Subway is introducing a digitally connected restaurant concept across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), combining self-service ordering, digital signage and redesigned interiors as part of a multi-year expansion strategy.

Called Blueprint, the new format will become standard for every new Subway restaurant and remodel across the region beginning January 1, 2027. The first locations opened in the Netherlands and the UK during the summer of 2026.

The concept integrates digital menu boards, self-order kiosks, kitchen display systems and order-status screens into a connected environment designed to simplify ordering and improve restaurant operations.

Customers can place orders at traditional service counters, use self-service kiosks to browse and customize meals, or order through Subway’s app and delivery services.

Behind the counter, connected kitchen displays help employees manage orders, while customer-facing screens indicate when meals are ready for collection. Dedicated pickup areas are intended to improve the flow of customers through the restaurant.

Digital menus adapt throughout the day

Blueprint also gives Subway greater flexibility in how it uses its restaurants throughout the day.

The company is expanding its breakfast and coffee offerings and introducing Grab & Go options at high-traffic locations such as transportation hubs.

A bigger change is Subway After Dark, an evening dining concept currently being piloted in the Netherlands.

Beginning at 6 pm, participating restaurants change their lighting and music to create a different atmosphere. Digital menu boards switch to an evening menu featuring items such as footlong pizzas, mac and cheese and loaded waffle fries.

The approach demonstrates how connected digital signage can support multiple dining formats within the same physical location, allowing restaurants to change their offerings and customer experience without redesigning the space.

Subway says the availability of After Dark and Grab & Go will depend on individual locations and local demand.

Supporting a major expansion

The restaurant redesign also includes warmer interiors, improved layouts, and clearer customer information. Food preparation and ingredient displays remain prominent, maintaining Subway’s traditional emphasis on customization.

“Guests want to eat their way, on their own schedule, and Blueprint is how we deliver on that,” said Tracy Gehlan, president of Subway EMEA.

The company has also introduced Get Your Own Way, a regional marketing platform designed to unify its advertising, packaging, digital channels and in-store experience.

Blueprint forms part of Subway’s strategy to nearly double its restaurant footprint across EMEA over the next five years. The expansion plans also encompass India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Subway operates more than 35,000 restaurants worldwide and has been incorporating digital technology into its restaurants since introducing its Fresh Forward design in 2017. Its subsequent Fresh Forward 2.0 concept, announced in 2024, expanded testing of self-order kiosks, order-ready screens and kitchen display systems. Blueprint builds on those initiatives with a more integrated approach tailored to EMEA. 

The post QSR: Subway Unveils Digital-First Restaurant Concept for EMEA first appeared on invidis.

Axion Displays is currently testing Radar, its web-based monitoring and predictive maintenance platform, with selected customers. The software is designed to monitor AV devices in real time and report anomalies automatically.

The German distributor developed Radar in-house. According to Roderick Bokdam from Axion Displays’ marketing department, the goal is to move beyond “simply reacting to equipment failures.”

To do this, Radar collects operational data such as temperature, fan speed, power consumption, and device status. Additional environmental values, such as room temperature and humidity, are also factored into the analysis.

Data-driven baselines

From this data, the platform derives a baseline. When values deviate from this baseline, an alarm is triggered. Radar also allows users to define their own rules. For example, if a device exceeds a temperature threshold, Radar could respond by notifying the service team or shutting down the device.

Using standard protocols and custom device profiles, Radar also integrates products from other manufacturers and existing installations. An added benefit for system integrators is the ability to view warranty information, firmware versions, and maintenance logs, enabling them to offer maintenance as an ongoing service.

Axion has announced that it will launch the maintenance platform to the market after the testing phase.

The post AV Monitoring: Axion Tests its Radar Maintenance Platform first appeared on invidis.

In an industry where growth often comes at the expense of profitability, Nowsignage appears to be breaking the rules. The UK-based digital signage CMS provider has quietly transformed itself from a regional UK software specialist into one of the most closely watched companies in the signage market.

