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IEICE Korea, Information Section has recently focused to discover new research and service opportunities in digital signage. The digital signage is simply referred to as a smart electronic display system to deliver various information and advertisements to anonymous users (consumers) by showing multimedia contents through 2D or 3D display screens. We found that typical digital signage is organized by a number of independent components including a (web-based) management server, contents servers, a set-top-box (STB), and display devices, each of which is mostly connected to high-speed networks. We have observed fast growth of digital signage market and business in Republic of Korea (about 20% CAGR, at least 200 million USD in 2012) and increasing demand of developing new converged technologies and services for digital signage.
It is classified that the current digital signage has entered into the early stage of its third generation. In the first generation, the digital signage is simply equipped with a 2D display screen directly attached to its multimedia content player (STB). Subsequently, the second generation was characterized by networked digital signage. Multiple digital signage systems cooperate with each other over network by showing integrated multimedia contents through multiple display screens. Besides, physically dispersed digital signage systems can be managed in a single-point-of-administration manner through the network.
The digital signage of the third generation not only adapts new IT technologies (context-aware, user-interactive), but also converges itself with other services (mobile and cloud computing). Having encompassed context-awareness, digital signage begins to recognize its customers and deliver personalized advertisements or information customized to each of the customers. Besides, advance in user-interactions technologies, such as gesture, fragrance/scent, allows digital signage systems to draw more attractions from its customers.
Moreover, mobile computing service is expected to be promptly and easily converged with digital signage. For example, a smartphone user can download a digital signage app from digital signage and he/she can chat with other users through the digital signage or communicate directly to the digital signage to obtain targeted information. Cloud computing service is also likely to be adapted to the digital signage business, so as to reduce a total cost of ownership of the digital signage and to mitigate any management overhead for the system operations.
Additionally, IEICE Korea, Information Section has initiated research efforts on the third-generation digital signage. First, we demanded to standardize various types of interfaces between different components within digital signage. Benefit from this effort is that one single company can be in charge of developing a distinctive component, rather than an entire set of components in the digital signage. Second, we asked to design a relevant cloud computing reference model (usage model) for more efficient digital signage services in terms of its total cost of ownership and performance.
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