What the research actually says about digital signage ROI (and what it doesn't)
The digital signage industry is full of impressive-sounding statistics. "400% more views than static." "83% message recall." "47.7% effectiveness on brand awareness." "8.1% sales lift across 237 in-store campaigns." Those numbers appear in nearly every digital signage sales deck and most vendor websites. Most of them trace back to a single underlying source, which gets re-cited until the original is lost. The re-citation chain creates the appearance of broad research consensus where there is actually one study being referenced many times.
This is an honest look at the citation chains behind the most-cited digital signage statistics, what is and is not actually evidenced, and where digital signage wins and where static signage still does. The intellectual honesty here is the differentiator. The point is not to argue against digital signage. It is to argue against making the digital signage decision on statistics whose evidentiary base has been amplified beyond what the original research can support.
The "400% more views" claim
This number originates with Intel Corporation eye-tracking research on digital versus static signage. Intel is a chip manufacturer with a meaningful commercial interest in digital signage adoption (digital signs require processors, displays, and connectivity that Intel sells). The original research presented findings on how human eye movement responds to motion versus static visual stimulus, and the 400% figure relates to that comparison.
The number is subsequently re-cited by OAAA (the Outdoor Advertising Association of America), SeenLabs, AIScreen, Microserve and several dozen other digital signage trade publications. None of those secondary citations add evidence. They amplify the original Intel finding by repeating it.
What is well-evidenced from the underlying research: motion-based visual stimuli do attract more eye-tracking attention than static visual stimuli in controlled lab conditions. The magnitude of that effect varies by context, content, and ambient conditions.
What is not well-evidenced: that a digital signage installation at a specific business will produce 400% more views than the static signage it replaces in real-world commercial conditions. The 400% number is a research finding from a lab condition that has been generalized into a marketing claim about commercial deployment. Those two claims are not equivalent.
The "83% recall" claim
This number traces to an OAAA 2015 study on out-of-home advertising recall, including digital out-of-home formats. The closely-related Arbitron finding from hospital patient surveys reported that 75% of patients could recall at least one digital-sign message from their visit. Both are real research findings.
The honest read: these are recall numbers for specific advertising contexts (out-of-home billboards and hospital captive audiences) where digital displays were measured against the recall baseline for that context. They are not claims that 83% of any audience will recall any digital sign in any context.
For a business considering whether to install a digital sign at a storefront, the OAAA 2015 and Arbitron numbers are directionally useful (digital signs do produce measurable recall in commercial contexts) but not directly applicable as ROI predictions. The recall rate at a specific storefront will depend on traffic flow, content quality, dwell time, ambient conditions, and the alternatives the customer sees on the same trip.
The "47.7% brand awareness effectiveness" claim
This number originates with InfoTrends, a market research firm that produced a 2007 study on digital signage effectiveness across several deployment categories. The 47.7% figure relates to one specific metric within that study.
Subsequent citations on Mvix, xpodigital, Rise Vision and other digital signage trade websites typically reference the 47.7% number without re-citing InfoTrends as the original. The citation chain has the effect of making the number appear to be a multi-source research consensus when it is one 2007 InfoTrends study being cited repeatedly.
The honest read: the 2007 InfoTrends study produced specific findings about specific deployment categories. Those findings were directionally favourable for digital signage. They are nearly twenty years old now, and the underlying display technology, content management systems, and commercial deployment patterns have changed substantially. Treating the 47.7% number as a current research benchmark requires assumptions about how well the 2007 study has aged.
The "8.1% sales lift" claim
This number traces to a four-year in-store digital signage study covering 237 campaigns, cited via ClickZ and several digital signage trade publications. The sponsoring organization is not always cleanly identifiable through the citation chain, which is a flag worth raising. Industry-sponsored studies can be rigorous, but the sponsorship is part of the methodology disclosure that responsible citation should include.
The honest read: an 8.1% sales lift across 237 in-store digital signage campaigns is directionally consistent with the broader on-premise signage research (USD 1997, UC 2012) finding that sign upgrades produce measurable lift in the 5 to 15 percent range. The number is plausible. It is also a single data point whose methodology is hard to verify against the citation chain. Treat as directional, not definitive.
What is actually well-evidenced
Setting aside the re-cited statistics, several findings about digital signage ROI are well-evidenced in the published research.
Digital menu boards in QSR. Multiple studies, including industry research summarized in compilations like Rise Vision's 2024 digital signage benchmarks, report sales lifts in the range of approximately 5% for digital menu boards in quick-service restaurants compared with static menu boards. The lift mechanism is well understood: dayparted pricing, item-of-the-day promotions, and visual merchandising that updates without printing costs all contribute. For QSR specifically, the digital menu board case is empirically strong.
Minor sign updates produce lift comparable to digital updates. UC 2012 - Rexhausen, Hildebrandt and Auffrey's The Economic Value of On-Premise Signage at the University of Cincinnati - found that minor sign updates produced sales lifts of roughly 10% for approximately 60% of businesses surveyed. The "minor update" category in UC 2012 includes both static refreshes and digital additions. The mechanism that produces the lift (the storefront communicates a fresh, current, well-tended message to passing customers) appears to apply to both static and digital implementations.
