Top 8 Trends Driving the Digital Signage Industry

It’s no secret that more and more businesses are choosing to adopt digital signage. And once you know all of the benefits and uses that come with digital signs, can you really blame them?

Digital signage can be a huge game-changer for companies, from boosting brand recognition and increasing revenues to getting valuable information to those who need it, when and where they need it. So it’s no surprise that the adoption of digital signage is a widespread trend occurring across multiple industries—particularly retail, advertising, corporate, hospitality, and healthcare.

For those looking at the situation from a macro standpoint, this large-scale move to adoption could be seen as the underlying technology simply becoming more affordable and accessible than ever. In that line of thinking, small and mid-sized businesses are implementing digital signage because they are no longer being scared off by exorbitant price tags.

While that’s most definitely true to some extent, in our opinion, the adoption of digital displays has just as much to do with how the technology has drastically improved in just the past few years alone—hence, how it has become exponentially more beneficial to businesses that implement it.

You might be asking: What are the overarching trends—enabled mostly by tech advancements—that are driving this digital signage growth and making it a much more sought-after technology?

Well, we’re going to answer that question for you. Here are the top digital signage trends occurring in the digital signage industry.

Omnichannel Content

In the brave new world we currently live in, it’s sometimes hard to tell where the physical world ends the digital world begins—and vice versa. They are pretty much always overlapping nowadays, which means for today’s marketers, this constant interconnectedness between platforms should almost always be reflected in advertising campaigns.

More specifically, omnichannel marketing—a fancy way of saying that promotional content should provide the same seamless experience across all platforms and channels, whether it be on mobile, tablet, desktop, social, web, a digital display in a brick-and-mortar store… you name it.

Today’s ads should be crafted to work in unison across every platform that your consumers interact with—no ifs, ands, or buts. 

Personalization

A lot of content gets made these days about Gen Z’ers and Millennials being the “me” generations. We don’t think that’s a fair examination.

What we will say though is that these generations do like highly personalized content that speaks directly to their needs and desires. That’s why digital signage is making a big push to leverage data, AI, and interactivity to learn about users’ personalized needs and wants—and then solving them.

Needless to say, it’s not always easy to know what your audience is thinking, but it’s definitely something that more and more businesses harnessing digital signage are striving for at the moment—and rightfully so.

Interactivity

Interactivity is also a visual communications trend in its own right. And it’s honestly pretty much common sense as to why.

Just think about it. When someone is actively interacting with something rather than being a passive bystander, as with anything in life, they are creating a much more meaningful and lasting interaction. When they interact this way with businesses, brand awareness undoubtedly gets a boost.

Interactive digital signage has seen the biggest leap in the restaurant industry. Consumers can now browse food menus and conveniently order without the need of a waiter to serve them, saving the business labour costs.

Many retailers have also enabled shoppers to utilize in-store touchscreens in recent years to blend the in-store experience seamlessly with the online shopping experience, as well as to enable customers to sign-up to receive emails about future deals or promotions.

Video Walls

Jaw-dropping video walls are taking the world of digital signage by storm right now. And what kind of company wouldn’t want a wall-to-wall screen that’s strategically placed in a high-traffic area catching every eyeball in sight? We’re pretty sure that answer is zero.

In the past though, you’d be hard-pressed to find a massive video wall anywhere other than airports, stadiums, or large convention halls. But today, these behemoth digital installations are starting to pop up everywhere you look, thanks to a price tag that just keeps getting lower and lower.

This trend isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

Thinner Displays

For anyone who’s ever owned one of those giant box televisions from yesteryear, this trend shouldn’t come as a surprise in the least. Screens are constantly getting thinner, and while it’s not as extreme as box TV to flat-screen revolution, there’s no reason to think this will change in the next few years. In fact, you should expect LCD and LED screens to become near bezel-less as the norm very soon.

On top of that, you should also expect digital display resolutions to continue to make strides. We probably won’t see an absolute transition from 1080 resolutions to 4K and 8K resolutions quite yet, but the slow march will undoubtedly continue in that direction.

Smart Cities

City governments are in the midst of trying to modernize cities in a way that makes them more operationally efficient. A big step towards this end includes getting rid of stale traditional signage and replacing it with dynamic visual information systems.

As it stands now, urban areas account for over half of the world’s population and that number is set to increase to two-thirds by 2050, posing a massive problem for urban planners. To keep everything running as smooth as possible, more metropolitan areas are opting for digital signage solutions, such as self-ticketing machines, touchscreen wayfinding kiosks, and other digital displays used to convey valuable information to commuters and pedestrians.

Responsive Content

While having top-notch digital signage hardware and software is a must, your visual communications network will only go as far as your content takes it. And increasingly, the days of static, dull, and looping content are going by the wayside.

These days, digital signage content needs to be able to respond to external factors and real-time data so that content stays fresh and dynamic at all times. Things like traffic conditions, weather, time of day, or emergency situations should all trigger automated content notifications and alerts.

Seamless and Artful Designs

The days of bulky, intrusive, and ugly digital signage installations are over. In fact, nowadays, you’re way more likely to find a beautiful and thoughtful audio/visual design than you are a bland eyesore of a digital sign.

Those implementing digital displays in buildings have tended to take two different guiding principles in recent years. Either they want a seamless screen design that effortlessly blends in with the surrounding environment, or they shoot for a design that does stick out, but in a way that is artful and gives off a huge wow-factor.

Whatever the case, both design principles have their fair share of merits.

Digital signage technology is without a doubt light-years ahead of where it was a decade ago and only looks set to continue improving and getting cheaper. For that reason, businesses will no doubt continue adopting digital displays and a/v solutions to meet brand objectives.

The defining trends of the digital signage industry mentioned above are just that—trends. Not fads. Businesses who want to maximize the effectiveness of their digital signage would be well-served to follow these trends and reap the success they sow.

In the Greater Toronto Area? Join us on Oct 3rd and get hands-on with some of the technologies mentioned above. Register today!