The signage industry has undergone a revolution in recent years. Conventional signage is being replaced by digital signage, and most recently, artificial intelligence has joined the mix. AI is transforming how we produce content, display it, manage audience interaction, analyze data, and more – all through smart digital signage.

“Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real,” the French author Jules Verne once wrote. Today, his vision seems to be becoming reality thanks to artificial intelligence. AI is already influencing every conceivable field, making our lives more convenient, more efficient, and far more advanced. Just as the imagination of creators has driven us to impressive technological achievements, artificial intelligence continues today to push us toward new heights we never dreamed of.

One of the areas where AI is making a positive impact is digital signage – the kind you find in stores, businesses, corporations, office towers, and residential buildings. The boring, static signs of yesterday are being replaced by giant screens with rotating video content, and when signage is controlled by AI, the magic moves to a whole new level. Richer content, audience-targeted messaging, and a multi-sensory experience – all delivered in seconds and with zero effort.

In the following article, we will try to explain methods you can use to leverage AI in your digital signage, and with tips and examples we will demonstrate how to do it properly – in an enjoyable and smart way.

Personalized Content Targeting

Capturing the attention of your potential customers in this era takes a bit more than flashing lights and bright colors… and business owners are turning to artificial intelligence to enhance the customer experience.

One of the brilliant ways you can harness the wonders of AI in digital signage is the ability to tailor content to your target audience. Imagine signs that not only look great and grab attention – but ingenious signs that recognize and learn about your audience, as if they were their best friend.

This message-targeting magic is achieved by connecting a screen-mounted camera with a sophisticated AI engine that can identify faces, gender, age, physical attributes such as height, weight, eye color, and hair color, and even detect the behavior of people in the vicinity of the signage.

Want an example of how this works? Picture a busy airport where digital signage spots tired travelers and displays an ad for plush travel neck pillows. Run a clothing store? A customer walks in wearing a black SMALL-sized shirt; the signage recognizes her and reaches out: “Hi :) Have you seen the new dresses from our spring collection yet? We have SMALL sizes in black that would look amazing on you!”

In short, get ready for a new era where digital signage no longer just talks at you – it holds an intimate conversation with you, as if you were old friends!

Automated Content Creation

There are many ways to tell a story and offer engaging content to an audience, but artificial intelligence knows how to do it far better than you. In the technological world of digital signs, AI is becoming your personal content wizard. And it’s not just about quality – it’s also about quantity. AI can produce endless volumes of rich, captivating content for you, and it does so at record speed.

Let’s say you want to generate content for your digital signage for every day of the year – that’s 365 unique messages, each one displayed over a background image. Used to take days and weeks of hard work to produce that much content, right? Today, AI does it for you.

Give AI the instruction: “Create 365 quotes from famous figures in English, royalty-free, and generate a matching image for each quote.” Within seconds you will receive a complete, varied list of inspirational quotes and images to be displayed on the digital signage day after day, without worrying about copyright infringement. It’s surprising how complex tasks become simple, isn’t it?

Real-Time Response

It turns out that artificial intelligence isn’t just smarter – it’s also faster than any living creature. When combined with digital signage, the results are stunning: AI changes the content displayed on the signage in real time,  and it does so in sync with the environment.

What does it mean for a sign to “respond” to reality? With AI, the signage can, for example, tap into real-time weather data and adapt its content accordingly. So when it starts to rain, your digital sign doesn’t just get wet – it stops displaying the refrigerator promotion and flips to a vibrant showcase of comfortable umbrellas and stylish rain boots. After all, what good is a refrigerator to someone when there’s a downpour outside? 

AI-powered digital signage can update content based on the hour of the day, road traffic, breaking news events, even the stock market. When the market is down, it will display deals that save your audience money; when the market is up, it will advertise things that are fun to splurge on, like a new Tesla or a luxurious vacation in the Seychelles.

Want another example? Suppose you run a Greek restaurant and discover that customers prefer salads over meat dishes. Your AI can detect this, update the digital signage, and then quickly create and publish a tempting deal on tzatziki salad and stuffed grape leaves from the kitchen. Just please don’t go overboard with the ouzo…

Two-Way Content Creation

Smart digital signage enables an interactive experience with your audience, but with artificial intelligence you can take it many steps further. Connect the screen to a voice-recognition sensor and a sensor that detects motion and hand gestures, and watch how AI “understands” the viewer, automatically tracks responses and consumption trends, and can even autonomously regenerate graphic or textual content based on the data! To put it simply – the signage is having a conversation with you!

Picture this: you walk up and say, “Hey, what’s the weather like?” and there it is – the digital sign responds with a cool animation and a real-time weather update. Stomach growling? Signal the smart sign with a hand gesture and it will immediately suggest a burger meal with fries and a cola, and ask whether you’d also like to supersize the meal for an extra dollar ninety.

Or imagine digital signage that serves as a 3D map in your company lobby. A guest walks in and asks, “Excuse me, where are the executive offices?” and the screen answers in a human voice while displaying an interactive map. The guest turns their head to the right and the screen reacts: “On the right side is the research and development area.” When they turn their head left, the signage says, “On the left is the sales department.”

 
Continuous Analysis and Optimization

Today, everyone wants to produce smart, data-driven content. AI enables real-time analysis of response data to the content displayed on the signage, and performs ongoing optimization of that content for you. As a result, the content is always optimized for the target audience, and you can fine-tune when the sign runs, draw more attention, and strengthen the connection between the audience and your product or brand.

Take, for example, digital signage in a shopping mall. During peak hours when foot traffic in the mall reaches its maximum, AI measures the dwell time in front of the screen and concludes that people are in a hurry – so it sets the ad rotation on the signage to accelerate, with a new ad cycling every 10-15 seconds. When the mall is at partial occupancy,
 AI detects that people are spending more time in front of the screen and therefore displays longer ads of 30 or even 60 seconds.   

Want to step up to a more sophisticated level of optimization? AI also knows how to analyze which stores, or which departments, have stronger or weaker sales. It can perform daily, weekly, even hourly analysis – and use the data to route the content displayed on the signage. Promote certain products, offer attractive deals – in short, AI uses digital signage to strengthen your marketing and sales. Genius, didn’t we tell you?

Forecasts for the future show that artificial intelligence will transform everything we know and understand about the worlds of content and marketing. AI makes it possible to produce more diverse content in less time, deliver personalized experiences, and respond rapidly to audience types and environmental data. So it’s no surprise that more business owners, organizational leaders, and even building management committees are already turning to AI  to generate content and run digital signage. So what do you say – do you want to join the revolution too?