Contacts
How many times people stopped in front of the screen, by hour, day and month — audience contacts without tracking anyone.
Audience contacts in front of a screen, measured on the camera
Digital signage audience measurement without tracking: an Axis camera above your screen, stele or shop window records how many people stood in front of it, when and for how long — to the second, as a log you can match with your playout.
- Contacts and dwell time in front of a screen
- Contact log as CSV, with ISO time stamps
- No faces, no images, no tracking
Stele, main hall
214
contacts today
Avg per person7 sMedian5 sAttention41 %
The idea
What a contact is
A contact is a period in which at least one person stands in the area in front of the screen. The camera reports how many people are in that area; Vicodis turns the changes into contacts with start, end and duration.
Dwell time
Dwell time in front of a screen per person, as average and median, so one person who lingers does not distort the figure.
Attention
Contacts that last at least a set time — 3 seconds by default — count as attention, shown as number and share.
The contact log
Contact duration for digital signage, to the second
Every contact is stored on the camera with date, start, end and duration, the number of people, the highest number at the same time and the person-seconds. The CSV opens directly in Excel and imports into Power BI; the header names the location, the device and the thresholds used.
You set the minimum duration that separates a contact from someone walking past, the attention threshold and a short bridge for moments when a person is briefly hidden. The log is kept for 90 days by default.
One contact · example
Start2026-09-22T14:03:12+02:00
Duration9 s
People2
Avg per person7 s
Attentionyes
Proof of play
Proof of play matching with your playout log
How many contacts did spot X have? Put the contact log next to the playout log of your signage player: a contact belongs to a spot when the two periods overlap. The ISO time stamps carry the time zone, so the hour that repeats when the clocks go back stays unambiguous.
The matching itself runs in your own tools. Camera and player only need the same NTP time source, so their clocks stay within about a second of each other.
Spot X14:03:05 – 14:03:20
Contact14:03:12 – 14:03:21
Overlapcounts for spot X
Where it is used
Screens, steles, windows and stands
Anywhere people stop in front of something and you want to know how many did and for how long.
Digital signage steles
Contacts per spot for advertisers and media owners.
Shop windows
How many passers-by stop, and when the window works best.
Promotion areas
Dwell time at a product display or a tasting counter.
Trade fair stands
Visitors and dwell time per day, with staff on the stand left out of the count.
Privacy
No faces, no age, no gender
The camera analyses the image internally and reports only a number of people in the area. Vicodis derives no age, no gender and no other features, and it recognises nobody again. In a group, the time per person is therefore an average — that is the price of not tracking anyone, and it is deliberate.
The reasoning behind it is on people counting and the GDPR.
- Counts only, no images stored
- No biometric features
- No re-identification across screens
Licensing and setup
Part of the base licence
Contact measurement is a mode of the Vicodis Visitor Counter: in AXIS Object Analytics you draw an area in front of the screen, in Vicodis you choose the area mode and the digital signage context. An SD card in the camera is recommended. Live figures for the screen itself and the CSV files are described on people counting API, exports and reports.
FAQ
Questions about digital signage measurement
01
How does Vicodis measure dwell time without tracking?
The camera reports how many people stand in the area in front of the screen. Vicodis records when that number rises above zero and when it falls back, which gives each contact its start, end and duration. For groups it divides the person-seconds by the number of people, so the time per person is an average.
02
Can I match contacts with the spots that were playing?
Yes. The contact log contains start and end of every contact as ISO time stamps with time zone. You place it next to the playout log of your player and assign a contact to every spot whose time overlaps. Camera and player should use the same NTP server, so their clocks stay aligned.
03
Does contact measurement need an extra licence?
No. It is a mode of the Vicodis Visitor Counter base licence, set up with an area in AXIS Object Analytics instead of counting lines. One camera measures one area in front of one screen or window. An SD card is recommended, because the contact log is written more often than entrance counts.
How many visitors does your entrance really have?
Tell us your camera model or your project — we check compatibility and come back with a concrete proposal.