The following is the full version of what was published in edited form in the Jan. 29, 2010, edition of the MediaPlanet Digital Signage Supplement included as a special supplement in USA Today (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington editions). Lyle Bunn served as principal writer and editor.

The economy has its shining lights and the brightest of these is North America’s Digital Signage and Digital Out-of-Home industry. These centrally-controlled digital media networks are improving the effectiveness of communications in out-of-home environments wherever people shop, buy, wait, work, travel and gather.

This provides significant improvement to the return on communications investment, helping brands, marketers, retailers, facility operators and other organizations such as consumer services, government, campuses and sport/arts/entertainment centers to effectively achieve their communications and business goals, at a time when communicating to shoppers, patrons, staff and students is increasingly complex.

Arbitron has reported research that Out-of-Home video as a medium reaches 67% of Americans 18 years and older each month, and delivers a fairly representative cross-section of consumers. 76% of those seeing digital signage noticed displays in multiple venues.

Advancements in digital signage technologies are improving network economies and message targeting to specific demographics and times of day and location.

Significant advances continue to be made to simplify advertising planning and placement.

David Drain, Executive Director of the 400 member Digital Signage Association says “Digital Signage is more like the internet than it is TV. When internet advertising came along a decade or so ago, advertisers weren’t sure how to create ads for it, because it was different than creating ads for TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. Then advertisers started to realize the beauty of it, with measurements like impressions and “click-throughs”. Digital signage is today second only to the internet in advertising revenue growth.”

At the 2009 Out-of-Home Video Advertising Bureau (OVAB) Digital Media Summit, Bob Liodice, CEO of the Advertising Association of America said “Marketers who aren’t taking advantage of this (medium) are going to be left in the dust.”

At the same summit, Bob Garfield, Editor-at-Large for Advertising Age noted that “unlike traditional media, out-of-home cannot be avoided.”

Digital out-of-home has matured and achieved critical mass in the perfect storm of a changing media landscape, the need for economic recovery and new, improved ways of doing things and shifts in how consumers, patrons, staff and students expected and need to be communicated with.