Kitcast report: 27% of digital signage content is over a year old
2026-09-04 · via Digital Signage Today
About 27% of digital signage content in use today is more than a year old, according to Kitcast's "State of Digital Signage 2026" report. The figure is slightly higher in government deployments, the report says.
For operators, that number lands as a warning rather than a surprise. A screen running the same message for twelve months or longer is functionally the same as a poster, minus the cost savings a static sign would have offered. It also raises the question of what those networks were built for in the first place, since stale content undercuts the basic case for digital over print.
The report, from digital signage software company Kitcast, also estimates there are roughly 100 million digital signage displays in use worldwide right now, and projects that number will climb to near 150 million within two years. The announcement does not break down that growth by region, vertical, or display type, so it is not clear where the expansion is concentrated.
Content sits longer than operators may realize
Kitcast's report says the typical digital signage network consists of a handful of screens showing content that has not been refreshed in more than two weeks. Update frequency varies sharply by sector. Education has the slowest median refresh rate at 49.3 days, followed by healthcare at 43.1 days and technology at 29.9 days, according to the report.
Those numbers suggest that sectors with the most captive audiences, students in hallways, patients in waiting rooms, are also the ones least likely to be updating what those audiences see. Whether that reflects staffing constraints, weak content workflows, or simply low priority for signage in those industries is not addressed in the report.
Most operators are not tracking ROI
Perhaps the more striking finding is that 76.5% of digital signage operators do not measure return on investment on their screens at all, per Kitcast's report. For an industry that regularly pitches digital signage to budget holders on the basis of engagement, dwell time, or sales lift, that is a significant gap between what vendors claim and what buyers actually verify.
The report does not specify how ROI measurement was defined for survey purposes, or what methodology Kitcast used to arrive at its figures. It also does not say how the 100 million and 150 million display estimates were calculated, or what sample size or geography the underlying survey covered. Readers evaluating these numbers for planning purposes will want that detail, which the announcement does not provide.
The announcement in full
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Nearly one third, 27%, of digital signage content is more than a year old and that number is a slightly higher in the government sector, according to Kitcast's "State of Digital Signage 2026" report that also revealed there are about 100 million digital signage displays in use worldwide.
The number of displays will hit near 150 million in just two years, according to the report .
A good majority, 76.5%, of digital signage operators do not measure the return on investment of screens at all — and the typical network is a handful of screens showing content that hasn't been refreshed in over two weeks. The report revealed that the education segment has the slowest rate of updating digital signage with a median of every 49.3 days, followed by the healthcare industry with 43.1 days and technology with 29.9.
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