A digital screen bolted to a wall and left on a loop of static promotional slides is one of the most expensive pieces of unused real estate in a retail network. It draws power, needs maintenance, and takes up space that could be doing something. In a lot of stores, it isn't doing much of anything beyond looking modern.
The gap isn't the hardware. It's what runs on it, and who controls it.
Control comes before the content question
It's tempting to jump straight to creative: what should the screen say? That's the wrong starting point. The research on digital signage backs this up, but so does the operating logic behind managing a network of screens at all. Before you can decide what plays where, you need control: one dashboard that can push a campaign to every screen, or to a specific region, or to a single store. Without that, "what's on our screens" is a question nobody can answer quickly, and a screen you can't update reliably isn't an asset. It's a fixed cost with a fan bolted to the back of it.
Once control is in place, orchestration is what makes the screens work as a system rather than a hundred separate installations: content scheduled to the moment, synchronised with what's playing over the speakers and what's in the air, so the whole location feels considered rather than assembled from parts.
What good digital signage actually does
The clearest evidence on this comes from a 2025 field experiment covering 237 advertising campaigns and 30 million shoppers, published in the Journal of Marketing. It found that exposure to a digital signage ad increased the probability of purchasing the featured product, and the effect was stronger for popular brands, emotionally-led messaging, and screens placed close to the product itself. Crucially, the study also found digital signage created spillover: shoppers exposed to an ad were more likely to buy other products from the same brand, and less likely to switch to a competitor. That's a screen doing three jobs at once. It moves the featured product, reinforces brand preference, and grows the category, without a single extra staff member lifting a finger.
Separately, industry data on digital signage adoption more broadly puts a number on this: roughly 80% of brands report a significant sales increase from digital signage, with the strongest performers seeing gains of up to 33%. That's a range, not a guarantee, and it depends entirely on the same fundamentals: is the content current, is it targeted, is it actually being managed.
None of it happens by accident. It happens because the content on the screen was scheduled for the right moment, targeted at the right shopper, and changed often enough to still earn attention. A static loop that hasn't changed in six weeks isn't signage anymore. It's wallpaper.
The three things that separate working screens from wasted ones
Centralised control. If updating a promotion means calling, emailing, or physically visiting every store, the update won't happen consistently, and inconsistency is what erodes brand trust across a network. Head office needs the ability to push a campaign to every screen, or to a specific region, or to a single store, from one dashboard.
Scheduling that matches the moment. The same screen should say something different at 8am than at 6pm, something different on a Tuesday than a Saturday, something different in a heatwave than in a cold snap. Real-time and rules-based scheduling turns a screen from decoration into a tool that responds to what's actually happening in the store, right now.
Content built for attention, not just information. The research is specific here: emotional messaging outperforms purely informational messaging, and screens near the product they're advertising outperform screens placed at a distance. Signage strategy isn't just what do we want to say. It's where does this need to sit, and what will actually make someone look up.
A revenue conversation worth having, carefully
Once a network of screens is centrally managed, something else becomes possible: those same screens don't have to only sell your own products. A well-run screen network can become inventory, sold the way a publisher sells ad space, with brands paying for placement the way they already pay for shelf and catalogue space. This is an early-stage opportunity, not an established revenue line for most retailers yet, and it depends entirely on the control layer already being solid. A screen network that can't reliably schedule its own promotions isn't ready to sell placements to anyone else.
The direction of travel is real. In-store retail media is a small but fast-growing slice of the broader retail media market, and the operators paying attention now will be better placed than the ones who treat it as an afterthought. Whether or not monetising the screens is on this year's roadmap, building the control and orchestration layer that makes it possible eventually costs nothing to start now.
Getting from "screens exist" to "screens perform"
For most retail networks, the gap between where they are and where the research says they should be isn't a technology gap. It's a control gap. The screens are already installed. What's missing is the ability to push the right content to the right store at the right time from one place, and to see what's actually working once it's live.
That's an operational decision before it's a creative one. Solve the control problem first: centralise the dashboard, standardise the scheduling rules, connect it to the rest of the in-location experience. The creative and commercial upside follows from there, not the other way around.
The takeaway: a screen that isn't centrally scheduled and regularly refreshed isn't signage, it's decoration. Fix the control layer first, and the sales lift and the ad revenue potential both become available to you.
Sources cited
- Journal of Marketing (2025). In-Store Advertising with Digital Signage. Field experiment across 237 campaigns and 30 million shoppers.
- Solomon Partners (2025). Retail Media Advertising Surges in Q2 2025. US retail media market analysis.
- InternetRetailing (2025). Retail Media Instore Report 2025.
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