Defining Digital Signage

The technology and work that supports getting messages to digital screens across a network goes by many names, but the one that has stuck the most is digital signage. It’s an emerging medium, but it’s been a part of your life for many years – in airports, restaurants, banks, shopping malls, office lobbies, store aisles, casinos, post offices, and checkout lanes.

A digital signage network can be as simple as a single PC connected to a storefront window display—or as complex as a spectrum of different screens, shapes, sizes and uses, used across hundreds or thousands of locations, across many countries – all controlled from a single desktop.

Digital signage is very flexible. With a little help, a company can set up a tailored network that meets business needs and speaks specifically to customers, employees, or guests.

How it’s used

Digital signage efficiently takes the place of printed poster material in most environments, hence the name. Full color messages at a venue that normally take days or weeks to switch out – because of all the planning, printing, delivery, and posting steps involved – can now happen digitally, and be delivered and changed almost instantly. It’s no longer one printed poster, one message, for a month. It can be many messages, rotating and changing in tone by the time of day and the nature of the audience.

Simple status messages are suddenly full motion. With a touch screen they are interactive. Using software from CoolSign, they can be dynamic – the messages adjusted and changed based on what external systems are reporting.

In retail, digital screens serve many purposes, the primary one being sales. There’s plenty of evidence in the marketplace that well-executed, positioned screens help sell more goods and services in stores. That sales lift is most achievable when the goods being promoted are in close proximity to the screen. This plays on the idea of reminding or prompting people to do something right at the big moment of truth, when they are deciding to put something in their shopping basket.

But retail digital signage is not just about sales. Some retailers use the screens to educate shoppers, help them find their way around stores, or raise the level of the experience through visuals that make the clientele feel more like this is their place, their store.

But retailers are by no means the only companies and institutions using screen networks. The rationale behind screens placed in public-facing areas may have everything to do with safety and getting vital information to people quickly. It might be about moving people around a facility effectively through way-finding displays and meeting room identifiers. Many airports have stepped beyond simple flight arrivals and departures screens to having screens at each departure gate that tell them far more about where they are going and a flight’s boarding and departure status.

Corporations use screens to tell their staff what’s going on far more effectively than emails that don’t get read and sheets posted on lunchroom corkboards that don’t get noticed. Cruise ships tell passengers what’s going on and where on the monster boats. Transport companies have news and messages tied in with GPS location screens on buses and trains. Service-based companies tie their customer handling systems in to the display system to more effectively deal with the customer flow, flashing announcements letting people know things like the status of their car’s tune-up.

Just about anything that needs to get communicated and updated on a regular basis, or could benefit from compelling visuals, is a candidate for digital screens. It’s not a case of doing it just because it’s possible, but because it can be more effective, efficient and cost-effective in the long run.

Digital makes messaging fast and flexible. Allows those messages to be dynamic and somewhat automated. Most of the human factor is removed with digital, meaning messages are up and down when and where they need to be, because the wild card of “hoping” staff at branch offices or retail outlets follow instructions. It’s much more green, removing paper and transport costs from the equation. And the possibilities for what marketers and corporate communicators can do with their messages are greatly elevated.

The potential applications of digital signage are limited only by your imagination.

Digital Out of Home Advertising

DOOH is the acronym for the one broadly-accepted alternative name for digital signage, but it is really more accurately described as a subset of digital signage focused on advertising. The advertising billboard and poster industry has long been called the Out Of Home business, and adding digital references those billboards and posters that are being replaced by video displays. Pure-play advertising screen networks, companies that put screens in targeted, vertically-defined venues like waiting rooms or sports bars, are also labeled as DOOH networks. Those networks run content other than ads, but they exist to make money from ad revenues – like micro TV networks running outside of homes.

CoolSign powers DOOH networks by providing the tools to efficiently target, schedule and distribute advertising, as well as update some elements of ads dynamically or trigger ads to play based on contributing information from databases. The CoolSign platform also gives network operators the tools to accurately monitor and manage networks, and feed back proof of performance reports to advertising clients.