A new report by audio-visual industry analyst Futuresource - formerly Decision Tree Consulting - has warned that five key challenges stand in the way of AV resellers and a successful exploitation of the market opportunities available.

In a white paper, Digital Media Networks Can't Fail to Succeed this Time…Can They?, analyst Chris McIntyre-Brown said that even up until 2007 the industry was blighted by project failures and negative press.

Of 100 studied in depth by the survey, nine failed to meet a single objective set completely and 10 were deemed to be only partial successes.

"The figures are worse when you consider that in many cases it was too early to judge whether the IT installation was a success or failure," explained McIntyre-Brown. "The risk of potential failure was high," he said.

The problem is that in 2008 it is still difficult to make a clear case for return on investment in many cases, he argued.

An agreed industry standard for ROI modelling has yet to emerge, he argued, and this is holding back the digital signage industry. The other main barriers to success in the digital signage market were identified as a lack of advertising proof points, too much network fragmentation and not enough scalability, project complexity and a lack of understanding of content requirements.

"Advertising and media agencies have begun to take notice of digital signage, as the effects of traditional communications become ever more diluted," concluded McIntyre-Brown. The potential is huge if these problems can be ironed out, however. "Big brands have woken up to the possibilities that signage can offer and put pressure on their agencies to at least experiment with this medium," he said.