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Thought Leadership: DSS Europe 2024 in Quotes

From analytics to IT security, from the state of the market to new opportunities in retail media: The panels at Digital Signage Summit Europe 2024 proved thought leadership and produced lively discussions.

After two days of intensive networking and learning, another Digital Signage Summit Europe came to an end. The panels and presentations spanned a broad array of topics in the digital signage realm, leaving participants with much to digest.

While we cannot recap every single panel, we have selected a few key quotes that relate to the different topics to provide a glimpse into the presentations and discussions. These quotes highlight the presentations’ depth, the participants’ openness, and the topics’ diversity.

Market

“Digital signage is definitely a growth industry and it’s rapidly changing. However, it’s still quite immature, even though it’s been there for over 20 years.”

Zetadisplay-CEO Anders Olin reflecting on his first seven months in the digital signage industry

“The times where digital signage was an end in itself are over.”

Christian-Thomas Retinger from Cancom Austria alludes to the fact that customers now have precise ROI expectations for investments in digital signage.

“The drive-thru, retail media networks and stadium experiences are the three hot verticals.”

CRI-CEO Rick Mills on the potentials in the US and Canada market.

“Green signage is not about reporting your progress, it is about transforming your business towards more sustainability.”

invidis impact expert Daniel Oelker sets the frame for a successful Green Signage approach.

“If I had one wish for this industry, it would a much bigger scale. Then we are able to talk about standards.”

Stan Richter, SignageOS, on the difficulty of finding common grounds in standardization for the digital signage industry.

“You’d be suprised how many people buy a screen and ask how the pictures come on it.”

Sian Rees from PPDS on the necessity of hardware manufacturers to have an inhouse software solution.

Technology

„Being in that room for the first time – it was a religious experience. The Sphere is the first venue where audio and visual coexist peacefully.” 

Michael Hlatky from Holoplot, the audio supplier of The Sphere and recently acquired subsidiary of Sphere Entertainment 

“Stop fibbing.” 

Dave Haynes about the overambitious claims marketers make about their offering. 

“We are moving into an API world.”

invidis expert Stefan Schieker explains the necessary transformation of digital signage software.

“The end customer did the worst thing an end customer could do: a little bit of research on the internet.”

Ben Phelps from Absen about the communication of finding the right LED product for the application.

DooH/Retail Media

“The hearts of the cities are going to change from analog to digital-out-of-home.”

FAW CEO Kai-Marcus Thäsler about the different DooH developments in rural and urban environments.

“Programmatic is the driver.”

Frank Goldberg from German IDOOH on why programmatic DooH capabilities need to be scaled further.

“It smells like out-of-home, but it isn’t.”

invidis expert Florian Rotberg stresses the differences between retail media networks and digital-out-of-home networks.

“We are going to disrupt the retail media industry in Europe.” 

Pontus Meijer, CEO of Visual Art, is confident in his goals.  

IT Security

“The biggest threat to companies is the threat they don’t know about yet.”

Craig Francis from Google ChromeOS about the importance of IT security

Wherever there is a screen that shows things that should not be there, is impacting the whole industry, not just the network owner.

Lars Peters from Ströer explains why IT security standards should be high in DooH applications.

“The ISO 27001 Certification is increasing the efficiency of our sales team.”

Vincent Encontre, CEO of Intuiface, explains that IT security certifications can speed up tenders because you can tick a lot of boxes at once.

Analytics

„Data has to be a pool of possibilities rather than a jungle of obstacles.”  

Tim Brachert from B12 on creating digital experiences for Siemens’ showrooms and fairs 

Analytics alone does not deliver enough value. You need to use the same data for multiple purposes.

Iman Nahvi from Advertima on why retail analytics needs a holistic approach to be successful.

“A lot of dashboards just present data, not insights.”

Hubert Van Doorne from Nexmosphere about the necessity for analytics to bring value to the customers.