sale starts, and an event runs the layout from 08:00 to 20:00 every day until the sale ends.

Once the offers have been running, the report filtered to that layout lists each window screen with its Number of Plays and Total Duration, plus a row for each image in the layout. One click on CSV and there's a file ready for the supplier. The shop weekly offers tutorial goes through it step by step, and scheduling weekly offers in a shop covers the scheduling side.

Reading the numbers sensibly

If the plays are lower than you expected, check three things before you doubt the report. Was a screen offline for part of the period? The Time Connected report will show it. Did a priority event cover the promotion for a few hours? And did the event end earlier than you thought?

If you've promised someone a share of airtime, an interrupt layout is the tidy way to deliver it. Five minutes an hour is 300 seconds of Share of Voice, and proof of play then shows whether those minutes went out. There's more on that in scheduling screen content.

The record is what the player played. If someone switched the bar TV over to the sports channel for the afternoon, the player behind it carried on and the report counts those plays anyway. It also can't tell you whether anyone looked. For that you need your till, which is what how to tell whether your screens are paying their way is about.

The full set of filters is on the proof of play help page, and the reporting section of the features page lists what can be recorded.