Digital signage advertising means two different things, and most pages on the subject blur them. The first is using your own screens to promote your own products, offers, and events, which is what a store, a cafe, or a venue does every day. The second is selling time on your screens to other people, which turns a screen into a small media business.
Both run on the same screens and the same software, and both are covered here, including how campaigns are scheduled and placed, how a digital advertising board is run for third parties, what advertising on screens can measure, and what the setup requires.
Two kinds of digital signage advertising
The split matters because the goals, the content, and the measurement are different for each. Here is what each kind involves.
Promoting your own offers
Advertising with digital signage in this sense is promotion at the point of decision. The offer appears on the screen above the counter, beside the product, or in the window, timed to when it matters and retired when it ends. The audience is already in the building, the content is yours, and success is whether the offer moved what you wanted to move.
Selling screen time to others
A digital advertising board run for third parties shows paid content from local businesses, sponsors, or partners, usually in a loop alongside your own content. Gyms, waiting rooms, venues, and transit spaces do this to offset the cost of their screens or to generate revenue. The audience is a captive one, the content is someone else’s, and success is whether advertisers renew.
Most organizations start with the first kind and some graduate to the second. The sections below cover each in turn.
Advertising with digital signage, campaign by campaign
Promotion on screens works when it is treated as campaigns rather than wallpaper, and the platform does most of the discipline for you.
Schedule every campaign with a start and an end. An offer that begins Friday and ends Sunday is scheduled once and retires itself, so no screen ever shows last week’s promotion. Scheduling is what separates a campaign from a poster that nobody took down.
Daypart the message. The breakfast offer runs until eleven and the afternoon offer runs after, so the same screen sells different things to different people through the day.
Place the ad at the decision. Promotion is most effective within sight of the product or the register, and least effective in a corridor nobody stops in. Our retail digital signage page covers placement in stores, and our digital menu boards page covers promotion in food service.
Rotate rather than crowd. One offer per slot in a short loop is read, and six offers on one screen are ignored. Our signage templates page has a promotion layout built for exactly this, and our guide to content design covers what makes a slide readable at a glance.
Give the ad a next step. The QR Code Generator app puts a scannable code on the screen with optional UTM tracking, which is the simplest way to connect a screen to a landing page, a signup, or a coupon, and the simplest form of attribution signage offers.
Face the street when the audience is outside. A bright screen facing out through the window advertises to walk-by traffic around the clock, as our outdoor digital signage page explains.
A digital signage marketing strategy at this level is mostly a calendar. Decide what to promote each week, schedule it, and let the screens follow.
Running a digital advertising board for third parties
Selling screen time adds a few obligations on top of the campaign discipline above, and they are worth getting right before the first advertiser signs.
Build the loop deliberately. Decide how many advertiser slots share the loop with your own content, how long each slot runs, and how often the loop repeats, and sell slots on that basis. Slots of five to seven seconds give a passer-by time to read an ad without stalling the loop, and a loop that grows with every new advertiser dilutes everyone’s value.
Keep advertiser content in its own playlist. Advertisers’ creative lives in a playlist with its own schedule and permissions, separate from your announcements and promotions, so a change on one side never disturbs the other.
Mix in content people want to see. Weather, news, and local transit times between the ads give people a reason to keep looking at the screen, which is what the advertisers are paying for. The Weather app is the easiest place to start.
Describe your audience accurately. Advertisers want to know who sees the screen and how often. Describe the venue, the foot traffic, and the dwell time as they are, because the renewal depends on the advertiser’s own results, not on your pitch.
Be able to show the ad played. Every advertiser eventually asks for proof, and the record that answers it is play history, which logs what each screen played and when. Play history is in beta and available on request, and we switch it on per screen, so ask support to turn it on for the screens you sell before the first advertiser signs. Playback monitoring shows that each screen is online and what it is set to play, but monitoring and screenshots do not prove playback on their own. ScreenlyOS screens send a screenshot every few minutes rather than for every play, Screenly Anywhere screens do not send them, and privacy mode turns them off.
Set the rules in writing. Agree on content standards, slot length, start and end dates, and what happens if a screen is down for a day before the creative arrives.
Screens that carry third-party advertising are, in the end, ordinary signage run with a sales mindset. The screens, players, and software are the same as for any other use.
Growing into a digital signage advertising network
Some operators take the second kind of advertising further and run a digital signage advertising network, meaning a fleet of screens across many venues with time on them sold to local advertisers. Marketing agencies often run these networks in lobbies, waiting rooms, and other places where people pause for a minute, and the work is the same as running one board, multiplied.
Three habits make a network easier to sell. Many small advertisers have no designer, so offering to design their slides removes the biggest obstacle to signing them. Franchise clients arrive with finished marketing material and many locations, so one agreement can fill slots across a city. Agreements should state which screens carry each advertiser’s content and how often it appears in the loop, and a promise about when and where each ad played should rest on play history, which is in beta and available on request. Teams with developers can go further with the Screenly API, for example by letting clients upload their own creative or by removing an ad automatically when a contract ends.
