The IPTV and digital signage fields are drawing closer to each other

Digital signage has evolved to the stage where you now find it deployed almost everywhere, from world-class venues to local school cafeterias. According to research company MarketsandMarkets, the international digital signage market could be worth ?9 billion by 2020.

This has come with a rapid increase in the flexibility of the medium: digital signage now enables large-scale venues to provide promotional and informational messages to hundreds, or even thousands, of screens throughout a venue and, when integrated with IPTV, network-wide delivery of multi-media content, scheduling, customisation and management can be combined with relevant, informative, persuasive and visually engaging digital content, bolstering the service for the end user.

Digital signage is becoming a key feature in venues that offer public services, such as leisure centres and sports stadia, fulfilling a need to deliver information and advertising in real time. We can expect to see a growth in adoption, as more and more organisations turn to digital means in order to provide personalised services, such as timetables and wayfinding.

An increasing number of businesses are turning to IPTV as they choose the best solution in which to inform employees and customers alike. This explosion in demand for video content will spell the end for coaxial networks in corporate organisations and venues, as such systems have limited scalability.

IPTV plays a key role in the delivery of content to any screen throughout a venue and has helped integrate advanced digital signage for more complex deployments. Businesses across countless verticals can offer a wide range of services that leverage IPTV integrated with digital signage, to display relevant, informative, persuasive and visually engaging digital content.

As we have seen from the recent World Cup, sport is big business. Venues of all types have implemented IPTV systems as they look to enhance the visitor experience. Screens can now be found in every corner of stadiums, providing real-time messaging to both improve the visitor experience and for more efficient sharing of information between staff behind the scenes.

It is a truly global phenomenon, which has fast-growing momentum in many other verticals, such as airports where digital signage takes an ever more significant role, as it offers the crucial capability of providing live information, such as flight information, in multiple languages.

Digital signage products and applications have grown in popularity and remain most popular in Europe and North America, but we are seeing strong growth in the Asia-Pacific region, further boosting the digital signage industry towards that magic ?9 billion figure.