During a recent exclusive background talk with invidis, CEO Nick Johnson offered insights into the strategy, product roadmap and growth trajectory behind the company’s rise. It became clear why competitors, channel partners and investors are paying increasing attention.

The numbers alone are impressive. According to Johnson, Nowsignage currently achieves a Rule of 40 score exceeding 100, a performance level that places the company among a very small group of software businesses globally. The Rule of 40, which combines revenue growth and profitability, has become one of the most widely accepted benchmarks for SaaS performance. While a score above 40 is generally considered strong, surpassing 100 signals an exceptionally efficient business model.

The company claims to be one of the fastest-growing digital signage CMS providers in the market. Its platform is now on target to power approximately 150,000 screens by the end of the year across more than 60 countries, up significantly from around 40 markets just a year ago. Equally remarkable is how that growth has been achieved: entirely through internally generated profits. Nowsignage remains 100% shareholder-owned and has never taken external investment.

Strategic shift towards enterprise

Several years ago, Nowsignage made a deliberate decision to move away from smaller deployments and focus on large-scale enterprise customers. Today, the company’s primary targets are consumer-facing organisations, particularly in retail and quick-service restaurants (QSR).

That strategic pivot heavily influenced product development. Rather than optimizing for simple content publishing, the platform was built to manage large and often complex digital signage networks. Advanced monitoring tools, filtering capabilities, targeting features and network-wide management functions are designed to support deployments consisting of thousands, rather than dozens, of screens.

The company’s strongest differentiator may be its approach to retail media. More than two years ago and much earlier than most competitors, Nowsignage introduced native advertising and campaign management capabilities directly into the CMS platform. While many competing solutions rely on third-party integrations, NowSignage allows operators to manage advertising inventory, campaign scheduling, share-of-voice allocations, loop durations and filler content from within a single environment.

As retailers increasingly seek to monetize in-store audiences, this capability is becoming a powerful competitive advantage. In-store retail media displays are no longer treated merely as communication endpoints but as revenue-generating assets.

A similar philosophy can be seen in the QSR sector, where menu boards are evolving into business-critical systems. Through deep POS integrations and dedicated menu board functionality, the CMS has become tightly connected to restaurant operations and customer experiences.

Winning through the channel

The next chapter in Nowsignage’s evolution will begin with the launch of NS Suite, a range of enterprise products built around the needs of retailers and QSRs. While CEO Nick Johnson remained tight-lipped on the finer details, he revealed that the first products of the Suite are due to be revealed next month, and will give NowSignage customers the tools to harness more power and control from their network through insight, data and automation.

Unlike many software vendors that increasingly pursue direct sales models, NowSignage remains firmly channel-led. The company works with more than 100 certified reseller partners worldwide.

Smaller projects are typically delivered entirely through partners, while larger opportunities involve direct collaboration between Nowsignage and the reseller. Significantly, the software company often participates in enterprise RFP processes alongside partners, helping secure large-scale opportunities while maintaining a channel-first commercial structure.

Global expansion accelerates

The UK remains the company’s strongest and most mature market. However, North America and the Middle East are currently delivering the fastest growth rates.

“The United States presents the greatest opportunity. While the reseller network and local resources are still developing, existing relationships with global retail and QSR brands are opening doors to major opportunities. Building on the success of securing the rollout across the entire US & International estate for Little Caesars in 2024; several significant US QSRs are following suit, with tenders already underway, supported by the credibility gained through international deployments.”

Recent customer wins highlight the company’s momentum. A major UK airport retailer selected the platform due largely to its integrated retail media capabilities. Another high-profile migration involved a 20,000+ screen retail network transitioning from Scala to Nowsignage, including sophisticated POS integrations and interactive customer engagement features.

Perhaps the most strategically important reference customer is Taco Bell. Nowsignage serves as the restaurant group’s international CMS partner and is one of only two software providers integrated with Taco Bell’s Byte POS platform. Following successful international rollouts, industry observers will be watching closely to see whether a larger US opportunity eventually emerges.

