Screen media offers an alternative that enhances the best features of three of the most powerful media - TV, outdoor and POS. It is among the fastest-growing advertising sectors today because it offers brands, agencies and media owners alike a way to bring together the visual power of television, the narrowcast targeting of digital, and the relevance of POS in a single powerful concept that reaches the customer out of home and at the point of sale, but harnesses all the power of the digital age - with endless potential for personalised interaction as well as mass messaging.

Networks are not only be found in large public areas such as train stations, shopping malls, major retail stores, and the London Underground, but also in convenience stores, post offices, fast-food outlets, bars, hairdressers, pharmacies, cinemas, garage forecourts, betting shops, taxis, trains and buses - anywhere, in fact, that receptive consumers can be found. There are now estimated to be well in excess of 150,000 such screens in Britain.

In the UK alone, advertising income from screen media - the revenue stream that drives much of the industry - is anticipated to reach at least £170m by 2010, while the European market for screen-media services will be worth £860m.