Digital signage is quickly becoming more common in retails ranging in size from one location mom and pop stores to massive chains. However, many potential users express doubts on how they can justify the upfront cost of digital signage. How can they measure an ROI with a display?

Measuring ROI in sales

There are a number of ways to measure the return-on-investment for displays if you have well defined objectives such as increasing sales or boosting coupon redemptions. Once you have these objectives in place, you can plan entire campaigns around them with your digital signage.

A primary objective might be increasing overall sales, or sales of a specific product (like a high-margin item or inventory that needs to be moved). One way to measure return on investment could be to run rich media content for a defined period and measure sales over that specific time frame. Sales ROI also may be measured in coupon redemption.

For some companies, traditional mediums such as fliers might not be as effective as they used to be, so digital signage can help boost overall customer awareness on products, specials, coupons, loyalty programs and other information.

AI, personalization to drive digital signage future trends

Digital signage vendors are constantly innovating and testing new tools, ranging from AI to dynamic content to responsive touchscreens. Keeping up with these trends is absolutely key to ensure your digital signage is effective.

As digital signage continually becomes more responsive and dynamic, it will become even more important to stay up-to-date on these trends to avoid falling behind the competition. The current big trends of 2019 include AI, omnichannel and personalization.

In order to learn more about these trends and what's on the horizon for the future, Digital Signage Today spoke with Chris Devlin, president of digital signage software vendor Omnivex to get his perspective.

1. What would you say are the top three biggest trends in digital signage?

2. As a software vendor we'll stay away from some of the hardware changes like System-on-Chip, and flexible or uniquely shaped screen formats. The biggest trends we are seeing include:

Autonomy / Artificial Intelligence — We hear about AI all the time, but in digital signage it is vital to have a screen adapt and respond appropriately to changing conditions. Automating changes to content, data or instructions that are displayed based on other systems such as analytics, content management or IoT devices are all part of this AI revolution. Digital signage is one of the most visible aspects of this.

Omnichannel — It is a buzzword that has been present for a long time. Now the seamless integration of content across devices and mediums is not just an idea it is very real. We are seeing organizations move away from bespoke applications to focusing more on truly integrating their systems and marketing across all digital mediums. Phones, email, digital signage and of course traditional physical assets and environments are key to customer experience, and that customer experience is at the leading edge of digital transformation.

Personalization — We talk about personalization and customer experience all the time. It is the panacea. We can achieve it through information based applications like digital signage.  Whether information is used to speak directly to the customer through a web based phone app or in a digital signage application to display relevant content to an individual or group it is still based on the same connection to data/information. That connection to make things more personal is moving at a rapid pace across all industries.

Q.How does digital signage fit into the bigger trend of improved digital communications?

1. It is critical.  If you think about what we can control that a user sees — it's the digital screen (signage). Most information can be delivered over a screen.  The key is bringing in relevant information and content to the screens/applications you build for them. Good digital signage software connects to existing systems and lets you leverage that data for multiple purposes and multiple applications. With these tools you can make dashboards, measure productivity, connect to the outside world through IoT devices or third party services and use any of that as either subject matter or as sources of information to change content. 

2. What do you see as the biggest future trend for digital signage?

3. We believe digital signage will become as ubiquitous as lighting (in non residential applications). Think about any building you walk into; you need information.  There is no doubt that the information you need should be digitally provided. It can be changed more quickly, it can serve multiple purposes and it is smart in that the software can be tied into every other system in that public space. So hospitals, airports, offices, stadiums, malls, plants, any place that people go in volume, we will see digital signage as ubiquitous as lighting is today. People are expecting more digital engagement in every aspect of their life.  We've always known that in order to make good choices people need good information.  Digital signage is the best medium for all of those facilities to inform their audience because it is the only display that they completely control.