DSS turns 20 – time to look back how the industry has changed. Dise’s Daniel Bloch, CPO, and Fredrik Bergström, CTO look back at about more than two decades of digital signage – an industry defined less by technology shifts than by a long struggle to understand and manage its own complexity.
Digital Signage Software: Then, Now, and AI
Modern digital signage platforms are designed to orchestrate content, data and experiences across global networks of screens. But when it all began, there were no platforms, no standards, and barely any infrastructure at all.
Building without a network
When Daniel Bloch entered the space in 1989 – his first CMS experiences were obviously with Scala at that time – content distribution meant dial‑up modems and manual connections to individual media players. There was no internet, no monitoring and no real concept of remote control.
A decade later, when Fredrik Bergström joined the signage industry, content could be delivered via satellite or broadcast networks, often only overnight and at immense costs. But even then, there was no return channel and no way to confirm whether updates had worked.
“You sent it out and hoped for the best,” Fredrik recalls.
This reality shaped early software architecture. Systems had to be resilient and autonomous, designed to survive long periods without intervention. Failures could not be fixed quickly, so they had to be anticipated.
Yet the biggest challenges were not technical.
When technology wasn’t the issue
From the start, Sweden-based Dise set out to build software for displaying content on screens internationally. What soon became clear, however, was that technology alone rarely determined success.
“The biggest misconception was thinking this was a technical problem,” Daniel Bloch explains.
Many early digital signage projects failed after launch, not because the software broke, but because customer organisations lacked ownership, strategy and processes. Responsibility was split between IT and marketing, or delegated to neither. Content strategies were unclear, and long-term accountability was missing.
Projects followed a familiar pattern: a strong concept, a promising rollout, and then gradual decline.
“It wasn’t about the screens,” Daniel Bloch says. “It was about everything around them.”
From experimentation to ecosystem thinking
The early years of digital signage were marked by experimentation and, in retrospect, a degree of “cowboy business”. Retail media concepts emerged long before the market was ready. Business cases were built on advertising revenues that never materialised. Others underestimated the effort required to maintain even small networks.
Over time, the digital signage industry matured. Successful projects shared common traits: cross-functional ownership, realistic expectations, and a holistic view of signage as an ecosystem rather than a collection of components.
One decisive shift was the move from simple CMS tools to platforms. For most ISVs, this evolution was gradual. From the outset, the focus extended beyond content publishing to orchestration: managing experiences, data and workflows across screens.
Equally important for Dise was the decision to avoid customer‑specific development. Custom solutions solved short-term problems but rarely scaled. Instead, Dise focused on building a flexible core platform, adapted through partners rather than rewritten for each project.
Integration and scale
As content became more dynamic, data integration became unavoidable. What began with simple data feeds quickly expanded into connections with POS systems, ERP platforms and real-time business data.
Integration is now fundamental to scalability and automation, especially as networks grow from dozens of screens to thousands or more.
Despite technological progress, several challenges persist. Defining what to show, and why, remains difficult. The tension between marketing and IT continues. And unlike digital-only media, digital signage operates in physical environments where hardware fails and conditions vary.
AI: acceleration with familiar risks
AI represents the latest industry shift, promising faster development and lower barriers to customisation. But the two Dise Experts remain cautious.
AI accelerates output, but it also increases the need for governance, testing and understanding. Automatically generated code still needs to be owned and maintained, especially in mission‑critical systems.
“Developers won’t disappear,” Fredrik says. “But they will need a deeper understanding of what they’re building.”
Digital Signage remains an industry that never settles
If they were starting again today, much would remain the same: build for partners, think globally, avoid unnecessary customisation and design for scale. The biggest difference would be architectural readiness for millions of endpoints rather than thousands.
After more than 30 years, digital signage still defies simple definition. It continues to evolve alongside technology, retail and user behaviour.
“It never really settles,” they reflect. And that ongoing instability may be the clearest explanation for both the industry’s long maturation – and its enduring complexity.