New industry benchmark from Kitcast challenges several widely held assumptions about digital signage, from average deployment size and AI adoption to content management practices and ROI measurement.
Research: Study Finds 76% of Digital Signage Operators Do Not Measure ROI
A report from Kitcast suggests that many of the digital signage industry’s most frequently cited thinking may not reflect how networks actually operate in the field.
The State of Digital Signage 2026 report combines anonymized telemetry from tens of thousands of screens, a survey of 515 digital signage operators and a 12-month hardware reliability study. The findings offer a data-driven look at deployment sizes, content management habits, AI adoption and device performance across the sector.
Measuring success without measuring ROI
One finding highlights a surprising disconnect between perceived success and performance measurement.
According to the survey, 76.5% of digital signage operators do not formally measure return on investment. Despite that figure, most respondents still described their deployments as successful.
The data suggests that many organizations continue to evaluate signage using measures such as communication effectiveness, employee engagement or customer experience rather than financial metrics.
Small networks dominate
One of the report’s most notable findings concerns deployment size.
While industry reports often reference an average network size of around 23 screens, Kitcast’s analysis of 10,520 workspaces paints a different picture. The study found a median deployment size of a single screen and an average of approximately four screens, with 90% of organizations operating eight screens or fewer.
The findings suggest that small and medium-sized deployments account for a much larger share of the market than commonly assumed.
AI adoption remains limited
Despite the growing attention surrounding artificial intelligence, actual usage remains relatively low among digital signage operators.
According to the survey, only 8.3% of respondents currently use AI to create or manage content. Another 46.2% said they expect to adopt AI tools within the next year.
Among organizations that have not embraced AI, the biggest obstacle was not cost. Instead, nearly three-quarters of respondents cited a lack of perceived need, suggesting that practical use cases may lag behind industry enthusiasm.
The “Dark Screen” problem
The report also raises questions about how frequently digital signage content is updated.
Researchers found that the median age of content displayed on active screens was 16.8 days, while 27.7% of scheduled content had been running for more than a year.
The issue varies significantly by sector. Hospitality environments refreshed content roughly every four days on average, while educational institutions recorded average refresh cycles of 49 days.
Kitcast also found that 2.5% of active screens had no administrator logging in for more than 90 days, despite continuing to display content.
Apple TV outperforms low-cost Android devices
The report’s hardware reliability study compared 1,000 Apple TV devices with 250 lower-cost Android media players over a 12-month period.
Apple TV devices achieved a median uptime of 99.31%, compared with 96.63% for Android alternatives. The Android devices experienced roughly three times as many outages and were replaced about nine times more frequently during the study period.
According to Kitcast, the findings illustrate the trade-off many operators face between lower upfront hardware costs and long-term operational reliability.
Released under a Creative Commons license, the report is intended as an open industry benchmark and provides detailed data tables and charts covering deployment trends, content practices and hardware performance across the digital signage sector.
The full report can be found here.
