Digital signage has been around for a while now, but the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is about to take it to a whole new level. 

The way organizations use this tool to engage their customers, employees, and partners is about to undergo a paradigm shift.

We're excited about what the future holds, and want to share with you how we think AI will shape the digital signage industry in the coming years.

1. Unparalleled Personalization

While digital signage is capable of providing personalized experiences (provided you power your network with an advanced CMS vs. a simple playback machine), we believe that AI is bound to push the limits even further.

By harnessing the power of data analytics, AI will enable digital signage to automatically adjust content in real-time based on each viewer's specific needs and preferences.

We're not talking about rule-based personalization utilizing if/then logic to tackle the most common use cases.

With AI, you can leverage intent-based personalization to serve truly personalized content to each and every user, as if you had an army of customer success reps working with each viewer individually.

For example, a retail store could use AI to deliver targeted advertisements to shoppers based on their gender, age, location, and previous purchase history. 

Similarly, a museum could use AI to provide visitors with customized audio tours that are tailored to their interests.

With the help of AI, digital signage will become more responsive and engaging than ever before, drastically improving its effectiveness.

2. New & Advanced Interactivity Features

Interactivity is one of the most important features of digital signage. It allows customers and prospects to engage with your brand in a way that is both informative and entertaining. However, interactivity can also be time-consuming and expensive to create.

This is where AI comes in. Applying AI to digital signage can unlock new levels of interactivity that were previously impossible or too costly to achieve.

Here's an example of how you can set up interactive features in Wallboard:

For example, AI can be used to create interactive content that responds in real-time to customer behavior.

AI can also be used to track customer engagement and provide insights that can help you optimize your content strategy.

In short, AI will enable you to take your digital signage to the next level of interactivity, making it more engaging and effective than ever before.

3. Data-Driven Content Scheduling

Still trying to find a way to reach the right viewer at the right time with the right message? 

It's impossible to hit the bullseye each and every time, even if you're the best data analyst in the world. However, with AI, you can completely eliminate the guesswork to skyrocket your ROI and impact.

By understanding the patterns and trends in customer behavior, AI can help you schedule content that is more likely to be seen and engaged with, monitor the performance of your content, and fine-tune your scheduling on the fly.

With its ability to unlock data-driven content scheduling, AI has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers.

4. The Death of Static Digital Signage Content

As digital signage increasingly relies on API webhooks, machine learning, and AI, static content displayed over and over again with a playback machine is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

Instead, more and more organizations turn to dynamic content that leverages data integrations to serve fresh signage in real time without having to spend countless hours creating them.

From the latest news to social media feeds, there's no need to torture your audience with the same digital posters run on a loop when you can deliver value by serving them with fresh and engaging content.

As AI continues to develop, static content will become increasingly obsolete.

5. The Rise of Context-Aware Digital Signage

The rise of AI has led to a new era of context-aware computing, in which digital devices are able to sense and respond to their surroundings. 

This same technology is now being applied to digital signage, resulting in a new generation of dynamic, context-aware displays, which are able to adapt their content in real time based on the surrounding environment.

A quick example of this is proximity-aware digital signage that dynamically serves content based on the actions of your audience.

This allows for more targeted messaging and a better overall customer experience.

In the coming years, we can expect to see more and more businesses adopt this technology in order to stay ahead of the competition.

6. Streamlining or Automating Even More Business Processes

As digital signage becomes more prevalent, organizations are beginning to explore how AI can be used to streamline or automate even more business processes. 

Self-service kiosks have great adoption rates among major retail chains, while lift-and-learn displays help apparel stores make their customer experience so much more enjoyable.

Rule-based digital signage already shows major wins, but it barely scratches the surface of what's possible. 

AI is here to challenge what we believe is possible, empowering organizations to streamline or eliminate entire process chains.

For instance, consider a retail store that uses AI-enabled digital signage to provide personalized recommendations to shoppers. The store could use data from the shopper's purchase history and third-party sources to make recommendations in real time. 

This would allow the store to reduce or eliminate the need for sales staff to provide recommendations to shoppers–all while increasing the average order value.

As another example, AI-enabled digital signage could be used to automatically update pricing information or make other changes based on conditions in the store.

This would further reduce the need for manual processes and could result in a major boost to productivity for the organization.

Prepare to Embrace the Next Generation of Digital Signage with Wallboard

While AI-powered signage promises major improvements across the board, not all organizations will be able to reap those benefits.

If you're still using playback machines to power your digital signage network, you won't be able to leverage advanced content types, as your hardware and software are very unlikely to have the capabilities needed to support dynamic data integrations, API webhooks, and modern file formats.

This is where Wallboard comes into play. Our advanced digital signage CMS supports all major operating systems and content types, helping you stay ahead of the curve at all times.

With a flexible content editor and a vast template library, you can create and deploy professional digital signs in just a few clicks.

Here's a quick video showing how the platform works:

Want to learn more? Get in touch with our team today to schedule a free demo.