Poll: Is “Digital Signage” an Industry?

Amalgamated Doohickey Co. Makers of fine Digital Signage components since 1854.

As screens in various locations continues to grow, how do we see ourselves? Do we see ourselves as a unique and growing industry with a specific architecture (rules, regulations, trade shows, organizations) that works in tandem with other forms of communication, like our TV at home, computers, and iPhones? Or do we see ourselves as an application inside a multi-channel communication culture with standards and practices that we should adopt? Take the poll and see what others think. I’ll share out the results and my thoughts next week.

  • http://www.dsokolov.ca Dmitry Sokolov

    I feel we are definitely a distinct industry, just as radio is clearly distinct from TV, web, mobile, etc. Just because information across all these mediums is delivered via digital bits and bytes and makes up (distinct) parts of a given communication strategy does that warrant lumping them under the same industry umbrella? Even more comical, imagine the heads of these industries on the same panel regulating the entire digital communication ‘industry’? Catfight!

    In general, loose concepts such as “communication culture” are broad academic constructs that, stretched far enough, can encompass and relate almost everything and anything, including pictograms.

    Between us (hands-on practitioners, not academics), I expect an inevitable dissertation on the relationship between Digital Signage Weather Icons and Cro-Magnon representation of the supernatural. It will feature extensive interviews with (and genealogy) of ScreenFeed’s founders.

    …but don’t tell the academics about this prediction.

  • http://dsinsights.blogspot.com David Weinfeld

    Paul,

    Great question to pose to your readers. It is fuel for a great conversation.

    After watching the results swing around 50/50, I spent a while thinking about why that might be. Though I marked the check box stating that digital signage is not a distinct industry, I am now questioning my response. In some ways digital signage is a distinct industry, and in other ways it is not. I think it all depends on whether or not you’re looking at the sector from an ad-funded/media-centric point of view, or strictly as the digital evolution of today’s static signs.

    Digital signage is an industry, in and of itself; and digital signage is not an industry. Confused yet? Approaching digital signage from the technology side of the equation, it most certainly is an independent sector. As printed signs from menu boards to neighborhood stop signs transition to digital, the growth of digital signage will come to embody a technological turning point in our society’s history.

    When framing digital signage within the world of media, it is but a piece of a much larger ecosystem. In the same way that the word “mobile” will cease to have meaning in an increasingly untethered world, so too will digital signage meld into a world of free flowing media.

  • http://agencybabylon.com Neal Kielar

    Paul,

    I’ve been pondering this question ever since you posed it in a conversation we had. It’s made me think hard yet end up with the same dual answer that David articulates above. I especially concur with his observation that digital signage will “meld into a world of free flowing media.” I happen to think the same of social media as an industry vs. application (or set of applications). Thanks for stirring the pot a bit on this.

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  • http://www.horizondisplay.com Steve Gladden

    Hmmmm. I always hate to answer a question with a question, but why does it matter if it is an industry or not? Can’t a media type exist (which at the very least DS is) with rules and regulations and standard terminology without it being an “industry?” I appreciate the question and the thought it creates. Before i responded i first researched “industry” from an economics perspective. My conclusion; most of the business types we refer to as industries, are not industries at all.

    For the sake of simple reference in business discussion we now put the product type before the word industry, and viola, “INDUSTRY.”

    So here it is, i know i took a long time to get here, but is DS a product? If you’re not sure, try this. Lock 100 people in 100 separate rooms. This must consist of a balance of media company representatives (non DS), DS representatives (display, content, players, and so on), a mix of targeted end users, and a diverse demographic of “consumers.”

    Simply ask them to draw, yes draw (we are gauging conception here) Digital Signage. If most of the people draw the relatively same picture, then it’s an industry. At that point we can all move on and start building a better product.

  • http://www.digitalsignage.net digitalsignage.net

    I definitely think it is an industry.

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