While demand for in-store digital out-of-home video is booming, there are still barriers to adoption for small and mid-sized retailers who don't necessarily have the resources of national chains. Thus DOOH networks are looking to suppliers for displays and distribution technology that's cheaper, more compact, easier to deploy, more flexible, and with fewer maintenance requirements.

Rapid economic growth and the clear advantages of variable, interactive digital signage have combined to produce a digital out-of-home boom in China, according to a new global overview of the DOOH marketplace from Kinetic. The overview, titled "Global digital out of home handbook 2011," also contains forecasts for DOOH advertising in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

Digital out-of-home networks are muscling up their content with original programming and exclusive programming partnerships. This week Gas Station TV and Akoo TV both unveiled new programming lineups. Their announcement follows a deal between Creative Mobile Technologies and ABC, bringing the latter's content and advertising to CMT's network of digital displays in taxis nationwide.

Yes, you read that right: relieving oneself is now a game, thanks to a British company called Captive Media, which is turning public urinals into interactive, "hands free" (get it?) digital out-of-home video games.

Premier Retail Networks, which operates digital out-of-home networks in big retail chains including Walmart, Sam's Club, Costco, Target, Albertsons, Pathmark, and ShopRite, has signed a renewal agreement with the National Football League giving it access to NFL Network football highlights during the football season.

If you've ever used one of those self-service blood pressure kiosks in a drugstore and said to yourself, "Man, this would be a great advertising platform," well, someone was listening. AdFlow Health Networks and FrontLine Marketing are finally bringing blood pressure kiosks into the present by integrating them with digital out-of-home video.

Digital out-of-home video network Adspace is partnering with Conde Nast's shopping magazine Lucky to provide mall-goers with style tips from editors and celebrities, along with other content taking viewers inside the making of the magazine.

This week brought yet another mash-up of two innovative, fast-growing digital channels, combining digital out-of-home with social media. Latinos in Social Media, or LATISM, which describes itself as the largest organization of Latinos engaged in social media, is unveiling a 7,400-square-foot digital billboard piggybacked on the iconic Reuters sign at 3 Times Square, New York City, at 6:30 p.m. today.

Stop the presses! It turns out mall-goers are disproportionately young and female -- or at least, the audience for mall-based digital out-of-home video networks is. That's according to Nielsen's Fourth Screen Network Audience Report, covering the second quarter of 2011, which measured audiences for three mall video ad networks in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston.

Near-field communications is one of the most promising routes for connecting out-of-home advertising with mobile devices, allowing consumers to interact with ads (both static and digital) simply by placing their phone near the advertising surface to receive discount coupons, enter contests, provide feedback or purchase products. Last week two Canadian companies, Gauge Mobile and Newad, unveiled what they claim is North America's first dedicated out-of-home NFC advertising network.