How Data-Driven Digital Signage can improve customer engagement

Let’s explore how data-driven digital signage can enhance ad engagement, especially in offline environments.

DISPL specializes in AI-Powered Audience Analytics paired with Smart Digital Signage to create personalized, measurable advertising experiences. With software controlling over 5,000 screens worldwide, we have developed a deep understanding of maximizing offline advertising effectiveness.

Through the Visitor Insights platform, DISPL collects anonymized and GDPR-compliant data directly from screens equipped with sensors. These sensors gather metrics such as age, gender, and viewing duration without capturing, storing or transmitting any personal data. Using these insights, media owners, retailers, brands, and other businesses can optimize their digital signage content, analyze their screen audience or store traffic and understand audience behavior in real time, paving the way for highly targeted content strategies.

Before diving in, let’s define what we mean by the term "engagement" that we’re using here. Drawing parallels with online analytics, we categorize visitors into two groups: traffic and leads. Traffic represents all visitors to your location, while leads are those who show a deeper interest—in this case, in the displayed content. According to our expertise, if someone watches a screen for more than 15 seconds, they’re highly engaged and are likely a potential customer. Of course, the ideal duration may vary depending on the business type. However, for simplicity and consistency, we'll use our standard benchmark of engagement—15 seconds or more—to evaluate performance across locations.

Real-Life Examples of Digital Signage Engagement Metrics From Our Projects

Today, we'll explore audience engagement with digital signage content across various locations based on what we saw in our projects and discuss which types of content perform best in each setting.

Analyzing millions of interactions, DISPL has identified trends in engagement across different offline settings. Here’s how the data translates into actionable insights:

Shopping Malls

Hallways

In shopping center hallways average customer engagement for digital signage is 1%. These screens suffer from low engagement as people are usually in transit and have specific destinations. This significantly affects the average viewing time. For shopping mall hallways it is only 3 seconds. 

Best content to show: Short, eye-catching dynamic content with clear messaging that is consistently displayed on the screen.

Food Courts

Engagement in shopping mall food courts is 11 times higher than in hallways, with average viewing time of 12 seconds. Short, catchy ads (10–15 seconds) perform best in these zones​​.

Best content to show: Eye-catching visuals and easy-to-understand messaging in a short (about 15 sec) video to get the best effect. 

Retail Stores

Brand zones

If we are talking about a brand zone in a big multi-brand retail store (for example, a consumer electronics store or beauty store), digital signage screens play a huge role in attracting visitors right to your brand, giving them a reason to choose you over the competitors. The second goal of such screens is to promote the product like your employees would do, but with the help of video demonstrations and promotions. Here we will see the average engagement of  11% and 10 seconds of average viewing time. 

The best content to show: Targeting content with a very eye-catching first scene (it shouldn’t necessarily have a clear message, but should attract the attention of people even from long distances) and then showing product promos targeted on the person who is standing in front of the screen, 10-15 second length on average. Lift-and-learn technology can work perfectly at this place, however it may be expensive to implement and upkeep.

Screens in mono-brand stores

The main goal of digital signage in monobrand stores or brand boutiques is to provide a WOW effect and show brand values, supporting your brand narrative. Don’t expect high engagement here, because people already came to your store and they will be concentrated on the product. The percent of engaged visitors is 4% on average with 4 sec of average viewing time. 

The best content to show: Don’t show eye-catching promos or something that will grab a lot of attention. Better focus on light brand-centered videos of a very short length (4-5 sec). Synchronization of all screens with content that changes on demand by the sales assistants may work perfectly here to support their sales pitch.

Checkout zones in retail locations

Screens located at checkout areas perform the best, because people are usually queueing there and are not concentrating on anything else with average viewing durations of 12 seconds. You can use separate screens above the queue, tablets or POS screens. It can be a good idea to combine checkout information (price, checked products) with promotional content about you loyalty programs, ongoing promotions, and news. Attracting attention here can translates directly into purchase decisions​​ (for example, FMCG products)

The best content to show: Display upsell promotions, loyalty program offers, or time-sensitive deals to capture the customer's attention during waiting times. Perfect place to show some feedback forms.

Quick Service Restaurants, Cafes and Other HoReCa Places

Dynamic Menu Boards

Menu boards are magnets for customer’s eyes, because they have the information that your visitors need – menu. It would be a bad call to not utilize this advantage. Expect high engagement here and longer viewing time (about 17 sec).

The best content to show: don’t hesitate to show images and short (2-3 sec) videos of new products, promotions and best positions in the menu. It can increase sales up to 40% – proven! Use screen synchronization to create a wow-effect and tell about new positions or specials. But don’t overdo your efforts, because it may frustrate your customers. Make sure your screens are not overloaded and the menu is still easy to read.

Public Transport & Taxis

Transit Screens

Screens in buses, trains, taxi cabs, airports, bus stops and other train stations. THE BEST place to show ads in terms of average viewing time and engagement – 84% of engaged audience and 34(!) Seconds of average viewing duration. People are sitting or standing still for a long time, usually they have nothing to do except looking at what’s around them. So it is your ultimate opportunity to capture the attention of passengers and people in transit with your digital signage content.

The best content to show: Longer ads can be shown here, it would be even better if it would have a plot – like a mini-film, this would increase engagement and make people view until the end.

What To Consider When Creating Digital Signage Content Strategy

For your offline advertising investment to truly pay off, it's crucial to consider the context in which your content will be displayed. The location of your digital signage screens significantly impacts their effectiveness, influencing both audience engagement and campaign outcomes. So it is also important to set your expectations accordingly. You shouldn’t expect to get attention from 50% of your traffic even if you have a mind-blowingly cool video placed in a low engagement and pass-through location like a shopping mall hallway.

Hence, you should tailor your visuals and video length to suit the environment. Shorter, snappier videos may work better in high-traffic areas, while longer, more detailed content could perform well in settings where visitors stay for longer and have more opportunities to see your campaign.

Also, content targeting and personalization can significantly increase efficiency of your digital signage. Solutions, like DISPL’s Engage Suite, that provide tools for real-time content switching based on the audience in front of the screen, can increase audience engagement by 30% or even more.

But even with impactful content and smart targeting on your screens, you need to know how your digital signage performs to constantly improve. AI-powered Audience analytics is your key to measuring the success of your advertising campaigns, right down to individual pieces of content. Solutions like DISPL Measure provide insights, allowing you to see who viewed your content, how long they watched, and how engaged they were—empowering you to optimize and refine your strategy for maximum impact.