Digital Signage: An Overview
Digital signage is swiftly replacing the use of conventional signage boards across the globe for both indoor and outdoor presentations. As proficient content distribution platforms, digital signages can be used for advertising, wayfinding, and broadcasting essential information on screens. Making use of text, images, video, and audio, these are versatile and effective because of their sleek hardware and attractive displays.
Digital signage primarily makes use of LCD, LED, and plasma displays to broadcast the content. Today’s smart signages are coupled with technologies like Windows, Android, or Apple for competently displaying diverse content formats. Converting an Android device into digital signage is also gaining more and more popularity because of its cost-effectiveness.
There’s a very fine, diminishing line between digital billboards, digital signage, and kiosks. While billboards are infrastructurally huge or a combination of multiple screens, kiosks are interactive displays where users can navigate and take action. Digital signages, on the other hand, purely display devices.
Remote Digital Signage: Use Cases and Industries
Digital signages are everywhere around us. From restaurants displaying static menu boards to airports displaying real-time flight information, digital signages are used commonly across various business cases. They are highly adaptable and involve relatively less investment, which makes them a favored choice across industries.
- Hospitals: To display directions within the premises as well as to display anxiety-relieving content in waiting rooms. In hospitals that have adopted technology for its operations, digital signages are used in patient rooms to display treatment details, progress, and plan of action.
- Restaurants: To display menu and order status at self-service counters. These are also popular spots where digital signages are used to display full-blown advertisements.
- Museums: As a way-finder. With intuitive maps that can help visitors navigate across huge complexes, these digital signages do much more than simply displaying content.
- Transport Hubs: To display up-to-date information on buses, trains, and flights as well as time schedules. They are used to display advertisements as well as entertainment content.
- Retail: To grab customer’s attention to your latest products and display advertisements. The retail industry has seen a year-on-year growth of 40% in digital signage installations because of its significant impact on sales and branding.
- Stadiums: At stadiums and sports arenas, digital signage is used to relay the game, display menu boards and advertising in the breaks and half-times.
- Hotels & Events: As way-finders, to display amenities and marketing material, playing entertainment videos and redefining lobby décor with graphical displays.
- Schools & Universities: To extend communication to employees, displaying schedules and updates.
- Banking & other corporate offices: To provide product information, display advertisements, and schedules.
Digital Signage using Android Tablets and TVs
After devices are installed at a physical location, they need to be monitored for functionality, controlled to publish content and need constant software upgrades to streamline and display content in real-time. These devices are powered by digital signage software that enables them to display content in various formats including videos, audios, presentations, and textual. This software needs to be up-to-date and operate in a cohesive manner to display content irrespective of the formats without interruption. The devices also need to be connected to the internet to display content in real-time.
Instead, converting Android devices into digital signage is more impactful. Here’s how:
- Using Android tablets and televisions as digital signage is lucrative because of the cost-efficiency of Android devices.
- Converting an Android tablet into digital signage is convenient since these devices can display miscellaneous content like videos, presentations, and audio as well as dynamic content like flight information and schedules.
- Once you lock down Android into digital signage, the need for digital signage software is perpetually eliminated.
Remotely Managing Digital Signage: Need of the hour
As digital signages are attaining more traction, the need to remotely manage these devices is accelerating. To mitigate the need to individually visit the signage location, maintain their system operation, and publish content, remotely managing digital signage is crucial.
This especially stands true if you have more than one device deployed at different locations. Choosing a cloud-based system to remotely manage digital signage to publish, replace, monitor, and delete the content on the device as well as to troubleshoot device issues without physically visiting the signage location is recommended.
Here’s why you need remote management for digital signage:
- Locking the device into a single app
- Publishing, replacing, deleting content including images, videos, presentations
- Publishing applications to play the published content
- Updating device software
- Checking device performance
- Troubleshooting device errors
- Reducing IT effort while increasing operational accuracy
Scalefusion for Remote Management of Digital Signage
Compatible with multiple operating systems like iOS and Android, Scalefusion enables remote control of your digital signage. After enrolling a digital signage device into Scalefusion MDM, the admins can track, control and manage multiple devices remotely from a single and centralized dashboard.
Scalefusion MDM for digital signage management can empower you to:
- Enroll and manage multiple devices through one dashboard.
- Customize the device branding, enforce security policies
- Lock devices into a single app playing digital content
- Publish a variety of content formats including images, videos, presentations
- Publish applications to play diverse content formats
- Get accurate, real-time insights, track device location, network, and battery
- Provide support and troubleshoot device errors for optimal performance
- Perform device shutdown and data wipe during cases of emergency
- Remote cast and control signage screens to troubleshoot errors
What makes digital signage the most preferred channel of advertising and information broadcasting is its ability to exhibit eye-catching content like moving images, photo animation, graphics, and videos with sound effects to garner audience attention. It procures larger user engagement as opposed to static signage and is hence rapidly being adopted across diverse industries. In fact, it is one of the most competitive marketing tools to gain visibility. According to a study, interactive content was proven to be 81% more effective than static content for conversions.
You can transform iOS and Android devices into digital signage and remotely manage them using Scalefusion MDM.
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