A network grows one screen at a time, and each new screen joins the same dashboard in minutes, so the hardware and software never become the reason to stop adding venues.
What advertising on screens can and cannot measure
The honest answer separates signage from online advertising, and advertisers respect it.
Screens can record which content played, where, and when, through play history, which is in beta and available on request. Monitoring shows that a screen was online and what it was set to play, which is useful but is not a record of each play. Screens can measure scans when a QR code gives the viewer a next step, and those scans carry through to a landing page where normal web analytics take over. Screens can also be correlated with results by comparing sales of the promoted item during the campaign window against the window before it, which is the measurement most in-house promotion actually uses.
Screens cannot measure who looked, for how long, or whether the look led to a sale, without additional sensors or systems that are outside the signage platform. Any page that promises conversion tracking from a screen alone is promising more than screens deliver.
The practical measurement plan for most organizations is three things. Confirm the campaign played, count the scans, and compare the window.
Where advertising boards work
Advertising screens earn their place wherever people wait, browse, or pass, and the settings are familiar.
Stores and food service put the offer beside the product, as the retail and menu pages cover.
Gyms, salons, and waiting rooms have a captive audience that makes third-party slots viable, and our gym digital signage page shows the pattern.
Venues, lobbies, and transit spaces run sponsor and partner loops alongside event and wayfinding content, and our bus stop digital signage page covers one of the classic placements.
Storefront windows carry a street-facing screen that advertises to passers-by around the clock.
Workplaces run internal campaigns for benefits, events, and programs with the same tools as external promotion.
Across all of them, a digital advertising board is a scheduled, placed, measurable version of the poster it replaced, which is the whole case for it. Our digital signboards guide covers how screen-based boards compare with printed and illuminated ones.
What you need
An advertising screen is a screen, a player, and software, and the software does the advertising work. Any screen with HDMI runs a Screenly Player ($219) or Screenly Player Max Mk3 ($699), and supported smart TVs run Screenly Anywhere with no new hardware. The platform supplies scheduling with start and end dates, dayparting, playlists with permissions, the QR Code Generator app, and monitoring that shows every screen is online, which together cover both kinds of advertising. Play history, which records what each screen played, is in beta and available on request. Digital advertising software, in other words, is signage software used with a campaign mindset, and our digital signage software page covers evaluating it.
For a single self-managed ad screen, our free digital signage page covers Anthias, the open source player Screenly maintains, which runs on a Raspberry Pi. Costs follow the standard pattern on our digital signage cost page, and a screen used for third-party advertising is one of the few that can pay for itself directly.
Getting started
The first campaign can run this week, and the first paid slot can follow once the loop is working. The path looks like this.
- Start a trial and connect a screen with a Screenly Player or Screenly Anywhere.
- Build one promotion from a template, with a QR code for the next step.
- Schedule it with a start date, an end date, and a daypart.
- Check what played and count the scans when the window ends, using play history if it is on for that screen, and compare against the previous window.
- Add advertiser slots in their own playlist once the loop and the audience story are ready to sell.
From there, advertising on screens is a calendar and a loop, and the platform runs both.
Frequently asked questions
What is digital signage advertising?
Digital signage advertising is the use of screens to promote products, offers, and events. The content is either your own, which is in-house promotion, or other people’s, which means selling slots on your screens to advertisers, and both run on the same signage platform.
How does advertising with digital signage work?
Campaigns are scheduled with start and end dates and dayparts, placed at the point of decision, rotated in a short loop, and given a next step such as a QR code. The platform retires campaigns automatically, and play history, in beta and available on request, records what played.
Can I sell advertising on my digital signage?
Venues, gyms, and waiting rooms sell slots in a loop alongside their own content, with advertiser creative in its own playlist. Play history, in beta and available on request, records what each screen played. The platform provides the scheduling, monitoring, and play history, and the selling is up to the venue.
What is a digital signage advertising network?
A digital signage advertising network is a group of screens across several venues whose time is sold to advertisers, usually run by an agency or a venue operator. Each screen runs a loop of paid slots and house content, and the whole network is scheduled and monitored from one dashboard.
What can digital signage advertising measure?
With play history, which is in beta and available on request, it can record which content played, where, and when. It can also count scans of a QR code that carry through to web analytics. Sales during the campaign window can be compared against the window before, but screens alone cannot measure who looked or whether a look led to a purchase.
What is a digital advertising board?
A digital advertising board is a screen that runs promotional content in a scheduled loop, either for the organization’s own offers or for paying advertisers. It is a standard signage screen used with a campaign mindset.
Does digital signage advertising cost less than print?
It costs less for offers that change often, because every campaign after the first costs nothing to run and retires itself. For a single message that never changes, print remains cheaper, as our cost guide explains.
The poster that knows when to leave
Schedule the offer, place it where the decision happens, give it a next step, and confirm it ran. Screenly turns any screen into an advertising board that manages its own campaigns.
