You don’t want a video wall to display the kinds of things a digital billboard would. Keep in mind that when you look at digital signage outdoors, you’re viewing it from far away. Things need to be large so that they’re readable. People and objects should appear larger than life. They’re designed to capture attention from people a few blocks down.

 

Different Approaches

 

In fact, their colors, designs, and movement should all be engineered to attract a glance rather than a stare. No one’s looking for your advertising space specifically, they’re looking at other things around it. The advertising space itself works to shuffle the visual priorities in their heads so that they begin to look at the advertising space instead of the other things they were looking at.

 

When you look at digital signage indoors, you don’t want to just repeat what you showed outdoors. Especially with larger digital signage indoors, or with video walls, the effect can repulse people. You want to scale things down so that the kind of overwhelming images that work outdoors give way to more subdued versions indoors.

 

Visual Impact

 

Digital signage indoors should feel more personal. It should be as busy or move as fast as digital signage outdoors. If you show a large, quickly moving image outside, people will be drawn toward it. If you show a large, quickly moving image inside, people will back up, so it doesn’t take up so much of their vision.

 

The story-tall digital ad outside will only take up a fraction of their vision. Something the size of a TV in the wrong space inside will take up a much larger portion of their vision. Test it out. See if people want to back up or feel too overwhelmed by your indoor ad images.

 

When you work with an advertising agency, or even if you put together your own ads for digital signage, make sure you get visuals for both indoor and outdoor ad versions. This way, you can run one outside version of the ad that’s a story tall…and another inside version that’s more personal.