In North America, growth in digital out-of-home advertising has been in the high double digits over the past few years. Businesses in Western Europe have also jumped on the bandwagon. A recent report by Research and Markets showed trends similar to those in North America – revenues from dynamic digital signage are expected to quadruple over the next 5 years, making it the only advertising sector that can expect any real revenue growth in that period.



Digital signage is effective, it's increasingly affordable and it has an undeniable “cool” factor, largely due to continued innovation by digital signage providers. Retailers have clearly decided that dynamic digital signage is the way of the future. A glimpse at some new trends and technologies will show us what that future might look like, while demonstrating the pioneering spirit of the digital signage industry.

What's on the Horizon

Expansion is, of course, one of the buzzwords of the future for the dynamic digital signage industry. And it isn't just in in-store marketing. Consider two unique examples:

• The city of Venice will suspend 5 huge (2,250 ft2) signs in 900-year-old St. Mark's Square. The signs will serve a very distinct purpose – help generate revenue to offset the costs of restoring the Square. They are not intended to be in place permanently, but will hang from scaffolding during the 6-year restoration project.

• Ernst & Young is using dynamic digital signage in its UK offices to communicate with its employees. Finding that email was inefficient – messages could be passed over too easily in crowded in-boxes – the company decided to try digital signage. They tested it and found that employees were more engaged by video messaging. Their messaging combines text, video and Flash and is used in everything from company news to training videos.

Merchandising has gone digital in a big way. Not only can digital signage be used to convey interesting messages in a unique way, it has unsurpassed abilities to target messages to specific shoppers. Consider:

• One of the latest products in audience measurement is called iCapture. It uses a high-resolution camera to capture faces. Its software processes them and can segment them by demographics. Age is one of the demographics they have recently mastered, which will allow dynamic digital signage content to be targeted to seniors (as opposed to previous efforts which could only distinguish between adults and children). This software joins projects like Nielsen Media's P.R.I.S.M. and Arbitron's Portable People Meter to help retailers gather valuable (and anonymous) demographic data about their shoppers.

You might want to file this next innovation under “just because you can, doesn't mean you should”. We all know digital signage affects the visual and auditory senses, but what about the olfactory senses?

• A Japanese company has developed an aroma-emitting device that can be attached to digital signs to emit “mood-heightening” aromas. Using a proprietary “fragrance communication” online service, the signs are programmed to emit certain scents that may draw attention to the signs. In testing, a cosmetics company used the technology to emit the fragrance of roses and reported that awareness of the fragrant signs was double that of standard digital signs.

There has been some debate about the need and efficacy of fragrance emitting signs, but that they were developed at all shows that the name “dynamic digital signage” is certainly justified.