Dayparted and time-of-day content. Digital signage is well-evidenced to outperform static in contexts where time-of-day content updates are valuable: morning menu in QSR shifting to lunch and dinner menus, plaza directory showing different anchor messaging through the day, retail signage rotating between merchandising and service messages. The lift comes from the rotation, not from the digital format itself.
For the broader research base on on-premise signage ROI more generally, see the business case for storefront signage research summary. The honest comparison is that digital and static both produce lift; the question is whether the additional capital cost of digital, plus the operating cost (content management, ongoing licensing, electricity, hardware refresh cycles), is justified for the specific category and site.
Where digital wins, honestly
The categories where digital signage has the strongest case:
High-impulse QSR with daily-rotating offers. Quick-service restaurants whose menu changes through the day or who run frequent limited-time offers benefit from digital menu boards. The 5% sales lift figure in the QSR literature is empirically grounded. For multi-location QSR operators, the ROI math is generally favourable.
Pricing-flexibility categories. Service stations, certain retail categories, and any business that updates prices frequently benefit from digital signage because the alternative (printing and replacing static signage at price-change frequency) carries real operating cost. The digital sign pays for itself partly through avoided printing costs.
Multi-tenant plazas wanting time-of-day messaging. A digital pylon or plaza directory that can shift anchor messaging through the day, surface time-sensitive promotions, and refresh seasonally without panel replacement has a structural advantage over a static cabinet for plazas with active marketing programs.
Outdoor LED on sites with strong sightlines and high traffic counts. Large-format outdoor LED on commercial corridors with traffic counts in the tens of thousands daily and strong unobstructed sightlines can produce impression counts that justify the capital cost. Smaller-format outdoor LED on lower-traffic sites has a tougher payback case.
For Ottawa-specific commercial outdoor signage including digital options, the choice between digital and static usually depends on the specific category, site, and operating model.
Where static still wins
The categories where static signage continues to outperform digital:
Dental and most professional services. The brand identity does not change daily. The message on the storefront is "this is us, here we are, this is what we do." A static channel letter sign at the correct spec carries that message for a decade. Digital signage at a dental clinic typically does not justify the capital cost over a static install at the same fascia. The Floss Dental Clinique Dentaire installation at Plaza Hawkesbury uses RGB LED for seasonal flexibility while staying within a static channel letter architecture. See the full case study at Floss Dental Hawkesbury bilingual channel letters with RGB LED. RGB inside a channel letter format is a middle path: the flexibility of digital colour shifting without the operating cost and complexity of a full digital display.
Plaza identity signage where tenants are stable. A multi-tenant plaza with low tenant turnover and a stable mix of established anchors typically does not justify the operating cost of a digital plaza pylon over a well-maintained static cabinet. The static pylon with periodic LED retrofits delivers most of the visibility lift at a fraction of the operating cost. The case for digital plaza pylons strengthens substantially when tenant turnover is high and the plaza wants to refresh anchor messaging frequently. See property management signage in Ottawa for more.
Exterior brand marks for businesses with stable identities. Most professional services, established retail, and category-leader businesses benefit more from a quality static brand mark than from a digital alternative. The brand identity is the message. A digital display rotating through the same brand identity adds operating cost without adding message variety.
The honest case for static signage in 2026 is that the LED retrofits, RGB integrations, and modern channel letter constructions available today deliver most of the visual flexibility that digital signage promises, at substantially lower capital and operating costs. For most Ottawa-area businesses outside the specific high-rotation categories above, the static-with-LED-flexibility option is the empirically strongest choice.
How to decide
The honest framework for the digital-versus-static decision:
Step 1. Identify how often the message on the sign genuinely needs to change. If the answer is daily or more often (QSR menu, retail merchandising), digital is in the running. If the answer is seasonally or less often (most professional services, dental, established retail), static with selective LED flexibility is usually the right call.
Step 2. Identify whether the site's traffic and sightlines justify digital impression economics. Large-format outdoor LED needs traffic counts and sightlines that justify the capital cost. Smaller indoor or storefront digital needs dwell time and audience composition that justify the operating cost.
Step 3. Run the payback math against the same framework used for static signage. The expected lift, the installed cost, and the operating cost (content management, licensing, electricity, hardware refresh) all need to be in the model. Digital signage operating costs are often understated in vendor proposals. The five-minute payback model from the signage payback case studies article applies, with the operating cost added to the denominator.
Step 4. Read the underlying research, not the citation chain. The widely-cited statistics are mostly directionally accurate but heavily amplified. The decision should be based on the specifics of the site and category, not on the impressive-sounding numbers that appear in every vendor deck.
About Lundon Calling
Lundon Calling is a full-service commercial signage company based in Ottawa, serving Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. We design, permit, fabricate, and install exterior and interior signage - including static channel letters with RGB LED integration, LED retrofits for existing cabinets, and traditional channel letter fabrication - for dental and healthcare practices, commercial property managers, franchise brands and general contractors across a 200 km service radius - including Kingston, Brockville, Cornwall, Smiths Falls, Pembroke, Belleville, Gatineau, and Hawkesbury.
Contact us today for a complimentary signage assessment.
(613) 854-9255 info@lundoncallinginc.com lundoncallinginc.com