VARs can profit from digital signage...

... at least according to this article at PC Magazine, anyway :) The last few lines of the article read:

Ben Leet, senior consultant at analyst firm Decision Tree Consulting, agreed that the digital signage market is poised for growth.

“The demand is definitely there but it hasn’t happened yet. This is mainly because digital signage is so complex and it addresses so many different verticals,” he said.

“The large AV specialists have been going after big deals, such as 10,000 units for a major supermarket, but there is also a lot of demand for small deals.

“There are plenty of opportunities in gyms and pubs. However, the smaller clients need an integrator that can pull together all of the different elements of a project.”

Ok, I'll be the first to agree that digital signage networks take a healthy amount of planning and work to set up, however I think it's wrong to say that any tech-savvy VAR can jump right in and expect profits. Digital signage networks require a wide range of business, finance, creative services, marketing and merchandising knowledge ON TOP of the tech, which you'll need to know cold in order to handle all of the display, network and transmission systems that exist today. Sorry for the rant, but I know that a lot of A/V VARs expect digital signage to be a natural extension of their existing services portfolio, and only after they find out about the other components of a successful network do they step back to think about it.