Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly impact the digital signage industry in the next few years. With the rise of dynamic content and an increase in external data being used in digital signage, AI is set to bolster creative content.

AI can't yet fully replace the human element of digital signage, but by making use of the tools available, the DOOH industry can take a huge leap forward.

Mixing AI and digital signage is the perfect combination for enabling more personalised and targeted messaging (via data), improving the effectiveness of scheduling, and enabling new capabilities and use cases.

Personalised Digital Signage Ads

One of the key ways that AI can be adopted into the digital signage industry is by powering the delivery of more personalised and targeted messaging to viewers. We’ve already seen dynamic creatives make use of a range of different data points, but this is bottlenecked by human interaction.

By combining the power of AI algorithms with viewer demographic and behavioural data, digital signage systems can automatically adapt and adjust the content displayed. The best part is this can all happen in real-time to better match the known interests and needs of the audience.

For example, a digital signage system in a retail store could use AI to analyse the demographics and purchase history of customers to display personalised product recommendations or promotions.

Personalised marketing/advertising is a rising trend, and being able to offer marketers and advertisers this feature thanks to the power of AI will be a huge win for DOOH networks.

Improved Campaign Planning

Another interesting way that AI can help the digital signage industry is with campaign planning and scheduling. AI tools will help both with improving and automating these steps of the process.

By bridging AI algorithms with audience data (in a similar way to personalisation), campaigns can be optimised and deployed in a manner that maximises visibility and impact. For example, AI could be used to determine the best times to display certain content, such as fast food or restaurants being advertised on roadside billboards around 6-7pm.

Digital signage is already known for being much more contextually relevant than other advertising channels, so why not continue to power it up with AI tools?

This might seem similar to personalisation, but the difference is in the scale and size of the screens. Personalising DOOH screens can be done in certain smaller environments, such as retail screens or petrol stations. It’s also much more unique and independent, relying on specific customer data.

Improving the planning and placement of campaigns is relevant more so to larger screens, seen by more people at once, for example, digital roadside billboards. This uses more generalised, aggregated data instead of specific personalised data.

The Next Step In DOOH Evolution

Finally, AI has the potential to further improve and revolutionise some of the new capabilities and use cases for digital signage. We’ve already seen some concepts for new innovations making use of cameras and digital screens, such as trying clothes on virtually.

Currently, these systems are in the super early stages of development, and from what we’ve seen are very basic. By adding AI to these systems, there are so many other possibilities that become unlocked.

It will no longer just be a generic template with the viewer's head added in, but the entire clothing catalogue could shape and move with the customer, in real-time. And that's just for clothing, so many other cool and unique interactive signage displays could become available.

These sorts of activations and retailtainment aren’t possible on other advertising channels and really show how DOOH can lift the user experience.

Conclusion

Digital signage isn’t going anywhere any time soon, we’re only just at the beginning of using external data, cameras, and things like weather triggers - so why not embrace AI? By accepting the place of AI early, every aspect of digital signage can be improved and made more efficient and accessible.

Integrating AI with digital signage systems will continue to lead to better content, more advanced scheduling, personalised experiences and more. With such a cutting-edge system at our disposal, marketers and advertisers will be fighting over screen inventory and will be more than willing to pay a premium.

Want to get started with contextual digital out-of-home advertising? Reach out to our sales team today to see how we can help get you started!

P.S.: Part of this blog post was actually written with the help of ChatGPT, one of the most popular AI tools available at the moment.