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Digital Signages & AEM Screens

As businesses embark on digitalization journeys, digital marketing and communication strategies are needed to be faster, more agile, & efficient. Broadcasting information, marketing campaigns or offering personalized content have become an integral part of customer engagement strategies for organizations and institutions.

Insights

In an omnichannel scenario, Digital Signages have evolved to be a prominent engagement channel to deliver superior customer experience and amplify outcomes.
Technically, Digital Signage is a network of displays that can be remotely managed. It has been traditionally used to display videos and multimedia content for advertising and informational purposes. Over years, it has evolved from being a technology label to a strategic identity in digital experience landscapes.
This paper outlines Digital Signage solutions across multiple aspects as business drivers, applicability across industry sectors, market stats and a detailed technical View. This also illustrates the technical solution using Adobe Experience Manager Screens, an integrated offering from Adobe Experience Cloud.

Introduction

Historically, the first thing that came to mind when thinking about digital signage was advertising displays. This was two decades ago when AV display technology reached a point where digital displays were more reasonable in any open space or communal area.

Digital signage has evolved over years, and is now-a-days being used to display information not only in meetings, conference rooms and classrooms, but also wherever people travel, shop, eat, have fun –sports, concerts, public places etc., and is capable of delivering interactive experiences.

Digital signage solutions have nuances in various aspects: Screen Type (LCD/LED/OLED), Display Type (Video Wall/Kiosk/Shelf-Edge), Hardware Mount (Flat/Tilt/Ceiling/Kiosk), Media Player Software, Content Management Software and Usage Pattern (Automated/Advertising/Interactive).

The rapid evolution of the digital technology landscape in the form of Digital Experience Platforms, Microservices & APIs, cloud-based content management tools, IoT and Artificial Intelligence have led to a revolution of sorts. When meticulously designed and implemented, it unleashes powerful capabilities, and delivers enhanced quality of digital content across devices and geos.

How can Digital Signages influence Businesses?

Businesses are adopting innovative technologies towards offering enhanced and personalized customer experiences at every touch point. Digital Signages have now become an integral part of such Experience Transformation solutions.

Communication & Marketing: Organizations today are storytellers; they control their own narratives and articulate their stories to lure customers. Digital signages can be the perfect partner to deliver their narrative and experiences more efficiently. It allows them to use screens in signage networks to communicate what they want and when they want. Most importantly, they can instantly send critical messages over the network in an emergency. The Internet of Things (IoT) is making signages more personal by using sensors and IoT devices to process content. For example, a retailer can advertise shorts or sunglasses when the temperature raises, or an umbrella when it rains.
Brand Consistency: Organizations on accelerated and parallel digital transformation initiatives may struggle to create and manage branded digital content that is consistent across publication channels, with proliferations resulting in cumbersome communication networks. In addition to the increased IT costs of managing multiple networks, the visual content needs customization and personalization while maintaining the brand consistency. It is essential to enforce consistencies across the content value chain from creation through publishing.

Having inconsistent visuals makes the process of nurturing trust and becoming remembered a nightmare.
Taughnee
Brand strategist

According to a recent survey conducted by brand consultancy Inner View and software firm Focus Vision, the estimated average revenue increase attributed to always presenting a brand in a consistent manner is 23%.

Market Stats

Digital Signage solutions have seen wide adoption across industry sectors. It has also led to a significant growth of the display devices, edge server software, and content management software markets.

Precedence Market Research predicts that the global digital signage market will grow at an annual rate of 7.7% from 2021 to 2030, reaching US$38.63 billion by 2030.

According to the analysis of the "Global Digital Signage Software Market", the content management system is expected to be worth 9.24 billion US dollars in 2021 and will reach 25.54 billion US dollars in 2030.

Prominent players in the digital signage market (devices & software) include LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics, Sony Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Screen Cloud, BrightSign, Signagelive & Scala.

Figure 1. U.S. Digital Signage market, by application, 2015 & 2023 (USD Million)

Source: Infosys

Applicability across Industry Sectors

Entertainment	Education	Hospitality
Provide touch screen ticketing kiosk. Act as a virtual concierge directing guests to nearby information and management. Provide entertainment in reserved areas and lounges.	Students’ performance dashboard. Virtual events broadcasting. Provide calendar and schedule.	Time checks and reviews and other guest announcements Self-service kiosks, digital directories, and digital menu boards Generate revenue from advertisers as travel agencies and restaurants.

Healthcare	Retail	Transport
Support programs and patients’ information. Issue emergency announcements. Display waiting time and available appointments. Provide educational training.	Provide real time inventory and pricing. Direct viewers to interactive content via QR Codes Increase visibility with video walls and other devices. Display in-store hours and advertisements. Advertise exclusive products, upsell, and cross sell.	Display arrivals, departures, and other schedules. Assist passengers in finding supplies. Provide entertainment in waiting areas and lounges. Provide travelers with travel options and other local services.

Digital Signage Solution Overview

Figure 2. Digital Signage Ecosystem

Source: Infosys

Let us now get into the composition and technical details of a typical Digital Signage Solution.

The solution comprises of hardware (digital displays, media equipment, network devices, installation systems), software for content management (Content Management System (CMS)/ Digital Experience Platforms) and connectivity (connected displays for content servers in the cloud). All these devices must work together seamlessly for efficient operations, visual ease of use, network security enforcement, convenient maintenance, inspection, and service of machines during operation.

