The Business of Digital Signage

There are three core approaches to digital signage networks – private, ad-based and hybrids of the two.

Private networks are screen networks owned and operated by the venue, the primary driver being the ability to fully control the messages appearing on the screen.

Ad-based networks, most typically, are networks of screens installed in third-party premises by media companies and entrepreneurs who take all the capital and operating risk and usually share a percentage of the screen time.

Hybrids are a combination of the two, generally private networks that allow some limited third-party advertising to offset operating and capital costs.

A digital signage network is a complicated, multi-faceted project that presents a challenge just sorting out where to start. A project needs a roadmap and guideposts, but more than anything else, it needs an objective. It’s hard to get started when it’s not clear what the end is all about.

Screen networks are put in by their operators for a huge range of different objectives. The programming could be intended to influence, inform, engage, entertain, preoccupy, distract, direct, or even warn viewers.

Some networks are deployed for no other reason than to advertise to an audience that is attractive – because of its sheer numbers, its time “captive” in front of screens, or its demographic and interest profile. There are networks in rail stations because 1,000s of people pass through them, and networks in hair salons where the numbers are small but the audience attentive and all of a similar profile.

Retailers can have wildly different reasons for wanting screens in their stores. Some see sales lift as a direct consequence, while others see that as the soft by-product of a better shopping experience.

Some companies put screens in their buildings to help keep staff informed, while others put them in only with visiting customers and partners in mind.

There are times that the digital screens are nothing more than a better, less labour-intensive way of changing basic information regularly, taking the human factors of accuracy and reliability out of the equation by putting a sign on a network and automating the data.

Sometimes, a network is a pure dollars and cents issue, as with billboards in major cities that are transitioning from paper and plywood to giant walls of networked LED display modules. The outdoor billboard companies ran the numbers, and determined they can make more money putting six ads on one board than they can sending a special truck and crew out every few weeks to paper over the old ad with a new one.

The best networks, whatever the type, went in with clear objectives, or worked their way to them. The most common, but by no means the only, objectives for network include:

• Improving communications at the venue
• Better wayfinding
• Distracting from wait times
• Sales promotions
• Improving brand awareness
• Better message compliance
• Improved internal communications
• Improved safety
• Reduced costs
• Green initiatives
• More revenue generation for the retailer or the ad network operator