Whether working with an in-house art department or an outside agency, here's a handy checklist to make sure your digital signage content achieves what you want.

Digital signage is going mainstream as a medium. Simply look around in retail stores, shopping malls, arenas, gas stations, hotel lobbies, restaurants, and just about any other place you can image, and you're bound to see one or more digital signs.

However, even though digital signs are growing in popularity, they are likely to be a rather new medium for the majority of graphic artists and other media creators, like graphic designers and animators, which you may turn to to create compelling content to achieve your communications goals.

Perhaps, you will be working with in-house graphic artists whose expertise is the design of brochures, reports and other printed collateral. Or, you may find yourself working with a creative agency that specializes in television commercials. Both are creative, talented and have an abundance of knowledge and experience to bring to the table. Your challenge will be communicating the unique demands of digital signage to them and directing them so they deliver the content you need.

Following some or all of the recommendations on this handy checklist should help you focus your creative team's talent regardless of their prior experience, or lack of experience, in creating digital signage content.

• Clearly state what you wish to accomplish. Explain precisely how the signs are to be used. Will they be informational in nature? Do you want to sell a product or service with the signs? Is the communication mission straightforward like that of a menu board or more nuanced?

• Define your target audience. Layout as much demographic information, i.e. age, sex, ethnic background, and psychographic information, including interests, attitudes and opinions, of your intended viewers as possible.

• Identify where the sign or signs will be located. Giving your creative team this information will inform decisions they make later about the appearance, placement and dwell time of content they will create.

• Explain desired quality. In today's world, it is hard to imagine that the display or displays to be used won't be HDTVs. But even if that's the case, will they be 720p, 1080i or even 1080p displays? That information will be helpful when content is created and may reduce the need for up, down or cross conversion of video, graphics and animation content.

• Visual SPAM. Because digital signage is becoming more common, the level of "visual noise" is also increasing. This should be considered along with the sensibilities of the target demographic. Work with your designers in creating a pleasing visual environment that will be more readily received by a discerning audience. Avoid excessive in-your-face content that may wax against the shopping experience by overloading the senses. Too much eye candy is not a good thing -it can give eye pain.

• Define duration. On a macro level, your messaging will be used for a finite period before it must be updated or changed entirely. On a micro level, individual pieces of content will dwell on the screen before being updated by the next item in the list. Information about both will help your team in creating content that can accomplish its communications task in the allotted time on screen as well as give the team a way to begin building a workable content production schedule.

• Discuss the number of onscreen zones desired. Start out by giving your team an idea of how many discrete areas of onscreen real estate you envision to communicate your message and what you believe should be communicated in each. Don't consider this the last word on the topic. Rather use your list as a point of departure to discuss and ultimately define how many zones actually will be used.

• Identify existing content resources. While you will want your content to be fresh, engaging and designed to meet your communications goals, there is no sense reinventing the wheel when existing resources can be used or repurposed. For example, if you intend to communicate to owners of high performance cars as they wait in a car dealer's service area, an existing RSS feed of Formula One, Indy Car and NASCAR race results and news might be available already for an onscreen crawl.

Whether or not your designers are experienced with digital signage, they will appreciate the guidance you give by discussing the items in the checklist. More importantly, reviewing the points in the checklist will help ensure you receive the content you need to achieve your communications goals.

Like any other aspect of business, successfully deploying digital signs hinges on achieving an acceptable return on investment on both the technology and the content to be displayed.

The use of digital signage is varied and diverse, which means the background, knowledge and skill brought to creating content to be delivered via this powerful medium is just as diverse and varied.

Consider the stark differences between a four-star hotel chain that's decided at the corporate level to use digital signs throughout its properties to welcome guests, offer wayfinding and promote various features and amenities. Now think about the local sports bar that's added digital signs to promote featured drinks and menu items while patrons quench their thirst and watch the game.

These are two entirely different types of businesses, with dramatically different resources to spend on digital signage content, varied levels of experience with using media to reach the public and quite diverse ideas about what they would like to accomplish with digital signs.

Regardless of these differences, however, the hotel chain and single sports bar -along with all other digital signage users- should share one common characteristic when it comes to digital signage: They need to determine their return on investment -not simply on the hardware and software needed but also on the digital content to be used.

Determining ROI on digital signage hardware and software is pretty straightforward. Simply divide the expense of both by their anticipated useful life in months or years. (For this example, I'll use months.) Then subtract this monthly expense from the revenue generated by the digital signs and divide this difference by the monthly expense.

For example, the ROI of a simple, single-sign system costing $6000 for hardware, software and display would look like this. Assuming a useful life of five years, or 60 months, $100 of expense should be assigned to each month of the system's useful life. If the sign generates an additional $150 in business per month, then the ROI in this example is 50 percent [that is $150 (revenue) - $100 (monthly expense of signage) = $50/$100 (monthly expense of signage) = .5].

The same sort of ROI equation can be applied to digital signage content; however, there are a few wrinkles to consider that make doing so a little trickier. First, consider that the useful life of content will be far shorter than that of the hardware and software. To be effective, that is to consistently attract the attention of patrons, content must be fresh and relevant. Thus, in a retail setting, the useful life of content will likely be measured in weeks, and possibly even days during certain times of the year.

Second, the expense side of the equation is a little more complex when it comes to digital signage content. For instance, will content be created in-house or by an outside agency? If in-house, will a new employee be required, or will an existing graphic artist take on the responsibility. Will elements of content created once be repurposed again and again in successive campaigns, thus requiring apportionment of content expenses across multiple uses? Will "free" content, such as an RSS feed, be leveraged in some campaigns and not others, thus impacting digital content expenses differently? Will the digital content be used across in multiple locations so a portion of the expense can be assigned to each location?

Third, digital signage content frequently has nothing to do with commerce. When revenue generation is not the goal of the sign, determining the ROI on content gets a little squishy. Considerations such as goodwill created among the public are much harder to quantify than dollars and cents.

Even though determining the return on investment of creating digital signage content can be difficult, it is essential. After all, doing so is the logical first step in assessing the value of any given digital signage content campaign.