What is Digital Signage?
Digital Signage is one of the most effective, viable and eye-catching communications tools. It can be both used by private companies and public sector organizations in order to communicate their messages, activations or advertisements to their clients or the public. Regarding private sector, digital signage can be mostly — but not only — found in the retail stores, restaurants/fast food companies, supermarkets, corporate buildings, hospitals and universities. In public sectors, most commonly we encounter digital signage applications in airports and transportation hubs.
Digital signage serves both commercial (advertising) and corporate use. Most commonly, for commercial use, the displayed content is either a promotion of products, offers etc. displayed through digital images, streaming media, information or video. On the other hand, when digital signage is used for corporate purposes, it can display useful stats, wayfinding etc.
In order to digitally display the content, the only thing that is needed is a monitor. Display media (monitors, projectors, etc.) of different types are available in the market, such as those that support content updates through the internet or a corporate network and those that the content is only manually updated (via USBs, storage cards etc.). Manually updated monitors though, can be really costly when the network covers a wide area. Networks (those managed via the internet) are highly recommended, especially for large scale signage deployments that spans in multiple locations. A network enables users to manage their digital displays without even leaving the office.
Digital signage can ultimately generate a greater return on investment (ROI) than traditional static signs and advertisements. Digital signs allow advertisers to send relevant, focused and high impact content to their audiences that are in the perfect location to act on the displayed message.
Digital signage monitors used to be mostly indoors, but now as technology evolves, outdoor monitors are also trending. Those monitors can be found in drive-thru lanes, bus stops and nowadays are more often found to be replacing roadside billboards.
As Dan Smith, director of commercial products at LG Electronics USA said: “I don’t want to put down traditional media like posters, print ads and banners, the problem with print media is it quickly becomes outdated. Compare that with digital signage, where content can be changed and updated at the click of mouse, it’s all in real time. That’s the greatest advantage.”
