Emerging markets for LED signage

Signage markets have seen an increasing popularity of digital signs with LED facility for message reader boards, channel letters, and video screen displays. Compared to over 100 years of electric signage, digital advertising has been existing for just about thirty years and yet has emerged as a key player in sign markets, particularly due to the advantage of programmability and low maintenance costs. On each of the aforementioned categories, LED signs are excelling and outwitting the now old fashioned CRT technology and the incandescent based message reader boards. Future success of LED billboards will depend on its performance capability in comparison to its price and other non-LED competing formats.

According to the magazine “Signs of Times”, a survey result showed that interest in the more traditional signage illumination forms has diminished, while the attractiveness of LED displays has been on the rise.  The survey covered a period of three years to see the growth in interest of each sign format and LED was the only format that saw a consistent growth over the entire period.

The growth of this form of digital signage will not be equal throughout the range of signage markets, but will in fact be most appropriate only for outdoor advertising due to its high brightness and low resolution. Overall, the electronic billboard market is seeing a promising future in terms of sales and market share, particularly in the sign replacement area.  Characteristics that will further specify their niche are the programmability of the sign, its graphics, colour, and animation capabilities. These will be helpful to commercial vendors to put across messages that will be noticed and remembered by their target markets.

LED signage has more to offer compared to their static electronic counterparts. Owners are able to schedule advertising messages based on time of day, demographics of passersby, holiday specials, and so on. Programmability of LED billboards allows better target marketing, interactivity, and can be easily updated with fresh content. Furthermore, if a company owns an extremely large LED hoarding, they can earn more from it by selling advertising space.

Just like computers have long become a necessity for every business establishment, commercial users will see LED displays in the same way one day. With an open market and freely available products, the application of LED signage has become dynamic and will completely change the features of outdoor advertising.