• QSR: Subway Unveils Digital-First Restaurant Concept for EMEA
• AV Monitoring: Axion Tests its Radar Maintenance Platform
• Nowsignage Interview: Retail, QSR and Global Growth
• Deep Dive for Retailers: The Big Retail Media Questions
• With Ocean Projections: Moment Factory Transforms National Geographic Museum

The post Nowsignage Interview: Retail, QSR and Global Growth first appeared on invidis.

Retail media is one of the most dynamic areas in today’s advertising industry – and at the same time one of the most difficult to clearly define. Few sectors are growing faster, and even fewer are as strategically complex. This is precisely where the challenge lies: retail media is not a neatly defined medium, but rather an evolving interplay of technology, data, and commercialization. Anyone engaging with it quickly encounters a series of fundamental questions.

Four of them stand out in particular:

• DooH or not? How do retail media and DooH advertising differ?
• Rent or buy? What options are available for building a network?
• Open or closed network? Who is allowed to advertise on the network?
• Sensors – yes or no? How much analytics is needed?

We answer these questions in a comprehensive retail media article in our invidis Yearbook 2026. Antonia Hamberger (now with Bluefin) explores the different models for building a retail media network. Download the “NextGen Signage” yearbook here (article on page 136).

The post Deep Dive for Retailers: The Big Retail Media Questions first appeared on invidis.

Moment Factory has transformed the courtyard of the National Geographic Museum of Exploration in Washington, D.C., into an immersive nighttime attraction that takes visitors beneath the ocean’s surface through projection mapping, interactive media and spatial audio.

Called Wonders of Our World: Ocean, the 17-minute experience uses footage captured by National Geographic Explorers, combined with custom visual effects, to recreate marine environments and encounters with ocean wildlife.

The show opened in June alongside the new museum, part of a major redevelopment of the National Geographic Society’s headquarters.

Smart glass creates a multilayered canvas

The installation combines large-scale architectural projections, high-resolution LED screens, dynamic lighting and spatialized sound to surround visitors with underwater imagery.

A central feature is the museum pavilion’s smart-glass facade, which serves as a projection surface while also creating effects involving transparency, depth and three-dimensional illusions.

Moment Factory worked with the project’s architects to integrate the technology into the building. The combination of smart glass, interior screens and exterior projections creates a multilayered visual environment that extends beyond a conventional building-mapping installation.

The National Geographic Society describes the pavilion installation as the world’s largest use of smart glass for this type of projection experience.

Before the main presentation, visitors encounter interactive floor projections and ambient lighting in the courtyard. Following the show, the floor projections respond to visitors’ movements, creating effects inspired by bioluminescent marine life.

The production combines original music with spatial audio to accompany imagery of ocean environments, marine wildlife and underwater exploration.

Part of a larger museum project

The nighttime attraction is one of three experiences Moment Factory developed for the National Geographic Museum of Exploration.

The studio also contributed to Geoverse, an interactive educational environment exploring geography and natural landscapes, and Photo Ark: Animals of Earth, an exhibition featuring the wildlife photography of National Geographic Explorer Joel Sartore.

The museum, which opened June 26, encompasses more than 100,000 square feet (9,290 square meters) of public space, including immersive galleries, interactive exhibitions and a renovated theater.

Wonders of Our World: Ocean extends the museum’s programming into the evening, using the building itself as a display surface and turning its outdoor courtyard into an additional attraction.

The post With Ocean Projections: Moment Factory Transforms National Geographic Museum first appeared on invidis.

Electrosonic has joined Women in AV/IT (Wavit) as a corporate sponsor, supporting the organization’s efforts to expand career opportunities for women in the audiovisual and IT industries.

The sponsorship will help fund Wavit’s education, mentorship, networking and professional development initiatives. The organization works with industry partners to increase women’s representation and create pathways into technical and leadership positions.

Electrosonic, which has operated in the AV industry for more than 60 years, designs, builds and supports audiovisual systems and experiences for commercial and entertainment environments worldwide.

