New research from IHS iSuppli indicates growing adoption of digital signage around the world as professionals in the retail, hospitality, healthcare, corporate and government sectors look to the medium to communicate to audiences on the go.

Political watchers probably are familiar with that often-asked question -and even more often asked in an election year: Is the country on the right track or the wrong track?

I would propose that those who make their living communicating marketing messages, ads, information and even entertainment on digital signs should frequently ask themselves a similar question. Is digital signage on the right track or wrong track? In other words, is digital signage a growing, vibrant communications medium that is headed in the right direction as a viable communications choice? Or, is it losing favor?

A new forecast from display market research specialists IHS iSuppli suggests that, indeed, digital signage is on the right track, at least if its adoption is any indication. According to the forecast, digital signage will see impressive growth. Worldwide shipments of signage and professional displays this year will reach 17.2 million units, up from 15.4 million in 2011 and 13.5 million in 2010. For the year, the unit shipments will reach 12.6 percent, and by 2016 they are expected to reach nearly 26 million units, IHS iSuppli forecasts.

The research firm attributes the healthy growth to a few factors, including a greater need for digital signage in public spaces and the rapidly declining price of LCD panels.

The IHS iSuppli forecast also identifies the largest digital signage markets for 2011. They include retail, hospitality/healthcare and government/corporate. The forecast also finds the education, outdoor and control room/simulation markets to be important.

So why are those with a message to communicate increasingly adopting digital signage? A few reasons are clear. First, digital signage has the unique ability to reach the public with clear, impactful communications when they are on the go.

Second, because it's a place-based medium, digital signage communicators can identify areas to locate signs that likely will be frequented by their target audience. For example, a restaurateur has a pretty good idea that the people entering the restaurant have eating on their minds, and the registrar of a college knows students entering the administration building at the beginning of the semester are likely interested in class registration information.

Third, digital signage offers communicators the chance to change messaging frequently -at little to no expense- which makes the medium responsive to rapidly changing requirements.

For all of these reasons and several others that have been well discussed in this space in the past, digital signage increasingly is being selected as an important part of an overall communications strategy.

As this nation enters the political season, journalists surely will report on the public's response to the right-track-wrong-track question. I'm sure each time I hear one of those stories, I am will be reminded of this column and the clear evidence from IHS iSuppli that digital signage is indeed on the right track as a communications medium.

While prognosticating about the results of any of this political season's races is a craps shoot, one thing is predictable. Digital signage as a communications medium will remain on the right track as long as professional communicators need to reach people on the go with their important messages.

A new report from IMS Research forecasts dramatic growth in digital signage over the next few years thanks to growing acceptance of the medium as a valuable ad delivery mechanism.

Whether your operation is a mom-and-pop store or a highfalutin retailer, take note. Digital signage is expected to see some remarkable growth over the next few years and much of that growth will come from retail.

A newly released report from IMS Research concludes that after a couple of sluggish years, the worldwide digital signage market will see growth in excess of 40 percent in 2013 to reach a total of $7 billion. And an important component of that market will be in the retail sector.

According to the research firm, which laid out its forecast in "The World Market for Digital Signage, 2011 Edition," an important reason for the growth is that digital signage is now entering the mainstream of media, which are regularly considered and evaluated by ad agencies and marketers for their advertising purchases.

"There is increasing recognition that it is a valuable tool for directly interacting with audiences, and providing a compelling additional dimension to augment overall advertising placements across media," a press release announcing the findings quotes Shane Walker, director of the Consumer Electronics Group at IMS Research, as saying.

With that growing recognition of the value of digital signage as an advertising medium, it's not too surprising that IMS Research found strong growth in the retail sector.

The new study shows that of all the vertical markets for digital signage, retail continues to be the largest, accounting for just under 25 percent of all digital signage hardware and software sales. By the end of 2015, IMS Research forecasts retail will remain the dominant sector of the digital signage market, reaching nearly $2 billion.

