Display Technology

4 digital signage rules to grab your audience's attention

Four key strategies to grip your audience's attention and get your message across using the power of digital signage.

Image: Adobe Stock

May 10, 2024 by Daniel Brown — Editor, Networld Media Group

We live in an age of decreasing attention spans, and in the digital signage game, time is money. Whether you're engaged in DOOH advertising, creating infotainment for urban kiosks, or simply creating workplace digital signage, you will generally have only seconds to engage a viewer's attention and get your message across. So, how do you do that?

Below are four key strategies to grip your audience's attention and get your message across using the power of digital signage.

Rule 1: Location, location, location

The landscape has never been more crowded in terms of digital signage, particularly in urban and retail environments. Even restaurants are getting in on the action, with in-house and table-based digital signage, tablets, and kiosks.

For this reason, viewers are overloaded with lights, sounds, and information. It's part of a larger theme of "screen fatigue" across technologies like tablets and phones — and that's why it's vital to make your signage stand out through placement.

Are you putting your message in a location where it will stand out from the competition? If you're placing a sign in your storefront, for example, you will want to place it where it can be easily seen but will not be drowned out by other digital messaging displays. If you have multiple displays going up, try to space them out so that they are not right next to each other; you don't want to be competing with yourself for your audience's attention! As more stores, restaurants and retail environments go "phygital" with a mix of physical and digital messaging, you can make your digital signage stand out by placing it in a minimalist fashion, allowing your physical decor and messaging to surround and contrast with your digital messaging platform in a way that makes it stand out vividly.

If you're a DOOH advertising professional, this rule counts double. As we saw in our conversation with Kevin Bartanian, an LA DOOH expert, cutting-edge scientific research has been going into finding out just how the human brain selects messages amid information overload. Sometimes "less is more" — by selecting your inventory in less heavily advertised physical locations, you may stand a chance to give your message more clout; however, if you find that you have to go toe-to-toe in the most crowded digital environments, you need to make your content stand out (see Rule 2!) As Bartanian says, make your message memorable!

Rule 2: Make your content stand out

In an overcrowded digital landscape, sometimes you can't help but compete with other screens. The solution in this case is to make your content stand out from the crowd. One powerful way to do this involves using alternative signage installations (including curved signage), spectaculars, and emerging technologies like 3D and holograms (think Kim Kardashian's viral Oculus advertising campaign).

Having vivid, unique, original content is key, but presenting that content in a format that overshadows the competition is a powerful way to draw attention from your competitors. It's one reason why large-scale 3D anamorphic is popular, with musicians using 3D ads to "take over" high-traffic urban areas, or utilizing digital signage in their live concerts, like Post Malone at the TSX Broadway venue.

Don't be afraid to make a splash and do something bold that your competitors avoid. Of course, remember your audience, and keep your signage accessible — avoid cheap tricks like blatantly offensive content or strobing lights that can hurt viewers' eyes or induce migraines. That's the one kind of attention you don't want to get!

Rule 3: Make it dance

It bears repeating in its own section — make your content dance! To this day, digital signage and marketing professionals still forget to add motion, which is the most powerful tool for drawing the human eye. Vivid, rich content that is aesthetically pleasing and which moves is always going to stand out over stale, stationary, bland messaging, from advertising to workplace information.

It's one of the most important aspects of a dynamic digital canvas, and it's central to strategy for world-class content from experts like Brian Cole, CEO at edgefactory. In an exclusive interview, Cole shared insights into how his team have created content for live events around the world for the likes of Disney, Quest, and many more.

"I would say three missing components from most corporate videos and communications. Energy, motion and edge," Cole said. "How do you target heartstrings?" Cole asked. "How do you connect with emotions using digital? It's a whole other challenge."

As consumers and workers fuel a renaissance of in-person experiences (for work and play and everything in-between), standing at the forefront of melding the physical environment with interactive messaging (including QR codes) is a great way to make your viewer feel "seen" and to create a memorable experience.

Make sure that you keep the text brief and to-the-point. Avoid small-print or extremely long text messages, and make sure that you invest in quality creative such as professional graphics and animations. Instead of static images, try for messages that turn over after 30 seconds or less; some argue that the proverbial 7 seconds is still the sweet spot, as explained by George Stenitzer, founder and chief content officer at Crystal Clear Communications in his primer on the "seven second rule" in marketing.

"In the first 7 seconds, your customer makes the first critical decision," Stenitzer writes. "Whether to keep listening, enter into a conversation with you, or end it right now. For marketers, 7 seconds mark the first moment of truth. It's the size of our smallest attention span. You only have 7 seconds to get attention and answer customers' key question, 'What's in it for me?' Not by accident, 7 seconds is the length of the average sound bite in news media."

Whether you choose to leverage the emerging world of generative and conversational AI (including AI avatars that can converse with your audience), or whether you focus on professional art and photography assets, your attention to detail and investment in original content that surprises and delights your audience in ways the other screens aren't doing is a powerful way to make your message get across and stick with each viewer. And the more you learn to craft an original, colorful, moving aesthetic for your campaigns, the more your digital signage content will stand out from the crowd.

Rule 4: Give value

In a world that is over-stuffed with digital messaging, noise, and lights demanding our constant attention, one of the most powerful tools you have to stand out from the competition is to craft content that genuinely informs and entertains your audience, whether you're crafting infotainment content for a city's wayfinding kiosks or whether you're crafting advertising content for the DOOH sphere.

People are tired of ads and the demands of digital messaging on their attention; content that seeks to brighten their day in some way, rather than merely exploiting their attention, will always stand out from blatantly mercenary messaging. It's the reason guerilla marketing and viral humor campaigns are still so powerful, such as Ryan Reynolds using ChatGPT to promote Mint Mobile.

In fact, "adding value" is one of Forbes' top 10 content rules for the 21st century, with a growing movement of "value-added content creation" taking over the content creation game as algorithms evolve to reward content that users genuinely deem useful.

"Focus on content that adds value for your audience," Paulo Petrocelli, founder of EMMA for Peace, said when interviewed by Forbes on these rules. "Give answers, bring solutions, create an emotional connection and engage. Your ultimate goal should be to build a community genuinely interested in what you have to say."

About Daniel Brown

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Daniel Brown is the editor of Digital Signage Today, a contributing editor for Automation & Self-Service, and an accomplished writer and multimedia content producer with extensive experience covering technology and business. His work has appeared in a range of business and technology publications, including interviews with eminent business leaders, inventors and technologists. He has written extensively on AI and the integration of technology and business strategy with empathy and the human touch. Brown is the author of two novels and a podcaster. His previous experience includes IT work at an Ivy League research institution, education and business consulting, and retail sales and management.