Addressing the gender gap

According to Electrosonic, women represent more than 25% of its workforce, compared with 9% across the AV industry and 2% in technical roles. The company did not identify the source of the industry-wide figures in the announcement.

“We’re excited to join Wavit and support its mission to create greater opportunities for women across the AV/IT industry,” said Sean McChesney, senior vice president of Electrosonic. “At Electrosonic, we’ve made a deliberate commitment to building a more representative workforce.”

Brandy Alvarado-Miranda, Wavit founder and board member and CEO of Bam Marketing & PR Agency, said corporate sponsorships provide both financial support and a commitment to improving opportunities for women.

“Electrosonic has an incredible history of innovation and leadership in our industry, and we are thrilled to welcome them to the Wavit community,” she said.

Wavit said corporate sponsorships help expand its programs and connect women with industry resources, professional networks and career development opportunities.

The post Announcements: Electrosonic Joins Wavit As Corporate Sponsor first appeared on invidis.

Forget changing outfits. Anrealage wants the outfit to change on its own. Japanese fashion house Anrealage has teamed up with E Ink to create six color-changing dresses for its Spring/Summer 2027 collection, unveiled at Paris Fashion Week on September 29.

The collection, called Skin, incorporates E Ink Prism 3 technology into garments that can change colors and patterns without the wearer changing outfits. Each dress features approximately 1,000 to 2,000 individual electronic paper elements arranged in overlapping, scale-like patterns.

Unlike conventional LED displays, E Ink technology does not emit light. Instead, the electronic paper reflects ambient light and changes its appearance electronically, consuming power primarily when colors or patterns change.

The technology gives designers the ability to create multiple visual appearances from a single garment, turning clothing into a programmable surface.

From LEDs to E Ink

Anrealage, founded by Japanese designer Kunihiko Morinaga, has previously experimented with integrating display technology into fashion.

In March 2025, invidis reported on the fashion house’s LED-covered garments, which transformed clothing into wearable digital displays.

The latest collaboration takes a different approach, using reflective electronic paper rather than illuminated pixels. The result is clothing that changes its appearance without producing its own light.

“Anrealage has a long history of combining craftsmanship, technology, and imagination in ways that challenge how we see everyday materials,” said Naoki Sumita, president of E Ink Japan.

The post E-Paper Chic: E Ink Brings Color-Changing Dresses to Paris Fashion Week first appeared on invidis.

Swedish digital signage platform provider Vertiseit delivered another strong quarter, underlining both the financial impact of the Scala acquisition and the growing importance of recurring software revenues in the digital signage industry.

Third-quarter revenue increased 45.4% year-on-year to SEK 219.2 million (€19.7 million), while adjusted EBITDA rose 80.9% to SEK 55.1 million (€5.0 million). The adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 25.1%, up from 20.2% a year earlier.

The key metric for investors remains Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). At the end of September, ARR reached a record SEK 464.0 million (€41.7 million), an increase of 43.9% year-on-year at constant exchange rates. Even more importantly, ARR continued to expand organically, growing 3.5% sequentially from the previous quarter. Annualized, this corresponds to an organic recurring revenue growth rate of almost 15%.

SaaS remains the centerpiece

Vertiseit’s transition from a traditional digital signage vendor to a software-led platform company continues to gain momentum.

Quarterly SaaS revenue rose to SEK 118.2 million (€10.6 million), an increase of SEK 38.0 million year-on-year. Recurring revenues now form the backbone of the business, providing greater visibility, predictable cash generation and the type of revenue profile public market investors typically reward with higher valuation multiples.

The company has now more than doubled ARR compared with only a few years ago, an impressive achievement in a digital signage market where many competitors still rely heavily on project-based revenue.

Strong progress, but not a pure SaaS story

While ARR growth continues to dominate the investor narrative around Vertiseit, the company remains far more diversified than many software investors might assume.

Looking at the last twelve months, SaaS accounted for 45.4% of total revenue, slightly below the 46.1% reported for full-year 2025. The recent acquisition of Scala may have diluted the software mix in the short term.

