New Industry Report Suggests Booming Business, However …

June 17, 2024 by Dave Haynes

I tend to put quotation marks around the word “research” when that “research” originates from a “research” factory in Pune, India, but I will at least give a company called Emergen Research a nod for demonstrating some baseline sense of the digital signage industry in its 2024-2032 industry report and forecast.

Most of the reports coming out of these research assembly lines require $3,000 or more to get a look beyond a press release summary, and in almost all cases, the press release summaries suggest the “research” teams have almost no real knowledge of the industry.

But with this one, I was able to have an admittedly quick look at the full report, for no charge, because Atlanta-based CMS software firm 22Miles has made arrangements to make it available as a free download. The company also did that last year.

I don’t have hours to go over the thing carefully, however I have my doubts a small company that also produced recent reports on the European market for industrial tubes and the Polyether Block Amide market genuinely knows this business. But at least the companies looked at are active in digital signage, unlike some other summaries I have seen from Pune factories that include vendors that no longer exist or don’t do what the “researchers” suggest they do.

My guess is 22Miles has at least advised the analysts on how the market works and its players. And to the software firm’s credit, 22miles doesn’t seem to get heightened or skewed attention in the report.

The report findings suggest:

I would not build or run a business around this stuff, but for companies raising money or pitching their pots and pans, these big research-y dollar figures and percentages look impressive on pitch deck slides, and the audiences won’t have any clue whether they’re meaningful or nonsense.

Apply the old grain of salt idiom here, except maybe use scoop instead of grain. For example …

Emergen says its head office is in suburban Vancouver, BC. I just about lost a mouthful of coffee on my monitor screen when I did a Google Maps look-up of the address and saw this photo of world HQ.

This is the actual head office, in Pune.

 

  1. Craig says:

    I keep a separate post monitoring levels of BS. They tend to tack on at least 10% ever year.

  2. Alan Brawn says:

    I think we should do a podcast of so called research…

  3. RB says:

    Totally dig reading the 16:9 site, but this data is complete and utter garbage. I design digital signage for “large scale construction projects” like airports, mass transit, stadiums, casinos, theme parks, and museums. 1- Corporate os not the leading DS industry. Not even close. Airports alone spend 4x that every year. Transportation as a whole is about 10x that. 2- I dont have a songle client asking for “on prem” anymore. In fact, in our world, “on prem” in an impossibility because we are constantly pulling data from any of about 120 cloud based sources. 3- Probably my biggest gripe with this bogus report is that Total DS Market for DS doesnt include just and few types of software and players! It includes the ties to Life Safety and ADA required by law. It includes the $15BB in DVLED spent in transport alone this year I have $20MM in DVLED in just one airport. It includes the IPTV, Passenger and Guest Information, TSA and security info, even the parking garages and roads leading up to an airport or theme park are now lined with digital signage! If you consider the budget for DS anywhere on the planet, you should also include the literally BILLIONS in content development! Dont trust any survey information that ignores by far the biggest niche of the DS industry.

    1. RB says:

      and please excuse the above typos! After 30 years in this industry, I have seen dozens and dozens of bogus surveys and reports like this. They infuriate me because they steer a lot of people trying to make a living, or trying to plan their organization’s spending, in the wrong direction. Also, the tiny little message box on my cell for submitting comments makes it hard to review and edit myself.

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