The Biggest Digital Signage Innovations Everyone Will Be Talking about This Year

With interactivity, OLED, mobile “cloud” control capabilities and other significant digital signage innovations on the rise, integration firms have the opportunity to take their digital signage businesses to the next level.

Tom LeBlanc Leave a Comment
The Biggest Digital Signage Innovations Everyone Will Be Talking about This Year

This interactive wall by Cineplex Digital Solutions enlivens Toronto's Scotia Plaza.

It’s a good time to be in the digital signage industry, especially if you’re in the integration business. 

However, Rich Ventura, the VP of business development and solutions for NEC Display Solutions of America acknowledges that most integration firms don’t take a very wide view when it comes to digital signage. Certainly they’re embracing corporate communication and providing customers across several markets with kiosks, for instance, but he says they’re just scratching the surface when it comes to digital signage opportunities.

One of Ventura’s top priorities—one that he hopes will be part of his legacy as DSF chairman — is to work toward righting that wrong. He’s focused on getting integrators more involved in DSF and effectively closing awareness gaps.

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For instance, DSF offers digital signage certification with its Digital Signage Experts Group (DSEG) program, Digital Signage Certified Expert.

A new integrator committee within DSF, Ventura hopes, will improve awareness of digital signage opportunities within the integration community. The idea is to help integration firms take their digital signage businesses to the next level. 

So the ceiling is high for integration firms and consultants serving digital signage customers in 2017.  Certainly, more opportunities will present themselves as digital signage technology becomes more and more sophisticated.

We decided to check in with some leading digital signage voices to see how the technology will evolve:

What are the biggest digital signage tech innovations that you expect to gain traction in 2017?

 

Lyle Bunn, Analyst, Advisor and Educator

“Following the market introduction of organic light emitting diode (OLED) flat panels for digital signage in 2016, OLED considerations and price point improvements will see these high image quality and efficient panels being installed in 2017.

“A further significant innovation will be the integration of digital signage with other operating applications such as point-of-sale, inventory and customer relationship management systems. The functionality and benefit of display medium will be advanced to improve the productivity of places, processes and people.

“2017 will also be the year of small form factor displays for branding and promotion on service counters and retail shelves, given the contribution to revenue achievement.”

Erik Willey, Senior Product Marketing Director, ViewSonic Americas

Immersive/Interactive Content: Interactivity is still a major topic of discussion in the digital signage market about kiosks and making signs interactive. The key initiative is to make delivered content messaging more immersive and personal, especially in the retail space. From the business owner/retailer side, it offers a way to measure the effectiveness of their signage from the amount of time spent and levels of detail spent on specific product pages or catalogs.

Beacon Monitoring: There are increasing conversations about in-store “beacons” becoming more popular, giving retailers a way to personalize content. And even provide incentives back to consumers for those employing apps on their mobile devices that share their identity.

Mobile “Cloud” Control: The ability of mobile device “cloud” control of content will be big. This will most likely become a requirement, as the many applications of digital signage will look for easy ways to control content on the fly, and manage their signage networks or video walls from their phone or table.”

Lance Hutchinson, VP, Alpha Video & Audio

“Technologies that allow cross utilization of social media, social games and digital signage to attract, motivate and retain ‘next-gen’ guests — this involves using digital signage to control social games that can be played on customers smart devices and the results of the games displayed in real time on the digital signage.  This technology can be used to drive customer loyalty conversions, opt ins, social marketing and the third screen.”

Jennifer Davis, CMO, Leyard and Planar 

“We are continuing to see adoption of interactive signage, 4K LCDs, indoor LED video walls, and social/mobile integration leading the trends into next year.

Jennifer Davis of Leyard

Jennifer Davis, chief marketing officer at Leyard.

“Increasingly clients, ad networks and brands are wanting to drive higher levels of engagement with their digital signage deployments and they are finding that building compelling interactive experiences, centered on things that the visitors or shoppers want to do in a public space anyway, is a great way to increase customer engagement. Cutting interactive brand content into wayfinding applications, creating brand activations that add a gamification element to the experience, or using interactivity to create a shared experience for in-store retail or exhibit design, is growing in popularity.

“When we launched the Planar UltraRes product years ago, with 4K or UHD resolution, we positioned it from the start for digital signage, believing that brands would want the fidelity and realism of a ultra HD experience in their signage networks. The market has responded with great enthusiasm and the ecosystem of 4K digital signage players, content libraries, and agencies providing 4K content development has risen to support the displays. We see 4K continuing to gain traction, as costs comedown, the sizes available expand, and the ecosystem required to support a signage network in 4K continues to expand.

“LED video wall billboards have been part of the digital signage landscape since the very beginning, wrapping buildings in Times Square, creating canvases for the world’s largest brands. But LED technology is coming indoors with finer and finer pixel densities and lower costs. So much so, that you can now deploy LED digital signage at some pitches for less than a similar sized LCD video wall, which was unheard of several years ago. Digital signage applications have lagged other video wall vertical market applications in adopting this new technology, but in 2017 will see LED surge as more brands, stores, shopping centers and public venues of various types see the advantages of creating a seamless display platform.

“As brands seek increased engagement through interactivity with their customers, with larger deployments and higher resolutions, they are also considering how digital signage fits in the larger context of their digital marketing spend: online, social, and mobile. The integrations possible with social media and mobile apps, including augmented reality to supplement the fixed installed displays, will allow for more creativity, integration with other back end systems for analytics and IoT style reporting, and the extension of the digital signage experience long after the customer has left the space.”

Jeff Hastings, CEO, BrightSign

“Interactivity will become even more pervasive in 2017, and that shift will greatly enhance the way people experience digital content. Brands, retailers and corporations will deploy personalized ‘experience-based’ solutions in their digital signage installations. These experiences will include engaging content such as real-time social media aggregation; Beacon/BTLE two-way interactivity whereby users can select and control signage content; content triggered by geo-coordinates in moving signage (busses, taxis, trains); and functionality enabled by pinch/zoom and Web GL to enable the consumer to touch the display and drill down into images and information.”

Brian Rhatigan, Director of Business Development, Almo Professional A/V

“As we move into 2017, I expect to see additional growth in the area of solid state media players as they continue to get smaller, less expensive, and at performance levels rivaling PC-based systems. I am also keeping my eye on Google Chrome enabled devices as they continue to make their mark in this space.”

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