Key Takeaways

• Digital signage is still heavily influenced by its audio-visual origins.
• Consumer exposure to screens is increasing across various environments.
• The industry needs to adopt a software-first approach to truly evolve.

Topics

• Digital Transformation
• Technology
• Innovation

Transcript

Yeah, well, in many ways, I'd say the digital signage industry hasn't evolved that much. And strangely, like, it's very similar to the industry that I kind of came into and sort of wanted to disrupt a little bit. And I don't mean this in an aggressive way. I think that digital signage evolved out of the audio visual industry, right? So it's not web developers that started this, because back in the day, that absolutely wasn't possible. It was very much a hardware driven industry. And still, if you look at it, if you go to the trade shows, it's still very much a hardware driven industry. And they're not talking about really about web content. It's more like internet connected screens, a bit of web content. But it's not really truly embraced digital, which is surprising, given what it is. And so I don't think things have moved on as much as I'd like. What I have seen change, I think, one, people understand digital signage. When I first started, I say digital signage, people like, oh, is that like signing, you know, Adobe contracts, like, you know, DocuSign or whatever. It's like, no, no, no, it's screens. They're like, oh, all right. Okay. So I think it wasn't very aware. And I think most people sort of know about it now. And I think the other thing is, in our lives as consumers, we are seeing screens absolutely everywhere. But it's in retail, outdoor advertising, quick serve restaurants like McDonald's walk on full screen, airports, anything, transportation. So I think as consumers, we are seeing screens like proliferate all around us. And screens actually, the cost of a screen over the last 25 years has really dropped out. It's super affordable to have just a screen. So I think that people are seeing the use of screens more in their lives. And they're kind of expecting a modern environment would have screens in it. And a less modern environment would have printed posters or something up instead. So I think the expectation from us as the public, as consumers, has rise