Like everyone else in the channel, William Kazman has been hearing bold talk about the big money to be made in digital signage for ages. Until recently, however, he had yet to see it borne out by experience.

Kazman is founder and CEO of iTeam Inc., a solution provider in Westford, Mass., that added an audio/visual practice to its existing IT business some two years ago. Though the company landed plenty of signage-related projects right from the start, most of them were relatively small. “Everyone was just doing a pilot,” Kazman says.

That was then, however. Today, based on the success of those early test deployments, customers have begun approving large-scale rollouts. “People have been able to validate the ROI,” Kazman observes. As a result, digital signage now accounts for more than 30 percent of iTeam’s revenue.

Kazman isn’t the only one experiencing a sharp uptick in digital signage sales recently. For years, vendors, analysts, and distributors have been hailing signage as a red-hot opportunity, even as the reality for channel pros down in the trenches was somewhat more modest. Now, however, businesses in a wide range of industries are implementing display-based solutions for the first time, and companies in more mature segments like retail and banking are aggressively expanding and upgrading their existing installations. Though it took longer than some predicted, the digital signage market appears finally to have reached its tipping point.

Opportunity is Everywhere

The latest market data certainly suggests as much. IT analyst firm ABI Research predicts that worldwide sales of digital signage hardware, software, installation, and maintenance will climb from $1.29 billion in 2010 to $4.5 billion in 2016. U.K.-based IMS Research, for its part, sees global sales of digital signage equipment and software jumping 40 percent from $5 billion in 2010 to $7 billion in 2013.

Neither firm has figures specific to SMBs, but many observers expect growth rates among smaller businesses to exceed industry averages. “The early adopters were the larger companies,” says Tom Nix, vice president, Americas and Oceania, at Scala Inc., a maker of digital signage software and advertising management solutions with headquarters in Exton, Pa. Now small and midsize companies have begun embracing it too, he says, in ever-expanding numbers.

Several factors explain the spiking demand for digital signage offerings. For one thing, displays have become much more affordable. Panels that cost $4,000 as recently as three years ago, Nix observes, are now available for half that. In addition, notes Lyle Bunn, strategy architect at digital signage consultancy Bunn Co., of Brighton, Ont., packaged and appliance-based solutions are helping make signage deployments almost a “plug and play” experience. More important, adds Bunn, all those pilots and proof-of-concept installations have convinced one-time skeptics that digital signage really works. “The technology has proven itself through its use by the innovators and the early adopters,” he says.

As a result, signage opportunities are popping up in a host of vertical markets, including the hospitality industry. “We’re seeing more and more hotels interested in having solutions in their lobby,” says Jacob Kelly, vice president of sales at CTI Solutions, a specialist in digital signage and content management in Overland Park, Kan. Such systems typically help guests locate meeting rooms and banquet halls, research local restaurants, or check the status of an upcoming flight. Though large hotel chains often prefer working with equally large integrators, experts say, independently owned or managed affiliates of major brands typically prefer working with smaller, local providers.

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