UK-based CMS company ScreenCloud secured a strategic investor this year — a testament to the potential of employee-facing signage, which makes up a significant part of what the company does. CEO Mark McDermott is known as a forward-thinking leader, among the first to translate emerging tech trends into the signage space. In his Year in Review piece for Sixteen:Nine, he shares why employee-facing signage represents such a compelling growth opportunity, along with his perspective on the current state of AI adoption in the industry.
What milestones did your company hit in 2025?
For us, the big milestones of 2025 were the majority buyout of Screencloud by Tenzing Private Equity, back in April of this year.
We also crossed $30 million of annual recurring revenue from our software subscriptions.
And we doubled down on our enterprise positioning of screens that communicate, particularly to deskless and frontline workers. We’re now working with a lot more larger companies, globally but mostly in the US, managing a massive fleet of screens with some of the biggest enterprise clients.
As we go into 2026 we have our eyes on a lot more of these big contracts focused heavily on the internal communications side of digital signage.
Which trends and transformations did you notice in digital signage in 2025?
So this year in digital signage, I’ve noticed that us as consumers have seen screens popping up absolutely everywhere. Almost every retail location, every QSR location and most out of home advertising is now powered by digital signage screens and kiosks. While it does seem that everywhere has digital signage displays, and they certainly are ubiquitous, I think that will continue into 2026.
The second trend is actually the fastest growing emerging category for digital signage which is employee facing screens. This is where Screencloud focuses, and we are seeing this adoption at a massive rate.
I feel that, to a large degree, this is being inspired by what we’re seeing as consumers in retail and QSR. But as we see bigger investment coming into digital signage, there is still the elephant in the room, which is the ROI of screens. We have not really determined this for employee facing communication screens in the same way that we have in retail environments where you can really pin it back to the money.
We did look at some of this back in May when we partnered with Unily to look at the cost of the gap in frontline communication, which put the figure of lost productivity at $80 billion every year – and that’s just in the US.
So I think in 2026, we’re going to be asked this question about the value of digital signage and the ROI even more, and there are various ways in which we can tackle it. I’m really excited about looking at that because we already know screens work. We know the science is fantastic behind it, but now we really need to prove it as an industry if we’re going to take this to the next level.
How is your company preparing for 2026, and what’s on the horizon for the industry?
I think it would be fair to say that the industry has not really fully adopted AI technology collectively yet.
Now, I know all of us are thinking about this, and most of us are working on ways to integrate more AI into our tools. But we, as an industry, haven’t really delivered anything that compelling with AI and digital signage yet. I’m beyond convinced that this can be a real force multiplier for our industry, and I would expect to see more innovation in this space as it matures into 2026.
At Screencloud, this is a key focus for us, so keep looking out for more announcements.