The Psychology of Digital Signage

Digital signage, or digital out of home advertising, is similar to other advertising mediums in that its effectiveness, is in part, governed by human psychology. There has been much research by psychologists into the effectiveness of advertisements and recent studies in digital signage have reflected the relevance of psychology on the effectiveness of a Dooh campaign.

A recent week-long study commission by UK digital signage players, Clear Channel, using face recognition technology, examined the effectiveness of digital signage in malls, discovering that many different things affect a campaigns success – not just the content.

As Emeritus Professor of psychology, Albert Mehrabin’s model of message influence stated in the 1980’s, in adverts only 7% of message take-out was attributable to words, 38% attributable to tone, but over half (55%) is due to non-verbal communication, or what psychologists call “The Presenter Effect.”

With digital signage, this means that the content itself is only half-responsible for the uptake of the message and other factors play a big part.

According to the Clear Channel survey, customer mood seems to be very relevant when it comes to absorbing digital signage messages. People in a better mood were more likely to dwell longer on a sign, and the use of images can boost people’s desire to uptake a message.

Differences with Outdoor Digital Signage

It has been know for some time that digital signage content has to deliver its message punch within a few seconds, as the audience only dwells on a screen for a limited number of seconds (between 4 – 6).

With mood playing such a factor, with outdoor digital signage content needs to pack this message punch a lot quicker. View time is always less with an outdoor screen as people tend to walk faster outside making the dwell time of an outdoor digital signage screen half that of a similar indoor campaign. In addition, when the weather is inclement, this dwell time will be reduced further.