2022 Global Digital Signage Awards 

This is the story of how Play Digital Signage started and how we became one of the leading digital signage providers in the world.

We incorporated in Denmark 8 years ago where we offered digital signage for the Scandinavian market. Only a year after our initial launch, we expanded to Europe. At the time we only had a small team of 6 people to do everything-- developing software, creating marketing materials, sales, and even onsite installations.  

With our small, but mighty team, we set out to create something no one had ever done. We wanted to take digital signage to the next level, making it possible for everyone to use digital signage in their store, office, shop windows, and anywhere they wanted to put it. 

However, eight years ago, digital signage was complicated and therefore not for everyone. For instance, you’d have to create your graphics in Illustrator, Fireworks, Photoshop, or PowerPoint and then import and add them to your content. Digital signage was neither intuitive nor scalable.  

In 2014, we launched the first cloud-based digital signage software with a built-in editor,  live scheduling, monitoring of players, plugins, and much more that made creating digital signage content a breeze for anyone. 

Our curation was a huge success and within a month we had the growth many companies only dreamt of. In the beginning, our user demographic was approximately half European and half American customers, but as the years progressed it shifted to more than 80% of the customers originating from America. 

Later in 2017, we started a whole new chapter for Play Digital Signage. The American market continued to show growth, but we knew that we had to be physically present in the country to better serve those customers. So, we closed the company in Denmark and incorporated Play Digital Signage in the United States of America. 

In conjunction with moving to America, we changed the whole structure of our corporation. We knew we had to grow bigger, and faster to keep up with the potential of the American market.  

The founders of Play Digital Signage, Inc., including myself, desired to construct a corporate structure that didn’t require investors and allowed us to swiftly navigate through the waters.  

In 2018, we hired our first team to implement our ideas. To our great excitement, the strategy worked and we were able to push more and more projects, build better code, add better security, and develop tons of awesome features for our customers. As the years have pressed on, we’ve added more teams, making it even easier to bring industry-leading features, integrations, and functionality to our customers. 

Our success came not only from our corporate structure because it allowed for financial stability, but we changed the game with our international development teams. With our development teams around the world, we were able to change the speed of development with short notice.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, we were able to turn the ship in a very different direction with the touch of a button. More than 32% of our customers had to suspend their screens as they were not at the office, the stores were closed, and everybody started working from home. We helped many of our customers by suspending their accounts, and leaving the screens running, but at no charge. 

We have always been super careful with spending money and signing up for contracts when it comes to marketing. If you have no insight it can be extremely hard to find the right marketing strategy and before you figure that out you can have spent thousands of dollars. 

We took a very different route, instead of throwing money after review sites, Google, Microsoft, and many more, we relied on our “First Screen, Free Forever” policy. For 7 years that was our primary marketing strategy and it worked well. 

Today, Play Digital Signage is represented in 3 continents of the world, we’ve stuck with our corporate strategy for 8 years and it has paid off. We represent a world of digital signage at a whole other level. 

Why we are one of the Leading Digital Signage Providers in the World

How we do business and how we treat our customers is related to where we come from. Play  Digital Signage started in Denmark, a small country with fewer than 6 million people where driving from one end to the other takes no more than 4 hours. The people of Denmark value quality and longevity. To obtain any form of success among the Danish, you have to be at your best at all times, and should you fail to do so you’ll find yourself on a downward trend. 

We took our years and years of entrepreneurship and business experience with us, adopted the Danish mentality, and set up to build and cultivate a brand known for its superior customer service, the best possible availability, and of course, the best digital signage software on the market.  

It may be a bit cooky to say that we’ve accomplished it, but when you have thousands of ecstatic customers with stellar testimonies to back you up, we think it’s okay. 

At Play Digital Signage, we work under the concept of treating other customers as would expect to be treated. We couple that with well-engineered software and that is the reason why our customers stick with us. That support and loyalty is something we value, cherish, and pay back in many ways. 

Play Digital Signage covers the world in a way no other digital signage provider can. We have teams in three continents making it possible to support customers around the world 24/7. Every team is a handful of people who are either developers or founders.  

If you live and breathe your product and you love what you do it becomes so much easier to help customers, stay ahead of the game at all times, and always stick to your strategy. These are the people you’ll find behind the live chat and the people who pick up the phone when you need them. 

Digital Signage in a Magic Box

We know that it's not magic, but let's see if we can shift that perspective a bit.

Building software for Digital Signage is no easy thing and it requires a lot more than just a  bunch of highly skilled developers. In fact, in most cases, the reason why software becomes a success is because of the people at the top-- Those who spend hours of hours working with the software and listening to the customers. 

Play Digital Signage is a magic box. A magic box that will allow any customer to create beautiful content and get it live on their screens. We know that it’s not magic, but let’s see if we can shift that perspective a bit.  

For 8 years, we’ve published features and plugins almost like clockwork. Every 3rd month we’ve added a feature or a plugin our users were asking for. Our roadmap has always and still does, contain users’ suggestions. 

As time has moved us from one segment to another, we have had to navigate and arm ourselves for bigger and bigger customers, and today that magic box provides digital signage to both the food truck down the corner and customers with more than 2500 stores around the world. That’s the magic right there. The guy with the food truck can comfortably create and publish content and bigger or more complex customers can dig further down in our software to unveil more advanced functionality. 

The magic here is not making it harder for the guy with the food truck and not creating restrictions for the bigger business.  

When a customer signs up, they can have content on a screen within just 5 minutes. We support many of the most popular operating systems, like Windows, Android, Amazon, Google TV, and others. Our APP can be downloaded very easily as well. Linking screens is easy, adding content is also super intuitive and is only limited by the user’s imagination.  

Our software offers features such as scheduling, teams, animations, transitions, music, notifications, advertising, and much much more. In addition, we offer plugins that work with Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, weather services, RSS, and more.  

And for those who want to play around with automation, we offer a public API with endless possibilities.  

One of our biggest challenges has always been the players and helping customers pick the right player for their project. Today we support most operating systems and we help customers pick their players by testing content and planning future content needs.

From our roots in Denmark to the successful empire we have built in the United States, we have continued to offer digital signage that changes how businesses of all sizes communicate with their customers and employees.