That distinction matters. Unlike many privately owned independent software vendors (ISVs), Vertiseit is not a pure-play SaaS company. The group remains deeply embedded in the broader digital signage value chain, generating revenue from software, services, hardware-related activities, implementation and support.

The actual software share is likely somewhat higher than the reported SaaS ratio, as Vertiseit inherited legacy perpetual-license revenues through previous acquisitions, including Scala. Nevertheless, the figures highlight that the company’s transformation remains a journey rather than a completed destination.

Profitability improves despite transformation costs

Growth was impressive, but profitability improved even faster. Cash EBITDA more than doubled to SEK 48.8 million (€4.4 million), corresponding to a Cash EBITDA margin of 22.2%, compared with 15.1% in the same quarter last year.

The figures suggest management’s focus on operational efficiency is beginning to bear fruit. Margin expansion continued despite ongoing costs related to the Scala integration and preparations for Vertiseit’s move to the Nasdaq Main Market.

As with most acquisition-led growth stories, organizational optimization remains a constant exercise. The company has continued to streamline operations while integrating newly acquired businesses into a common structure.

Cash flow remains the one concern

The quarter was not entirely without challenges. Operating cash flow came in at negative SEK 23.4 million (€2.1 million), compared with negative SEK 2.7 million a year earlier. Management attributed the decline primarily to temporarily elevated working-capital requirements relating to the Scala transaction and integration activities.

Investors will likely monitor coming quarters closely to ensure that cash conversion normalizes as integration efforts mature.

Scala is about much more than revenue

The strategic significance of Scala extends well beyond its contribution to ARR and revenue growth. For decades, Scala was arguably the strongest global brand in digital signage software, with an ecosystem and partner network that many competitors envied. While the company’s market position weakened under previous ownership, the acquisition gives Vertiseit something it previously lacked: genuine global reach.

The immediate challenge is clear. The newly combined Scala-Dise organization must rebuild trust with parts of the legacy Scala ecosystem while accelerating the migration from perpetual licenses toward subscription-based SaaS offerings. Neither task will be easy.

Yet the real value of Scala may ultimately prove to be geographical rather than technological.

Vertiseit already enjoys a leading position in Europe. North America and Asia-Pacific, however, represent a different story. Outside a handful of partners in Australia and parts of Southeast Asia, Vertiseit’s footprint across APAC remains limited. The same applies to North America, the world’s largest digital signage market and also one of its most competitive.

Scala may change that equation.

The acquisition provides Vertiseit with an established global partner network, particularly in North America and parts of Asia where its own brands historically had little recognition. For a company that openly aspires to build the world’s leading in-store retail platform, international expansion is the logical next chapter.

invidis Analysis

Vertiseit continues to be one of the digital signage industry’s most closely watched companies. Partly because of its strong execution, but also because publicly listed software providers remain a rarity in a market dominated by privately held competitors.

The quarter demonstrates an organization that is successfully integrating a “transformational” acquisition while simultaneously improving profitability. ARR growth remains impressive and validates the strategic direction management has pursued for several years.

Vertiseit has proven that they can grow recurring revenue, but now its time to prove whether the Scala acquisition can become the catalyst for meaningful expansion beyond Europe.

If the Sweden-based company succeeds in converting Scala’s global footprint into sustainable SaaS growth, Vertiseit could emerge as one of the few genuinely global digital signage software platforms. If not, it risks remaining a highly successful European champion with limited influence in the industry’s largest growth markets.

For now, the numbers suggest management under CEO Johan Lind and Co-CEO/CFO Jonas Lagerqvist remains firmly on track. The difficult work of turning global ambition into global market share, however, is only just beginning.

The post New ARR Record: Can Scala Turn Vertiseit Global? first appeared on invidis.

The Romanian adtech provider Footprints AI is equipping Spar International with its retail media software. The new system consolidates channels across more than 13,500 of the retailer’s locations in 50 regions. This enables advertisers to centrally plan, book, and evaluate their campaigns in Spar stores.

