While still trailing behind indoor screens, outdoor digital signage is becoming increasingly more prevalent. Three major locations, however, dominate outdoor digital signage: roadside, transport and retail.
Transport
The leading outdoor digital signage environment with 50% of all spent revenue is transport. Including signs placed on subways in train stations and airports, the transport industry also utilises a lot of displays onboard buses trains and at bus stops. With an estimated £100 million due to be spent on outdoor digital signage in 2011, £50million will be spent on transport. With transport customers offering a captive audience, with little else to do than absorb the content offered to them, it’s no wonder transport leads the revenue share for outdoor digital signage.
Roadside Digital Signage
The second most prevalent environment for outdoor digital signage is at the side of the road. Roadside screens constitute 28% of all revenue spent on outdoor digital signage, but the reason for this is perhaps due to their effectiveness.
Roadside screens attract a wide audience—passers by and commuters using transport systems can all see a roadside display and as these screens tend to be larger than comparative outdoor digital displays their readability is fairly long distant—especially the large digital billboard hoardings now seen along major motorway and highways.
Retail
The third most prevalent environment for outdoor digital signage is retail. Shopping centres and retail parks are now littered with outdoor digital signage displays providing retailers with an ideal platform to entice customers through the doors.
22% of outdoor digital signage displays are in retail or leisure environments such as outside cinemas and theatres.
Expanding Outdoor Use
While the indoor sector is starting to slow, outdoor digital signage is continuing to expand and there are plenty of opportunities for all sorts of industries. And with the falling cost of outdoor screens and increasing use of LCD enclosures, outdoor digital signage is not as expensive as people often imagine.
