The Importance of Digital Signage

The importance of digital signage

Digital signage is rapidly becoming an integral part of ad campaigns for brands and companies globally. Essentially, digital signage just means digital displays that use technology like LCD, LED, projection and e paper. Since static signs are becoming less prominent as the leading format in Out-of-home media, digital signage continues to grow. Global expenditure on digital signage is set to exceed $20 billion in 2020. Digital signage captivates audiences, and has the capability of displaying custom messages tailored to enhance viewer experiences. Digital signs are capable of showcasing videos, graphics, and other content from small screens you might encounter behind aeroplane seats, to meticulously structured giant video walls.

There are several reasons for why brands and businesses are embracing digital signage:

Making your company visible:

Whether it be TV, radio, or online advertisements; businesses often struggle with promoting themselves on these mediums due to the sheer noise created by other businesses and brands. Digital signage has the unique ability to deliver customized messages, and capture the attention of potential customers at opportune locations, for example at stores where consumers are present to make purchases. It’s proven that digital signage is guaranteed to increase brand awareness by a staggering 47.7%.

Changing displays fast and efficiently:

Perhaps one of the most useful applications of digital signage is the ability for brands to change displays within a moment’s notice. If there’s a new product, purchase deal, or upcoming sale, companies can almost instantly have new ads up and running within no time. Moreover, if a brand has multiple locations these newly created ads can simultaneously be displayed across all locations seamlessly.

An added benefit to all this is that digital ad displays can be changed automatically rather than manually. With the use of rule-based softwares, digital displays can be programmed to display various ads throughout the span of a day, a feat that is highly inconvenient and time consuming with static forms of signage.

More likely to grasp consumer attention:

The human brain is intrinsically attracted to moving objects.  Though static signage can often be creative, it cannot take advantage of this innate human tendency like digital signage can. Digital signage can display dynamic full motion videos that capture and retain human attention in a way static signage cannot.  

Coupled with this, during times where paying attention can save lives, digital signage can provide updated critical information alerting employees, customers, and guests, whilst also displaying the safety procedures in full motion for observers to better understand. There’s a reason why aeroplanes now have videos explaining what to do in emergency situations, rather than just let passengers learn this via the booklets under their seats.

Analytics support:

The analytical data digital signage systems are able to support can help optimize the systems, thus improving the benefits. With certain softwares, digital signage systems are capable of reporting what items are searched for most amongst consumers. Based on these levels of interest for particular items, retailers get an idea of the perceived value of said items. Displays can include cameras that record customers eye movements that ultimately inform retailers of which items on display attract the most attention. Customers can even access store inventories, thereby increasing consumer engagement with the brand or business. The displays themselves can even be further improved, for example if one of the displays plays  a 30 second video loop, but people tend to only stick around for 20 seconds of the video, that would basically mean that the video ought to be trimmed to retain the most number of eyeballs.

Digital signage is now almost vital for brands and businesses to employ, for the sheer reason that it provides a multitude of possibilities like collecting analytical data about consumers, attracting attention due to its digital capabilities, efficiently delivering messages, covering certain services so the staff is free for other work, and providing an outlet for customers to engage with the brand.