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As a marketer or brand builder, you’ve likely heard this before: The best advertising is the kind people can’t easily skip or scroll past. Digital advertising screens do just that. They pair the massive, high-visibility impact of traditional billboards with the flexibility and real-time analytics you’d expect from online advertising.
Bright, animated displays provide opportunities for you to place your clients’ messaging in front of the very people you want to reach, exactly when you want to reach them. And unlike an online ad, no one’s reaching for the “skip” button.
Below, let’s walk through why digital signage matters in your ad strategy, where you can use it, and how to make it worth every penny for you and your clients.
Why Digital Signage is a Game-Changer for Advertising Agencies
Expand Reach with High-Impact Displays
If you think about it, one reason digital signage makes an impact is its placement in places with massive foot or vehicle traffic: highways, city centers, train stations, airports—you name it. People simply can’t dodge these displays. In the UK, for instance, more than 98% of the population sees outdoor ads every week. Meanwhile, 71% of drivers in the U.S. notice roadside digital signs during their commutes.
This means that it's nearly impossible for your brand messaging to go unnoticed. Not everyone is reading the same social feed, but almost everyone is out there in the real world, traveling from place to place.
High-traffic digital billboards ensure your clients’ brands are in the spotlight, which builds brand familiarity through consistent exposure.
Boosting Engagement with Dynamic Content
Large-format ads give you room to create vivid visuals that your audience can’t help but remember. Some studies even show out-of-home (OOH) ads have higher consumer recall than TV, radio, print, or online ads. When those OOH ads are digital, recall climbs higher. One Nielsen study shows that digital billboards can achieve a 71% higher recall rate than traditional static ones.
Why is that? Motion. Lights. Bold colors. They all make a statement. So, if you want your clients’ campaigns to stand out in a sea of never-ending ads, large-format digital signage is your best medium.
Interactivity goes further by inviting your audience to play an active role. For instance, Coca-Cola launched the “Playable Billboard” campaign in Times Square last year, which invited passersby to grab controllers and engage in a retro “Pong”-style gaming battle.
They used a 42x68 feet billboard that lights up the night sky using 1,800 LED modules - practically impossible to miss. The campaign gained over 6.8 million impressions, and sparked over 234 unique interactions between strangers.
Cost-Effective Media Buying & Campaign Optimization
Digital signage is agile. Unlike traditional static billboards, digital signage allows instant content updates, making your campaigns more agile and responsive. If an ad creative doesn’t work or you decide to run a flash sale, you can swap in new content on the spot.
A single digital billboard can rotate multiple ads, allowing for flexible budget allocation and multiple brands sharing screen time.
Where You Can Use Digital Signage (and How)
1. Programmatic DOOH Advertising for Clients
Programmatic digital out-of-home advertising opens the door to automated, data-driven placements. You set your campaign parameters, location, time, and audience preferences, and let a platform handle the rest. Ads appear where and when you want, and you pay only for relevant slots.
You can think of it as Google Ads for the physical world: You’re bidding for space on screens instead of banner slots on websites. And because everything is trackable, you get real-time feedback on whether your campaign is hitting the mark.
2. Retail & Point-of-Sale Advertising
If your clients want to influence customers at the exact moment they make a purchase, in-store digital signs are proven to drive sales by up to 33%. Strategic screens in malls or near checkout counters deliver timely promos that encourage impulse buying. “Buy now, 20% off this weekend” is hard to ignore when you’re standing in line with your wallet out.
And because you can update those screens in minutes, you can keep your promos fresh or run flash sales that play on scarcity (“Two-hour sale—don’t miss out!”). It’s a direct, immediate pathway to higher conversions.
3. Event & Experiential Marketing
Trade shows, conferences, and festivals are all about making a splash, and interactive digital kiosks or wall displays help you do just that. Engaging features such as touchscreen games, interactive digital photo booths, and live social media walls enhance audience interaction and brand recall.
Better still, you can collect real-time data on engagement, like how many people played your game or scanned your QR code, and present that to your client.
4. Corporate & Brand Messaging
Sometimes, the audience you want to reach is your own client’s employees. Digital displays can replace bland bulletin boards with dynamic displays that keep everyone in the loop by announcing milestones, sharing internal updates, and reinforcing the brand’s core values.