Long recognized as a fundamental strength of digital signage in retail, the ability to reach shoppers at the point of sale with a message aimed at influencing their final buying decision is likely to benefit from a trend that is in its infancy at home, but soon is likely to become commonplace: TV Everywhere.

Cable, Telco and satellite television providers have been promoting the concept of TV Everywhere for the past year or so. Perhaps you are familiar with the commercials. A TV viewer witnesses a raging battle between two robotic-looking creatures in his kitchen. As one appears to get the upper hand and slams his opponent through the wall, the viewer pauses the action with his remote control and walks into an adjacent room, where he hits the play button and the fight resumes.

Commercials like these are building awareness among television viewers that they are no longer chained to one TV set to watch a show. Rather they now for the ability to not only resume programming they are watching from set to set as they walk through their homes, but also access and resume a program on their laptop computers, smartphones or media tablets that they started to watch on their TVs.

Now extend this "TV Everywhere" concept to the realm of commercial messages and take that every-access notion to the retail store aisle with a digital signage end cap. Imagine how brand awareness campaigns in the home could morph into a product-specific offer at the point of purchase.

As Walker of IMS Research put it in the press release: "The tools are available today to create a consistent campaign that can reach an audience multiple times while in transit through billboards, street furniture, metro displays, video walls and in-store kiosks, all the while becoming more targeted through mobile device interaction. This experience will culminate in the customer reaching a touch-enabled screen at the point-of-sale where inventory can be checked and an order placed."

The easiest way to boost the impact of an ad campaign may be to add out-of-home advertising to the mix, according to a new study.

Want to boost sales? How about double or even triple them? A new analysis of 600 case studies of marketing campaigns, including 43 in the United States, by British media research firm BrandScience has a suggestion: add out-of-home advertising to the media mix.

The reason, it turns out, is pretty straightforward. People spend many of their waking hours away from home, and if influencing them when they are making their final purchasing decisions is an important goal, it only makes sense to move the point-of-presence of an ad or marketing message closer to point-of-presence of their wallets.

Sounds good in theory, but what about real dollars and cents? Turns out the research firm shed some light on the economic impact of out-of-home advertising as well. For each dollar spent on out-of-home advertising, an average of $2.80 is received in product sales, according to the research.

Keep in mind the BrandScience research was sponsored by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. Still, the findings make sense - particularly to someone like me who has written copiously on the power of reaching people at the point of sale with digital signage messaging as they are making their final purchasing decisions.

Not only can out-of-home advertising reach shoppers at or very near the point of sale, but this form of advertising also can reinforce ad messages delivered via TV and other media, effectively extending the duration the ad campaign is remembered by the public. The research found that when a high proportion of out-of-home media is used as part of media mix, the effectiveness of an ad campaign increases.

According to the study, sales tripled when spending on out-of-home ads moved from a low amount to a medium amount. Additionally, the study found sales more than doubled when a high amount was spent on out-of-home ads.

The research also offered some advice about how to allocate ad budgets to maximize return on investment. The best ROI is achieved when overall ad spending is low and the proportion of out-of-home media used in the mix is high.

Rather than get caught up in the minutia of the research, it may be wiser to consider the bigger picture. That is even as evidence mounts that out-of-home advertising is an important part of an ad mix, critical pieces of the puzzle professional ad buyers need to evaluate digital signage advertising networks and a variety of audience metrics measuring technologies are falling into place.

As I've previously written, technology is helping to quantify digital signage audiences and even qualify them in terms that make sense to ad agencies that are accustomed to reading reliable circulation statements and examining Nielsen ratings to make logical decisions about ad placements for their clients.

Taken together with the latest research from BrandScience, these tools help to make clearer for the professional ad community just how important it is to add out-of-home media, like digital signage, to the media mix.

With research, such as the study from BrandScience, that quantifies the exact dollar return for every dollar spent on out-of-home, this medium is impossible to ignore for agencies seeking the best advertising solutions for their clients.