59% of digital signage slides run at the default duration
SignageSpace · 2026-09-27T11:26:36.797Z · 7 min read
The most interesting finding isn't simply that seven seconds might work well for an image. It's that operators change timing according to what the viewer is expected to do with the content.
How long should a digital signage slide stay on screen?Search for an answer and you'll find plenty of rules of thumb: 8 seconds, 10 seconds, 15 seconds for video.But we wanted to know something different. What do people actually choose when they're running real digital signage?Welcome to Digital Signage Insights, a series where we share patterns we discover from how Signage Space customers use digital signage in the real world. Rather than relying only on conventional wisdom, we'll look at anonymized usage data from real screens and see what operators actually do.Our first finding surprised us and was slightly uncomfortable for us as the software company behind the data:59% of signage slides run for exactly 10 seconds.Why 10 seconds?Because that's the default duration in Signage Space.In other words, most operators never change it.And that makes the remaining 41% much more interesting.What happens when operators actually choose the duration?A default tells us something about the software. A changed value tells us something about the person operating the screen. So we set aside every slide still using the default 10-second duration and looked only at slides where someone had deliberately changed the timing.Here's what operators chose:Content typeMedian duration chosenImage7 secondsVideo15 secondsApp (weather, menus, embedded pages, etc.)70 secondsThe differences are substantial. When operators change the duration of an image, they generally make it shorter. When they change an app, they do the opposite: they leave it on screen for much longer. And when you think about how people consume these different types of content, that behavior makes sense.Images: 7 SecondsThe median manually selected duration for an image was 7 seconds, three seconds shorter than our default. Most signage images communicate something that can be understood relatively quickly:$4.99 Lunch Special20% Off TodayTry Our New BurgerA product photograph, promotion, price, announcement, or simple cal...