Much has been said of the benefits digital signage offers marketers, but don’t forget the personal context in which digital signage viewers will likely see your message.

Successful marketers know their ads exist in a context that enhances the value of their message to consumers. For instance, a billboard lets Interstate drivers know a gas station is at the next exit. Or, a print ad for the latest smartphone runs in a magazine with a focus on high-tech gadgets. Even the nightly news has commercials relevant to its audience. Who doesn’t need an antacid or hemorrhoid relief after plugging into the latest news?

The same is true for successful digital signage ads. To succeed for the marketer, digital signage ads and messages must deliver value to the consumer. A freely available white paper from DigitalSignageToday.com entitled, “Key Ingredients For a Successful Digital Signage Campaign,” sheds light on putting together a digital signage network that delivers a value proposition for consumers.

According to the white paper, a successful digital signage network combines five key elements to convey clear messages to consumers and keep them entertained. To this end, digital signage captures the attention of consumers and focuses it on product features, specials, or some sort of infotainment that adds to the brand experience. So, by delivering an appealing message at the point of purchase to customizing a marketing message for a specific place and time, digital signage offers significant benefits to marketers and retailers. But a solid digital communication strategy only starts here.

For the growing medium to flourish, marketers would do well to deliver on the value proposition of digital signage for consumers: make their shopping experience better than it would have been without the presence of the digital signs.

One way to make the shopping experience better is to allow consumers to change the content of the digital sign. How so? Simply by giving customers choices in what kind of content they want to see on the screen, which is what interactive digital signage is all about. This enables the context of advertising, product information or infotainment to be personalized according to one’s whims.

In a recent article, A lesson from the agencies: creating successful DOOH content, published by OutputMagazine.com, author Geny Caloisi highlights several examples of how important engaging content is to a more meaningful consumer experience.

The article quotes Sophie Burke of Zoom Media, who says, “…the majority of truly successful and innovative media campaigns involve an element of spontaneity - whether it's copy which can be adapted dynamically based on real-time data, or an interactive component which allows the consumer to get involved."

Additionally, the article quotes Nick Mawditt, global director of insight and marketing at Kinetic, a UK-based digital-out-of-home media company, who suggests that physical interactions are more useful than the more hyped gesture interaction. Mawditt relates, "If you touch a screen, you are engaging in a more personal and private level, even if it's in a public space. With gesture, the engagement is brief and people can feel self-conscious."

So there you have it in a nut shell; in the same way that mobile and Internet media benefits from relevant interactive media, digital signage campaigns can benefit by adding interactions of many kinds, which lead to a better, more helpful, or at least a more personalized experience. This is why engaging content matters to a digital communication strategy and why you should consider trying it on your next digital signage campaign.