A media player is the hardware or driver that connects the CMS software to the internet and to the screens. Some popular media player options include BrightSign, Signagelive, and Scala.

Figure 3. Composition of Digital Signage Sol

Source: Infosys

A digital signage CMS is software for managing display content. One can create and manage content in the CMS and publish it to any signage across the world. Choosing the right CMS enables you to customize your displays and get your messages across easily.

Device management is essential in scenarios where devices are in multiple locations. The platform collects information about the media players, broadcasted content and can interact bidirectionally.

With the proliferation of cloud based digital signage solutions, aspects like remote connectivity and controllability of devices, and management and publication of content have gained maturity.

Content Management in Digital Signage

Businesses prefer to be able to deliver unique experiences and gather valuable insights while engaging with customers. For this purpose, many Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs) are available in the market and a plethora of content management tools and display software to choose from. It is possible to manage everything centrally and distribute across geos to thousands of screens together coupled with features like the experiences being time-controlled, automated, smart and AI-driven.

Next-gen APIs are available to automate content management and content streaming work cycles, provide dynamic multi-lingual support, while keeping the content current and relevant.

While the benefits of digital signage and content management solutions seem lucrative, it could potentially pose integration challenges, especially between disparate sets of solution components.

We will explore this further with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) Screens, an integrated Digital Signage offering from Adobe Experience Cloud.

Adobe Experience Manager Screens ‘aka’ AEM Screens

AEM Screens deliver personalized and interactive experiences to customers.

The pillars of AEM screens are industry-leading CMS and DAM suites (Adobe Experience Manager aka AEM) and blends the value of physical experience (e.g., stores) with the personalization and visualization of digital experience. With AEM, business users can configure the content and publish it on digital signage screens in a retail store in a seamless & unified interface. AEM screens provides full inventory of deployed digital screens with the ability to author, schedule and distribute experiences locally or remotely.

Technically, AEM screens is an application within AEM that powers intelligent and personalized Digital Signage. All capabilities of AEM sites and assets that manage & deliver experience apply to AEM screens as well.

Key Features of AEM Screens

Content Assignment and scheduling
Most used screen components
Context-aware and target experiences
Offline playback
Analytics Integration
Remote Device Management

Solution Components

Screens as a Cloud Service includes three main components:

AEM Sites to create and manage content.
AEM Screens to push content to one or more screen devices.
The AEM Screens player software that runs on one or multiple screen devices.

These devices connect to an AEM Server to fetch and play content.

Figure 4. Digital Signage Solution Components

Source: Infosys

Content Provider: Content authors create content (AEM Screens Project) in the AEM author instance and may include assets like images and videos to the configured channels. The associated content is then published to the AEM Publish instance. The AEM Screens player must be registered with an AEM Server instance with which it uses basic authentication over HTTPS to periodically check and download content and configuration changes.

Service Provider: The digital signage management service runs on Adobe I/O Runtime. It controls delivery instructions and players when added to the channel. The player uses a “ping” mechanism, over https to AEM Publisher like a heartbeat check, and in response, receives action items that the player needs to perform, like taking a screenshot, sending logs, or downloading updated content. This is entirely a pull mechanism, from the player to AEM.

Player Application: This is an application that runs on a signage device, plays content, and manages connections with service providers to send IoT events and receive and process commands.

AEM Screens Architecture

This section elaborates the architecture of AEM screens in the larger context of a retail store and over the internet across devices. It depicts solution components and integrations between them at a granular level.

Figure 5. Architecture Diagrams

Source: Infosys

Artificial Intelligence in Digital Signage

Artificial Intelligence and digital signages can create a powerful synergy and influence the future of customer engagement and marketing. It has the potential to measurably increase viewer engagement and influence conversion rates for advertisers and content providers.

With the continuing digitization of physical spaces, AI can amplify influential aspects such as Audience Analytics, Content Optimization & Personalization at Scale. Advancements in technologies like Computer Vision & Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) with pre-trained AI models can stitch customer profiles across channels and offer real-time and personalized recommendations through screens based on parameters like location, preferences, facial features/emotions etc. For example, if AI detects a group of teenagers, it can display sports or entertainment-related content, while displaying health and well-being related content to other, more relevant demographics. Besides, Generative AI is increasingly being used in the Content Marketing space and delivers features such as content suggestions, summarization, tone adjustment, content reviews and grading. This coupled with content life cycle automation all the way through publishing to screens only implies an exciting horizon for Content Marketing & Digital Signages.

Conclusion

While advertisements have evolved from traditional print media to multi-media rich digital channels through the internet revolution, digital signages have only made them ubiquitous. The growing adoption of digital signages as a strategic marketing medium is influenced by the businesses’ need to garner a customers’ attention with powerful content at the right moment. It has significantly influenced data driven marketing where signages are context aware and display real-time and targeted ads based on dynamic factors like inventory, weather, time and location. The interactive aspect of signages has the proven potential to contextually engage with customers, and their wallets too.

The prolific evolution of digital signages has placed an ever-increasing demand for device and visual quality, and longevity at lowered prices. Technological advancements powered by cloud, digital and applied AI solutions have revolutionized digital marketing through digital signages, and the future promises to be even more exciting.