Digital signage is the use of LCDs, OLED monitors, TV, video walls, and other display technologies to advertise products and services. It has literally revolutionized the marketing space and increasingly become a constant feature in our society, from train stations to airports to shopping malls and everywhere else.However, not everyone seems to understand what it really entails and how to take full advantage of it. In this article, we’ll give you an in-depth explanation of the digital signage concept and every other thing you need to know about it.
Common features
Digital Signage has a lot of advantage over the traditional means of advertisements thanks to the advanced features that it offers. Let’s explore some of the most important ones.
Connectivity
Digital signage offers you exceptional connectivity backed by modern age technologies that you wouldn’t get from traditional advertising solutions. Imagine being able to connect your advertising network through smart technologies. You wouldn’t need as much cables and wires as you would ordinarily need.
Network monitoring
Another feature of digital signage that’s really helpful is network monitoring. Usually, big companies would have a large advertising network, and sometimes, it can be hard to keep track of each one of them. In fact, in the days of traditional advertising, it was almost impossible. Imagine trying to manually monitor a network of over 100 screens or sign posts spread across a vast area, it would be an absolute nightmare.
The emergence of digital signage has made things much more easier. Nowadays, you could just stay in the comfort of your house or anywhere else and monitor all your entire advertising network without stress. And it doesn’t stop there, you can also update each screen as required and get access analytics.
We should also mention that in digital signage, we have two standard types of networks namely: a digital signage network and a digital signage advertising network. For instance, if you own a fleet of digital signage displays that’s used for advertising your services or products, then it can be said that you run a digital signage network.
A digital signage network can also be utilized as a steady income stream. But how is this even possible?
Well, it’s simple; instead of using your digital signage network for your brand alone, you could collaborate with advertisers to use the network to promote the services or products of their customers as well. Once you start generating revenue through this means, then your network has effectively become a Digital Signage Advertising.
Multimedia support
Digital signage allows you to incorporate different media files ranging from images to videos to widgets to HTML, Web pages, etc. You will be able to promote your message to the world with any of these forms of media without any worries.
Content scheduling
Content scheduling in digital signage is basically preparing the content that will be displayed on your screen ahead of time. It’s quite beneficial because it saves time and helps to keep your digital signage campaign organized.
Also, it allows you to write when you feel creative. For example, if you’ve got a long week ahead, you could easily pick out a day where you’ll curate content for a particular period, probably for a week or a month.
Consequently, the content will go live at the pre-set time, keeping your audience updated while you go about your busy schedule.
Third-party integrations
More like the connectivity feature, digital signage supports a wide range of useful third-party integrations and applications. You can add value to your digital signage campaign by integrating social media content, RSS feeds, news, weather updates, and many more other valuable additions into your content; it will drive up customer engagement. Not to mention that it facilitates feedback as well. That would definitely be a huge boost for your business in terms of visibility and reach.
Multi-screen management
Multi-screen digital signage is deploying multiple screens to promote your business or update your employees within a facility. They’re also utilized when you have a large amount of information or content that can not fit into a single screen. For example like a restaurant displaying their menu or an organization showing a multi-page document or perhaps streaming a live event that’s covered by more than one camera.
There are quite a few methods of managing multi screens that are worth mentioning. The first one is to pair a single player with multiple monitors. With this technique, you can have different types of screens including monitor, TVs, video wall and any other display devices receive visual feed from a particular source which could be a laptop, computer, or a digital signage player. While this is one of the cheapest options, you may not be able to connect more than two screens depending on the number of outputs that your source has and it requires cables.
The next option would be to use an HDMI Signal Splitter which will receive feeds from your source and distribute it to your screens. Again the number of screens or monitors you will be able to feed will depend on the number of outputs available on the HDMI Splitter and each connection is facilitated through cables. To eliminate the need for wires and cables, you will have to utilize wireless HDMI splitters and receivers. This method is much more expensive but it looks better to the eyes and saves you the additional stress and cost that comes with running connections with cables.
Even if most of the legacy signage systems are hardware based, cloud-based solutions are one of the leading digital signage trends. Without having to deal with painful hardware installations, you can choose to subscribe to a cloud-based digital signage software and manage multiple screens even on the go.
Future of digital signage
Digital signage has come a long way, from the days of obscurity to becoming a mainstream trend. But interestingly, the future looks even more encouraging. The next phase of growth for the digital signage ecosystem will be explosive, with analysts estimating a revenue turnover of over $45 billion by 2030.