How to Advertise on Digital Billboards
According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), there were 1,500 digital billboards along U.S. highways in 2009. This fast-growing outdoor advertising medium offers lower creation costs, remote advertisement updating and higher effectiveness rates when compared to conventional billboards. You can easily develop your own digital billboard by following a similar procedure to advertising on traditional billboards.
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Instructions
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Contact an outdoor advertising agency. These companies generally place their names on the bottom of the digital billboards. A directory of digital billboard agencies can be found in the Outdoor Advertising Association of America's Media Marketplace, oohmediamarketplace.com.
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Pick the right digital billboard location. Choose one that has a high Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB) circulation to increase the number of potential customers who will see your message. Also consider access to your business when choosing billboard location. You want customers to have enough time to react to your message and easily navigate their way to your business.
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Sign an outdoor advertising contract. This agreement will spell out billboard location, advertising price, responsibilities and amount of time the advertisement will be displayed. Display length varies from one week to several weeks. According to Inc. magazine, you can expect to pay from $1,200 to $10,000 per month, per billboard.
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Choose your message. Six to eight advertisers share the same digital billboard in rotation, with an average display time of eight seconds per advertisement. This fact, coupled with the limited amount of time you have to attract your mobile audience's attention, means your message should be brief and to the point. The OAAA recommends limiting the number of words to a total of 10, with headlines of five words or fewer. Consider having different messages used at different times of the day. For example, digital billboard messages for a restaurant could advertise breakfast specials in the morning and the dinner menu in the evening.
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Design your digital billboard. Most digital billboards require static advertisements, with no moving graphics. Use a simple photo or illustration that shows your product or service. Choose bold fonts, and make them large enough to be read at a distance. The LED lighting technology used in digital billboards allows for colorful displays. However, lighter colors (especially white) can appear unclear, so avoid large light areas. Many outdoor advertising companies offer design services as part of your advertising contract.
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Approve your advertisement for display. Check your design for typographical errors. Then give the outdoor advertising agency final approval for display. Digital billboards use satellite or cell phone networks along with a local computer to display the advertisements, so your ad should appear shortly after your authorization.
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Tips & Warnings
Measure your results. Ask your customers where they heard about your business to calculate the success of your digital billboard advertising.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit white honey holed plate with blue leds image by willem169 from Fotolia.com
