Do Customers Actually Notice Digital Signage in Stores?
Yes, and the numbers are hard to ignore. Out-of-home media produces the highest consumer recall of any channel, 86 percent, ahead of radio, podcasts, online ads, and streaming TV, according to a 2023 benchmark from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) and Solomon Partners.
If you own the screens in your venue, the real question is not whether people see them. It is whether your screens earn recall, and whether that recall turns into branded search, return visits, and sales you can track.
This article is for venue owners who run their own screens: shops, salons, gyms, clinics, and restaurants. The goal is to show what attention you can reasonably expect, where signage falls short, and how to make your screens work harder.
What "Noticing" Really Means
Seeing a screen and remembering its message are two different things. Plenty of screens get glanced at and forgotten. The win is recall, the moment a customer can later name the brand, product, or offer they saw.
The OOH category sets a high ceiling here. In a separate OAAA study, 79 percent of consumers noticed digital out-of-home advertising, and 84 percent of those who noticed a brand said they were likely to consider it later. Those figures cover outdoor and large-format DOOH, so treat them as directional for an in-store screen rather than a guarantee. Your placement, dwell time, and content quality decide where you land in that range.
Seeing a screen and remembering its message are two different things. The win is recall.
Why In-Store Screens Have An Attention Advantage
Roadside billboards get a passing glance. A screen inside your venue gets minutes. A customer waiting for a haircut, a coffee, or an oil change has time to read, and the message sits next to the exact product they can buy right now. That combination of dwell time and point-of-decision context is what makes in-store signage punch above its size.
To convert attention into recall, a few rules hold up:
Run one message per screen, not a crowded grid.
Use motion and short copy that reads in under three seconds.
Place screens at eye level where people already wait or queue.
Tie each promotion to a product within arm's reach.
Name the KPI: Recall and Branded Search, not "Engagement"
"Engagement" is too vague to manage. Track recall and the actions it drives instead. After running a promotion on your screens, watch for lifts in branded search (people searching your venue name), direct return visits, and attach rate on the promoted item.
None of these proves signage alone caused the change, since foot traffic, weather, and seasonality all move the same numbers. Treat the signal as directional, run a promotion for two weeks, pause it, and compare. A repeatable pattern across several cycles is more convincing than a single good week.
The Honest Limits
In-store signage attribution is directional, not precise. You will rarely tie one sale to one screen with certainty. Signage also does not change your Google rankings directly. What it can do is prompt the branded searches, reviews, and repeat visits that local visibility feeds on.
Set expectations at the level the medium can actually deliver, and the results read as credible rather than inflated.
How Beam Helps
Beam turns the TVs you already own into managed digital signage, then opens your idle screen time to approved third-party advertisers through the Beam Network. You schedule your own promotions and earn revenue from the gaps.
Most signage tools stop at "manage your screens from one dashboard." Beam does that, then adds the part that pays you back. When your screens are not running your own offers, the Beam Network places approved advertiser content in the idle time and shares the revenue with you. Your screen becomes a recall engine for your own promotions and an income stream for the rest of the day.
A practical setup: a clinic runs its own service reminders during peak hours, then lets Beam fill quiet afternoons with vetted local advertising. The waiting-room screen keeps earning whether or not the clinic has something to promote that day.
Try it on your own screens
If you already have TVs in your venue, you have the hardware. Plug into Beam, schedule your promotions, and switch on the Beam Network to start earning from idle time.
See how it works at usebeam.io.
Sources
Do people really remember in-store signage?
Recall depends on placement and content, but the category benchmark is strong. OOH media leads all channels at 86 percent recall, and clear, single-message screens at eye level capture most of that potential.
How is noticing different from recall?
Noticing is the glance. Recall is being able to name the brand or offer afterward. Recall is the metric worth managing because it predicts later consideration and action.
What KPI should a venue owner track?
Track branded search, return visits, and attach rate on promoted items. These move in the right direction when signage works, though other factors affect them too, so read the trend over several promotion cycles.
Can digital signage improve my Google ranking?
Not directly. Signage can prompt branded searches, reviews, and repeat visits, which support local visibility, but it does not change ranking algorithms on its own.
How does Beam make my screens pay for themselves?
Beam runs your own promotions and fills idle screen time with approved Beam Network advertisers, sharing that ad revenue with you. The screen earns even when you have nothing to promote.
Do I need special hardware?
No. Beam works with the TVs that most venues already own. You connect them, schedule content, and turn on the network when you want to monetize idle time.