Consumers today are hard-pressed to visit any retail store, hotel, restaurant or corporate building without encountering digital signage. From television programming to menus to advertising, businesses are using digital signage to entertain while informing customers — and the trend is growing dramatically. According to Adweek, digital signage will account for 41.5 percent of out-of-home advertising by 2014.
Why do you need to include digital signage in your integrated marketing campaigns? Consider these revelations from OTX Research/Ipsos:
- 63 percent of adults find that advertising on digital signage “catches their attention.”
- 62 percent of adults remember seeing digital signage in the past 12 months.
- 58 percent of people find digital signage more unique than traditional advertising.
- 44 percent of people pay more attention to digital signage than traditional billboards.
As the convergence of advertising and technology continues, digital signage will grow in importance as a must-have component of many integrated marketing campaigns. Although some digital signage trends sound like Star Trek technology, we bet you’ll see the following widely embraced over the next few years:
Live Video. Consumers, bombarded by advertising messages, are more likely drawn to live video versus canned content. By including live video feeds as part of your digital signage, you could hold viewers’ interest longer. This stimulating way of engaging consumers could mean they spend more time at your location, which could result in increased sales.
Augmented Reality. What if your customers could experience using your product without ever touching it? That’s the genius of augmented reality technology, a way of enhancing the physical, real world with computer-generated sensory experiences, such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data. This innovation could supercharge ecommerce and speed up buying decisions.
Interactive Digital Signage. Color this trend a result of the Internet generation. Because of the way we interact with smartphones and tablet computers today, consumers want digital signage to respond to them. Interactive digital signage lets users shape their engagements through touch screens, gestures, mobile interfaces and other means. This way, they control the messages they receive, helping you market to them based on their interests and needs.
