What drives the market in 2020

Digital experience platforms, data or green signage – invidis hosted the Digital Signage Summit during ISE 2020 in Amsterdam. And presented important trends and figures in their keynote.

The digital signage market is navigating through troubled waters in 2020 and has been since the beginning of the year. In early February at this year’s ISE in Amsterdam, hurricane Sabine, the early stages of the corona epidemic, Brexit and the trade war between the USA and China were the main reasons for this.

All of this was reflected in the invidis keynote, which the consulting company presented at the Digital Signage Summit DSS of ISE. The invidis experts Florian Rotberg and Stefan Schieker, together with experienced market participants, also addressed the many challenges for the digital signage industry that make this year a special one.

Geopolitical trends are generally a difficult factor to assess. Already at the beginning of the year, the experts realized with regard to Brexit, Corona and USA: the economic damage can only be assessed by the end of 2020. Florian Rotberg summed up the persistent and unpleasant topic of Brexit in particular: „It will be interesting to see in which direction the discussion will now evolve, who will live with it and who will have to adapt. Brexit is not the end of the world. But it doesn’t make life easier either.“

2019 was a success

The market looks back on a successful 2019. In professional screens, the Global Units grew by 8.8% and the Global Value by 9.9%. The market distribution, however, hardly changed in 2019. The winners are Spain/Portugal with 30% YoY growth, while Italy, one of the largest markets, is among the weakest with a 3% increase.

MicroLED is, according to popular belief, slowly making its way into the market. At present, however, the technology is still around 100 times more expensive than standard LCD, but it also offers advantages. The keyword is „limitless“ technology: MicroLED panels can be combined to any size, while LCDs are limited to 120 inches due to logistical constraints. According to experts, however, the as yet very high price could fall in the coming years as production rates rise and more units are sold. Nevertheless, the technology, together with LCD video walls and all-in-one LEDs, is among the disappointments according to invidis.

Transparent (O)LED displays are on the rise, however. OLEDs as such continue to struggle with their rather short lifetime. Even during production, the defect rate is high, and OLEDs also burn out easily during subsequent operation. LCDs with MicroLED backlight represent an alternative, but they have no place on the market so far. Magic mirrors, immersive showrooms, projection mapping, as well as tracking technologies and collaboration are trending. This also became evident at ISE.

Market consolidation is intensifying

Mergers and partnerships in the digital signage and DooH industry in EMEA are growing quickly. One of the most significant mergers was that of AVI-SPL and Whitlock, the two largest integrators in the world. The number two and three in their industry now form the largest workplace service provider with combined revenues of USD 1.3 billion.

The Italian digital signage provider M-Cube, formerly one of the largest Scala partners, also proves that enterprise consolidation can work. „After five acquisitions in 14 months, M-Cube has grown into a top European player and now covers the largest markets in Europe with Germany, Italy, France and the UK,“ said Florian Rotberg during the keynote.

However, things are changing here as well: More and more companies want to become full-service providers. They discard partnerships and plan to establish direct customer relationships. The increasing complexity of platforms also plays a role here. Integrators sometimes have some difficulty in applying them effectively. The supplier, on the other hand, is of course very familiar with his products. Adapting the product to customer demands is easy for him.

From Signage to Digital Experience

Digital signage, always in flux, has already taken several evolutionary steps – from digital posters (DP) to signage (DS) and experience platforms. First for digital signage (DSXP), and subsequently for all digital touchpoints (DXP). The technology behind it also evolved, first from static to dynamic, then on to interactive. And finally to adaptive.

„While the evolution seems very linear, this last development step is a major one. Particularly because the amount of data that needs to be processed is so enormous,“ explains Stefan Schieker. Data-driven campaigns are also increasingly replacing rich media; programmatically created media are becoming increasingly prevalent. „The industry is changing, former visual solution vendors are turning into providers of adaptive analytics platforms.“

With the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), data security is more important than ever. However, the certification of information security management systems (ISMS) still has its problems in some areas. Above all, many point solutions do not have a complete end-to-end ISMS to secure them. The weak link in the chain are the content management systems that store and process data-protected information. Here, ISO 27001 certification from the CMS provider is urgently needed for companies.

Data and AI shape the future

EiArtificial intelligence (AI) also plays a key role, adding eyes, ears, and a voice to the systems – important for interactions with the audience, but also for the use of data. This does not mean, however, that every company must now develop its own AI.
Large established providers of respective technologies, which actually had little connection with digital signage so far, already offer comprehensive platforms: Adobe Experience Manager, SAP Experience Management Qualtrics, Salesforce or Microsoft Teams. So, it is all about the use cases and the question of who can train the AI properly to make it useable for digital signage. The big players have yet to make the leap into the industry. However, if this actually small step happens, it will really shake up the market.

Sustainability also for digital signage

„By 2030, Microsoft will be CO2 negative.“ With this statement, technology company Microsoft is responding to the scientific consensus that the world faces an urgent carbon problem. That means that the goal is not only to reduce the CO2 footprint to a neutral level, but to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The trend towards sustainability is also gaining importance in the digital signage industry. Florian Rotberg referred to an example of Green Signage, specifically on screens on refrigeration units in supermarkets. „Customers can see the products and get information about them without having to open the doors. The cooling chain is maintained, and no energy is lost by unnecessary door openings. Especially the energy costs for constant cooling rise exponentially when the doors are opened frequently.“
The overall Green Signage motto is: „Use what you have and turn the bad into good“, emphasized Florian Rotberg. Many of the existing digital signage systems already have green technology, but simply do not use it. For example, many displays are equipped with unused brightness sensors. Activating them would save a huge amount of energy. More energy-efficient networks and content geared towards sustainability can also make a significant contribution to environmental protection. For this purpose, the content should be darker, with only a minimum of white and should not contain rapidly changing images.

Awareness of the sustainability theme is progressing. It is important to recognize the potential and set definitive standards so that the green idea really takes hold. „Let’s change things now, not years from now,“ Rotberg concluded by appealing to the participants of the Digital Signage Summit. „For a long time, sustainability was a niche topic, but the attention of the major CEOs is now focusing strongly on more environmentally friendly solutions. This is the opportunity for Green Signage.“