Global Market for Digital Signage Report

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

NSR’s Global Market for Digital Signage report is now available at a cost of USD 2,995 (Standard License) or USD 5,995 (Enterprise License).

I am sure that many large corporates will end up buying this – as they do other reports but we always question the way in which they are compiled (everyone and his dog was rung up by NSR to give their input and supply data).

We don’t mind that so much but it’s always in such a short time frame that their is no (long term) accumulated wisdom in the research – it’s always a hurried lets-get-expert in a short period of time type of process.

Our first coverage of the report being compiled was back in February so the report process has taken them 2 – 3 months, February probably and effectively March and April to put the whole thing together!

Digital Signage Advertising en Route to Becoming a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry Out-of-Home Digital Display Networks to Generate $2.7 Billion in Advertising Revenue by 2013

CAMBRIDGE, MA – April 29, 2008 – NSR today announced the release of its market research and forecast report:Global Market for Digital Signage. Focused exclusively on networks consisting of digital displays used for third party advertising, the report provides a study of the major verticals served by these networks across all regions of the world. Data from over 200 companies forms a core of the research, and the report provides Excel models that allow operators and advertisers to calculate their return on investment (ROI) for Digital Signage networks.

Digital Signage networks have evolved from offshoots of business television to corporate marketing mechanisms to an advertising medium today, which leading international advertisers are paying serious attention to for reaching customers as they spend more time away from, and indeed avoiding, mainstream media. As the industry evolves its own sets of standards and measurement of true audience impact grows, advertiser confidence will build and revenues will grow at rates that NSR believes will mimic the growth of online advertising during the past decade.

According to NSR the industry, which has the majority of deployments and revenues globally from retail, hospitality, healthcare and transportation verticals, is poised to grow from an estimated installed base of about 210,000 sites in 2007 to more than 850,000 sites during the period from 2008 to 2013. Though North America and Europe remain leaders in deployments, countries such as China, Australia and India in the Asia Pacific are witnessing tremendous growth and are estimated to reach the scale of their early-adoptive counterparts over a five-year period.

Revenues from advertising, though hard to come by initially, have picked up considerably with advertisers recognizing the impact of the medium on consumers, especially in retail locations such as malls and supermarkets. Here, once again, the global industry is expected to grow at a healthy rate of about 18% from its current estimated figure of nearly $1 billion annually in advertising revenue.

“We have all seen a screen outside of our homes at some point beaming advertising content at us with the idea that we make our decisions at the point of sale” stated Prashant Butani, Analyst for NSR and author of the report. “However, despite an ROI model that is yet to be proven, companies continue to deploy large networks, as advertisers that were once skeptical are now more apt to divert a portion of their huge advertising budgets to a medium that claims to be here to stay.” This acceptance of the medium will drive the industry past billion dollar figures in revenues from advertising, sales of customer premises equipment as well as software over the next five years.

When asked, what makes this report different from other research efforts, Butani added, “We, at NSR, pride ourselves on our forecast model that has served the satellite, wireless and digital media markets for nearly a decade. With this report we also incorporate expertise on calculating return on investment, which adds to our forecasts addressing key verticals across all regions of the world. Advertisers want to know what impact advertising on such a network will have on their sales figures, and entrepreneurs want to know when their network will break even. Both of these concerns have been addressed with our spreadsheet models, which users are free to tweak and develop based on their own estimates.”

About the Report

Global Market for Digital Signage is a multi-client report now available from NSR. The report forecasts the sites and revenues associated with the Digital Signage market in each region, examines the business model behind advertising-based Digital Signs and includes a breakdown of the elements of the business pertaining to network operators. As additional tools for business planners, spreadsheet models for calculating return on investment for both operators and advertisers are included with the report. For additional information on this report, including a full table of contents, list of exhibits and executive summary, please visit www.nsr.com or call NSR at 617-576-5771.

About NSR

NSR is an international market research and consulting firm specializing in satellite and wireless technology and applications. NSR’s primary areas of expertise include emerging technology, IP applications, and broadcast services. With extensive expertise in all regions and a number of broadband sectors, NSR is a leading provider of in-depth market insight and analyses.

We are not sure where they got there “estimated installed base of about 210,000 sites in 2007” figure from – bearing in mind two things; (1) these are sites, not screens or displays and (2) they state early on in the report that they are only focusing on screens that take 3rd party advertising revenues.

More accurate figures that we work to see a 2007 installed base of just under 150,000 screens (note: screens not sites!!!) growing to just under 500,000 by 2012 BUT IMPORTANTLY those screen numbers include BOTH merchandising and 3rd party advertising displays so we think that the NSR figures are way off to start with!


2 Responses to “Global Market for Digital Signage Report”

  1. Anonymous Says:

    112,000 installed base of digital displays by Focus Media alone as stated here http://www.focusmedia.cn/en/aboutus/companyoverview.htm

  2. kirk mitchell Says:

    I agree. Focus Media’s deployments for in-store and commerical alone total over 150,000. Now we need to add the rest of the world’s deployments which are greater than 0.

    Is anyone reading the publicly available documentation?

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