If your client runs a showroom or a flagship store, digital screens can double as storytelling canvases. It could be immersive videos or interactive elements that showcase a brand’s history, product lineup, or philanthropic efforts.
5. Transit & Outdoor Advertising
Digital signage thrives in outdoor settings because it’s a captive audience scenario. Travelers will notice an ad if it’s interesting or relevant. And if you know your audience’s typical route or profile (say, corporate professionals at an airport terminal), you can tailor your messaging accordingly.
Best Practices for Advertising Agencies Implementing Digital Signage
1. Selecting Network
You have to choose between third-party DOOH networks or in-house (client-owned) displays. Third-party networks give you large-scale reach instantly; client-owned displays give you full control and exclusivity.
Often, the best approach is a mix of both — blanket coverage for broad awareness plus private networks for a specialized, ongoing brand experience.
2. Crafting Engaging, High-Impact Ad Content
Viewers typically engage with digital signage briefly. Studies show that the average view time for a digital billboard ad is approximately 8 seconds, making it crucial to deliver a clear and impactful message quickly.
This means your creatives should communicate the message extremely quickly. Use bold headlines, striking imagery, and as little text as necessary. If using video or animation, the key frames/logos/taglines should appear within the first few seconds and should be easily digestible.
A good practice is to treat OOH content like a silent movie trailer – it should be visually compelling and understandable with no sound and minimal reading.
3. Using Analytics to Track Ad Performance
Most digital signage software provides built-in analytics. At minimum, you should gather impressions or play counts – i.e., how many times and when each ad was shown (often referred to as proof-of-play data).
If there are interactive elements (touchscreen clicks, QR code scans, short URLs or promo codes displayed), track those closely. These are direct indicators of engagement. For instance, “We got 200 QR code scans from the billboard ad, which led to 50 app downloads.”
Even for non-interactive signs, you can measure conversion by looking at lifts in business outcomes during the campaign period (e.g., foot traffic, sales, web searches).
4. Sync It with Your Other Channels
Don’t let digital signage run in isolation. Tie it to your online campaigns, social media, and email marketing. Maybe show a QR code on a screen that leads people straight to a landing page or encourages them to post on social media.
An omnichannel strategy creates a “surround sound” effect: your audience sees consistent, reinforcing messages wherever they go, which makes each contact point more memorable.
How Look Digital Signage Helps You Succeed
Behind every successful ad campaign is a reliable platform that keeps everything running smoothly. Look digital signage CMS helps you manage multiple screens, schedules, and ad creatives from a single point. Once logged into your Look cloud-based dashboard, you can queue up or swap out content across thousands of displays with a few clicks.
Why This Matters for You:
Instant Updates – When you need to change a campaign’s creative, you can do it remotely in real time as long as you have an internet connection. You can swap out a creative asset, upload new media, or even update pricing on a menu board within seconds. Plus, Look DS has predesigned templates that speed up the design process. Instead of starting from scratch every time, you can adapt a pre-built layout to maintain a consistent brand look across all your displays.
Advanced Scheduling – Set up different ads for different times of day or weather conditions to maximize relevance.
Analytics & Proof-of-Play – The system logs every instance of your ads and displays it in straightforward reports. You’ll know exactly which ad ran on which screen and how often. If you integrate sensors or audience measurement tools, you can even get approximate viewer counts or engagement data. That way, you can show clients the tangible results of each campaign and make quick, data-driven tweaks when needed.
Collaboration and Scalability –You can manage many screens across different locations and even different clients under one account (with role-based access if needed, so each client or team sees only their content). As you expand to a nationwide network, the same system supports you.
White-Label Options – If you prefer your branding on the dashboard you share with clients, Look DS can accommodate that, too.
Elevate Your Agency’s Advertising Strategy with Digital Signage
The consequence of ignoring DOOH is that you risk getting lost in a sea of competing messages, especially if your competitors are lighting up city centers and transit stations with digital screens. On the other hand, the agencies and brands that do adopt DOOH enjoy measurable engagement, high-impact storytelling, and top-of-mind presence for their audience.
If you’re ready to see how easy managing a digital signage network can be and how it can transform your campaign outcomes, take the next step today.
Take control of your advertising strategy with Look DS. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and see how effortless real-time updates, analytics, and campaign management can be.
