What Is A Digital Billboard?
Digital billboards started coming to prominence around 2005. While many digital billboards are the same size and can be found in the same place as traditional billboards, they are produced in a much wider variety of sizes for more diverse placements.
Digital billboards can be easily programmed to cycle through different ads at different intervals, making the setup costs lower than traditional billboards. While these billboards may have only been found in high-traffic areas like Times Square when they were first introduced,
Where Can You Use A Digital Billboard?
Digital billboards have become common in subway stations, bus stops, and attached to the sides of skyscrapers, giving you targeted access to a variety of demographics that highway billboards just can’t.
Since the infrastructure necessary to install a digital billboard is relatively minimal, they can be installed pretty much anyway with access to electricity.
When placing a digital billboard ad, you should approach audience targeting in the same way you would a traditional billboard. It’s important that your ad is placed in a high-traffic area and one where the traffic is qualified. For example, bookstores will get better exposure advertising on a college campus than a luxury car dealership would.
Benefits Of Digital Billboards: Static Vs. Digital
Databeat reports that digital billboards are up to 400% more effective than standard, static billboards. The same study found that they capture attention faster with moving images, are more memorable, and have a higher reach.
Digital billboards aren’t always going to be the right solution for your brand. That being said, there are definitely advantages worth examining.
Share Advertising Space To Reduce Costs
Advertising on a digital billboard tends to be cheaper than advertising on a static billboard.
Since a digital billboard displays multiple advertisements, you split the cost of advertising space with others sharing the space.
If your copy is succinct and well-formatted, the average person should be able to take in the message in less than 10 seconds.
Digital billboard advertising cost depends on your advert’s length, the billboard’s location, and the advertising agency you work with. On average, you can expect to spend anywhere from $5,000 to $100,000 per month for a digital billboard spot.
Update Your Advertisements In Real-Time
Some of the best and most effective marketing campaigns rely on building anticipation for a product. This perhaps works best for TV shows and movies, but similar principles can be employed for products and services no matter the niche.
If you’re running a promotion, your billboard can display a countdown timer showing how much time customers have left to take advantage of it. This makes your ad attention-grabbing and builds a sense of urgency, making it more likely to leave a lasting impression.
With a bit of creativity, this can apply to practically any product. Adverts for an antihistamine can display the day’s pollen count. You sell umbrellas: how likely is it to rain today?
Interactivity
People are more inundated with advertising than ever, so they’re growing increasingly weary and jaded of being marketed to. Thanks to the interactive elements that digital billboards give you access to, your ads can encourage active participation that works around this and leaves a lasting impression.
This can be as simple as displaying live posts alongside your ad with the relevant hashtags, getting people to spread the word on social media.
One genius example from Canada had fans of the Netflix show Daredevil show support for their favorite characters on Twitter. Characters with more support would ‘damage’ their competitors, and the display would change to show them getting cuts and bruises.
Draw More Attention
With so many modern distractions, marketers have to work harder than ever to grab and retain an audience’s attention. This is where digital billboards have a distinct advantage over traditional ones.
If you’re planning on using a digital advertising space, leaning into animated and moving elements will make your ad stand out against all the others. Even something as simple as a moving transition from the previous advert can get someone to look up from their phones.
An Arbitron study found that 47% of respondents could recall digital billboards over static ones. That said, you should avoid the temptation to go overboard with visual noise. One or two moving elements are all you need. More than that means your audience won’t be able to parse the critical information in the time they’re looking at it.
Lower Production Costs
So how much does it cost to advertise on a digital billboard? Surprisingly, it’s generally much less expensive to produce an advert for a digital billboard than a static one.
You can avoid all the costs involved in printing on a large canvas or vinyl and paying for someone to install it. You can simply design your ad and send it off to the publisher. This also reduces turnaround time, so you can take advantage of the latest trends before they become stale or oversaturated.
You can take these savings a step further by utilizing remnant advertising. This means finding advertising spaces that haven’t been sold and securing them for low prices. It’s a perfect option for testing a new idea on a smaller scale.
How To Get The Most Out Of Digital Billboard Advertising
If you don’t know where to go with digital billboard advertising, you can boil down the basic concepts into three important steps.
There is plenty more to consider before launching your campaign, but nailing down these three concepts will give you a roadmap for your campaign.
Step 1: Choose Your Location Wisely
Deciding where you’re going to place your advert is possibly the most critical aspect of a successful campaign. But there’s more to consider than just what kind of people will see your ad and where they’ll see it.
What kind of mindset are the people seeing your ad likely to be in when they look at your advert?
If you’re advertising over a highway at 5 pm on a weekday, it’s likely that your audience is frustrated and sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic. How can you position your message in a way that addresses that directly?
Step 2: Create The Right Message
If we think about the most recognizable ads and slogans, they’re all concise. Tell your company’s story in just a few words. Six words are far more likely to stick in your audience’s head than a whole paragraph.
Visual communication is more effective at communicating your message than textual, so you should pay just as much attention to what your font, spacing, and color scheme say about your brand as the words.
Use simple but powerful images to show why your business is the best. You’ve only got a few opportunities to shine, so make the most of them.
Step 3: Concentrate On A Call To Action
A successful call to action requires understanding your marketing goals from the outset.
Are you trying to promote a sale, generate a broader social media presence, or drive customers to your webpage?
For example, a well-designed billboard ad with a QR code that leads the audience to your website is a great way to encourage people to take action without drawing attention to the fact that they’re directly engaging with an advert.
Buy Remnant Digital Billboard Ads With The Remnant Agency
While the costs for digital billboards may be a bit more restrictive than traditional billboards for some advertisers, you may be surprised to find out just how far you can stretch your budget with remnant digital billboard ads.
We can secure premium digital billboard space at a significant discount by purchasing unsold ad space at the last minute. With these discounts, we then make your existing budget stretch significantly longer than it would for a typical campaign, causing your ROAS to multiply.
Contact us today to learn more about advertising on digital billboards with The Remnant Agency.
