Contextual advertising is advertising relevant to the location in which it is broadcasted. This can never happen so long as Digital Signage technologies view signage as a content playlists paired to a dedicated display. The media, or content must be freed from any specific display, the media must live as a story of its own, free to be broadcasted in real-time anywhere. the entire concept of playlists is an old way of thinking display plus playlist boxes in messaging and if we truly want to start controlling messaging and where it appears, digital signage users must come together and have their displays form a network similar to the internet. Only then can automated systems display ads related to the content of the location.
Automation and artificial intelligence are being embraced across all industries. Monitoring and managing campaigns can be enhanced with automation. AI can help decide whether certain content should be shown to a specific customer after analyzing multiples databases and indicators. It can analyze a person’s goal when they are in front of a display and determine the appropriate advertisement for that particular moment. For this to achieve change the first you need real-time broadcasting and second, you need to change the way we think about digital signage.
For the ultimate engagement, we need interactivity. When it comes to displays they have the most potential for interactivity. Displays attract interactivity, touchscreen technology was born and breed from displays, when we’re talking about displays and digital signage we should be talking about touchscreens and interactive applications. Displays need to be looked at as touchscreen devices from here on out and the technology powering them must be able to broadcast applications with the same real-time power as with videos and other media. But that’s not enough, people must be able to process at their fingertips and build interactive and context-aware stories to broadcast at will from the cloud with the same technology powering the displays.
It is going to take an industry shift from antiquated service providers, installers, and consultants to a self-service platform. There are a lot of old-time players with large marketing dollars locking people into systems that will never scale. If you want to be a part of the future the time is now to make the switch.
The Future of digital displays is here and it is with Display.Stream. We’re democratizing digital displays just as Apple democratized computers and Google democratized information. We bring a community-driven platform where industry professionals and businesses can come and innovate with powerful yet simple tools and processes at their fingertips. Display.Stream is a full cloud content management service, a player supported by all major hardware displays, an SDK to build custom applications, a REST API to integrate with other services and an AppStore for consultants to sell ready-to-use templates and applications.