Footprints AI is not building its own network for this purpose. The software accesses existing channels operated by Spar retailers, which include in-store screens, in-store radio, online stores, apps, and point-of-sale data. According to the company, Footsprints AI is already active in more than 10,000 stores across Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Spar decides on data use

With this launch, each Spar national organization retains control over data and advertising space. For Central European Spar stores, Zetadisplay is currently building a retail media network with hundreds of displays.

“Retail media has reached a point where brands and agencies no longer need an isolated network. They need a marketplace that can scale results,” says Dan Marc, CEO of Footprints AI.

Software predicts in-store demand

The Footprints software supports planning with its predictive audience targeting. It predicts what customers are most likely to buy in the next one, seven, and 30 days and uses this data to build target audiences and optimize campaigns.

To do this, Footprints AI combines various data points in real time. These include shopper behavior in-store, screen and radio ad delivery data, POS transactions, and app behavior.

According to the company, the forecasts it generates are 98 percent accurate. To arrive at this figure, the software provider analyzed its own benchmarks from more than 7,000 campaigns for global brands – including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Heineken. These features are now also intended to help Spar’s national organizations increase their advertising revenue.

The post Retail Media: Spar Integrates In-Store Channels with Footprints AI first appeared on invidis.

USSI Global has announced three executive leadership changes in October, promoting Ted Korte to Chief Technology Officer and Amanda Flynn to Chief Operating Officer while appointing Ed McGivern as Chief Revenue Officer.

The Melbourne, Florida-based company provides engineering, installation, maintenance and managed services for digital signage, broadcast media and network infrastructure. The leadership changes come as USSI Global looks to expand its technical capabilities and develop new business opportunities across its markets.

All three executives report to President and CEO Anthony Morelli.

Korte takes over technology leadership

Korte, who joined USSI Global in 2021, most recently served as Vice President of Engineering and Technology. As CTO, he will oversee engineering teams, evaluate emerging technologies and develop solutions across the company’s three business units.

He previously helped establish USSI Global’s Media Transport Solutions Lab, which allows broadcasters to evaluate satellite, terrestrial IP, cloud and other distribution technologies before deployment.

Korte’s expanded responsibilities will also cover digital signage, retail technology and electronics repair. The company’s engineering teams are exploring opportunities involving audience analytics, IoT sensors, point-of-sale systems and other technologies.

“Ted has played an instrumental role in transforming how USSI Global approaches technology, engineering and customer engagement,” said Morelli.

Before joining USSI Global, Korte held engineering leadership positions at Harris Corporation, Qligent and L3Harris.

Flynn moves from revenue to operations

Flynn, an 18-year company veteran, moves into the COO position after serving as CRO since March 2024.

She will focus on expanding service offerings, improving operational processes and aligning the company’s capabilities with customer requirements.

Flynn joined USSI Global in 2008 and has held positions spanning business development, customer relations, sales and revenue operations.

“My experience working closely with customers has taught me that the best opportunities come from understanding their challenges and finding creative ways to solve them,” said Flynn.

McGivern leads revenue growth

McGivern, appointed CRO on October 8, will oversee USSI Global’s go-to-market strategy, customer acquisition and revenue expansion.

He brings more than 25 years of executive experience, including leadership positions at Harris Broadcast/Imagine Communications, Grass Valley/Snell Advanced Media and Tektronix.

Most recently, he established Appear’s North American operation in 2022 and grew it into a business generating more than US$45 million in annual revenue.

McGivern will focus on expanding managed services and pursuing opportunities in government, sports and live events, alongside the company’s established broadcast and digital signage markets.

The appointments also come as USSI Global prepares for another phase of the C-band spectrum transition, which involves shifting satellite communications frequencies to make room for expanded 5G wireless services. 

The leadership changes position USSI Global to expand beyond individual installation projects into longer-term technical services and customer support relationships.

The post Three Appointments: USSI Global Reshuffles Executive Leadership first appeared on invidis.