Brightsign’s 2025/26 Review: Steve Durkee on Turning Screens into Smart Touchpoints

December 11, 2025 by guest author, Antonia Hamberger

When we called for companies to send us their Year in Review posts, we noticed one theme: both software and hardware providers are seeing digital signage becoming more connected and more intelligent. While IoT integration has been a niche trend for a while, it seems the expanded AI ecosystem has accelerated its adoption. In his Year in Review, Brightsign’s CEO Steve Durkee explains what’s needed on the hardware level to support connected signage.

2025 was a significant year for Brightsign and the digital signage industry. Vertical markets began recognizing signage as a business and revenue driver. AI’s role in digital storytelling became more prominent. At Brightsign, we capitalized on the trend by expanding the AI capabilities of our players. We simplified how AI integrates with our solution stack and strengthened relationships with CMS partners who focus on using AI to support the digital signage needs of specific industries.

The biggest shift involved more organizations embracing connected digital signage systems to capture attention and drive action. Instead of deploying one standalone display in retail, for instance, signage now appears at the entrance, product displays, check-out areas, and service departments – all linked to one another. Connecting different touchpoints delivers greater impact.

Keeping an audience’s attention has grown increasingly challenging – so has measuring it and monetizing it. This increases the stakes for effective digital signage. Every interaction plays into the overall experience. To help customers tackle this challenge, we launched new digital media players, established new partnerships and smart integrations, and debuted new AI toolkits.

Brands will seek to leverage digital signage for interactivity, personalization, and efficiency in 2026. The advancements we made in 2025 will help them get there:

• To help organizations meet the need for richer, vivid content, we enhanced our offerings and launched our new Series 6 digital signage solutions to help them capitalize on visual storytelling.
• To ensure users can run powerful AI applications without experiencing lags or delays, we made sure the integrated Neural Processing Units (NPU) in BrightSign digital media players could run AI without compromising content playback.

The future of digital signage depends on combining AI insights with video or graphics for more personalized content. It’s this level of personalization that drives stronger relationships with audiences. AI-powered analytics and integrations help organizations better understand customer interests, patterns, and motivations. Businesses will evolve from struggling to measure the impact of signage to now being able to measure, understand, and act on smart data from digital touchpoints.

At Brightsign, we’ve uniquely positioned ourselves to deliver value. Security, reliability, and performance are our top priorities when designing solutions. Our players are purpose-built with the power to handle AI applications so businesses never have to choose between taking advantage of AI’s benefits and running content reliably.

I look forward to 2026, for what feels like an important year in the digital signage industry. Together, we will embrace increasingly connected digital signage that leverages AI, IoT, and other sensor-based technologies to make every touchpoint unique and highly valuable. We’re excited to work with businesses and help them define what success looks like, and the impact digital signage can have on organizations and their customers. Powerful solutions and a solid understanding of how to leverage AI in pursuit of business goals will be key to success.

Regardless of the industry —whether it’s retail, healthcare, banking, transportation, or education— the BrightSign team remains committed to helping organizations implement the right technology to transform digital signage into revenue generation.