Ways AI Leads Digital Signage to The Higher Level
We all have a general idea of what AI (artificial intelligence) can do for digital signage, such as making signage more interactive or more personal. Yet, these days, making something more interactive and more personal is not that impressive. What is impressive about AI is not what it does, but how it is used and applied to either achieve higher sales or to guide and manage staff members. Here are five ways that the clever use of AI has elevated digital signage to the next level, both not through clever programming, and through the ingenuity of use.
1 – Advertising Based on Local External Parameters
Thanks to our ever-increasingly online world, there is plenty of local data you can use to adjust how your digital signage software presents its information. For example, let’s say you run a small shop in High Street, and even though times have been tough, your digital sign still manages to draw a few people in to see your general store products. Then, one day, you install AI to run your digital signage software, removing the need for human-based decision-making.
When it is raining, your sign shows your best offers on umbrellas, and when it is sunny it shows your best line of sun hats. During icy weather, it shows offers on deicer for cars, and it shows fans on sweltering summer days. You must visit https://kitcast.tv/industries/restaurant-digital-signage/ to learn more about restaurant digital signage.
All of this could be done manually, but link the AI to the local weather report, and suddenly your sign is your most enticing tool for drawing the drop-in/footfall crowd. Plus, rigging up the AI to correspond with the external data would be as easy as aligning the most obvious sales offers with the corresponding weather conditions.
What’s more, there are hundreds of local external parameters that could direct your digital sign content, such as traffic congestion data, local Wi-Fi hot spot users, crime statistics, house prices, demographic movement, health/infection rates, and even third-party local data like ride-share user amounts, takeaway users, and so forth.
2 – Metrics Displayed Depending Upon Importance;
This type of AI is most often seen in large call centers. As the day progresses, different targets become more important, and the signs reflect what the upper management wants staff to do about it. For example, if call waiting times are too long, then metrics appear on the screens, and staff is prompted to shorten their call times. If sales start to slow, then metrics appear and staff is encouraged to push their products a little harder.
Informing staff about targets, important dates, and safety information is what digital signs have been doing for years. However, thanks to AI, the system itself can take a very reactive approach to staff management without the need for human interference. As the day progresses and the metrics change, people are instructed to take different approaches. Such technology can be used in a wide variety of businesses from stock brokerages to currency exchange trading companies. From holiday-making businesses to entertainment enterprises.
3 – Content-Based on Changing Input Such As Current Sales
In this case, your digital sign’s AI examines sales information and changes ads accordingly. The best example of this is in cinemas because they have been doing it for years. As people wait in lines and movie entrances, they see several digital signs as they go. As people wait and watch, they think they are seeing a set of pre-planned scheduled advertisements. People think that the ads for movies they are seeing are on a loop, but in bigger cinemas, this is not the case.
The AI decides which movies are going to be the most popular based on their current hype, budget, etc. However, when the movies actually start selling in the cinema, the sales information is used to alter the movie preview ads. The best-selling movies get the most screen time. After a few days, the AI has enough information so that it also knows the best time to show different movie ads, and it is all based on how the ticket sales were the previous few days. In chain theaters, this sales data is allied with the promotional budget of the movie since some theaters are incentivized to show certain ads for certain movies.
Movie theaters are an expert at basing their advertisements on sales data, but other business types have used it to just as much effect. For example, bookstores have used sales data to promote their books via their digital signs, which has become even more effective during runs on very popular books like Harry Potter, Fifty Shades of Gray, and Twilight books.
4 – Content Based on the Time and Date Related Metrics
As you have learned already, choosing what should appear on your digital signs can be controlled by AI and determined by things like local external information, sales data, and based on importance. You can also have your AI base content on the time of day and the date. Taking the cinema example from earlier, the content could be filtered based on the time of day, such as not promoting kid’s movies during school hours, and changing the frequency of advertisements on weekends.
However, there is also a more complex variety based on current social media AI programming. For quite a while now, social media tools have been analyzing social media content and measuring how much traction posts get when they are posted. They have been able to determine the best times of day for people to post their content, and often offer automated scheduling to best exploit said times.
Your digital signage AI could do a very similar thing. If your digital sign has a direct effect on something you can measure, such as footfall, sales, inquiries, and so forth, then such measurements could be allied with the time and date. This may help the AI predict which types of digital content should be displayed, and when it should be displayed.
5 – Data Collection Based on a Signage Data Feedback Loop
If your digital sign is interactive, like the interactive floor plan digital signs that are becoming popular in office buildings, then you could program your digital sign to collect data and use that same data to become more effective at its job. It is ironic that only now is the business world catching up to the touch-screen interactive sign used in the Nakatomi building in the 1988 movie Die Hard.
Let’s say you have a route planner for your shopping district. You could use the most commonly chosen routes to determine which stores have the highest numbers of passing pedestrians, and then charge shop rents accordingly. Plus, you could use the same information to promote stores requiring people to take different routes, so that parts of the shopping area do not become congested.
The point is that the information is always circling the loop. As you make changes to the content of the sign, people interact with it differently. Not only is this a valuable source of information, but it also gives you an idea of how your changes affect your targets and goals. Going back to the shopping area example, you could see how your changes to your shopping area affect planned routes, or how your changes to the content of the sign affect how people navigate your shopping district.
Conclusion – Brilliance is Determined by its Use
A piece of AI technology or programming is not brilliant because of its complexity, it is brilliant because of how it is used. It is reminiscent of season one, episode eleven of the Ricky Gervais show when Karl Pilkington recounted the story of the company that gave computer tablets to a tribe in Africa. When Karl visited, they were using the high-tech tablets as chopping boards. Technological brilliance is based on how the technology is used.
Being able to program a piece of AI to show advertising is not impressive. However, program it to guess what people want, and then entice them into buying, and you have a recipe for success.
Programming your AI to show business stats is mildly amusing but setting up your AI so it manages your staff performance without the need for human interference, that is impressive.
