Recent years have seen an increase in digital out- of-home advertising and digital signage in public places. Today, they are ubiquitous in supermarkets, airports, escalators, buses, trains, reception areas, waiting rooms – and even rest rooms! This fast growing market is monitored by various digital signage consortia whose members include consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, advertising agencies, designers and manufacturers of point of purchase stands, and suppliers of digital screens.

The consortia track trends and report on the increase in consumer spending following a campaign, and on the many advantages of digital signage. To give an example, retailers benefit from this medium from a cost perspective because they can reduce their over all merchandising outlay. The ease of changing existing signage means they can produce less material, and save time changing it for new campaigns. Also, digital signage enables retailers to execute a campaign quickly and – most importantly – increase sales by reaching their target consumer at the point of purchase.

As a platform, digital signage offers almost unlimited possibilities, including ads, vibrant images, promotional clips, sound, and the ability to change content as frequently as needed. The flexibility of digital signage also enables companies to tailor content to certain times of day, and to prepare it in advance and schedule it for display in the future. The ability to create date and time-specific playlists of numerous types of media content – including still images, animation, video and webpages – make digital signage the perfect marketing tool . This is especially true when companies want to advertise products, promote offers or simply provide information to viewers on demand and in an attractive way.