Digital Billboards Attract New Market Segments

When digital billboards came on the scene, segments of advertisers who hadn’t traditionally used outdoor began moving their ad budget from other media to outdoor. Outdoor’s dynamic characteristics have really helped outdoor advertising become a strong competitor to print and broadcast advertising. 

Here are a few types of “new to outdoor” advertisers that have not only increased their outdoor advertising spend, but have brought new ideas that utilize the full potential of digital outdoor. 

Many of these ideas can be applied in any market and may help your sales effort. Here are a few:

• Funeral Homes - The traditional “newspaper only” obituary has gone digital. Funeral homes are using digital billboards to display photos of the deceased with a web address to the full obituary and service/memorial details.
   
• Realtors - Many realtors use digital billboards to advertise individual listings for homes in the vicinity of the billboard.  In my discussions with realtors who are doing this, they admit that they can rarely attribute the ultimate sale of the posted homes to the billboard ads. However, they do see a spike in homeowners signing on with them to list their homes.  More listings equates to a higher possibility of the realtor selling additional homes.
   
• Venues - Civic centers, concert halls, theatres and other places where ticketed events are held are starting to buy longer billboard contracts.  Before digital billboards, only select events would receive outdoor support – and only for a few weeks before the event.  Now, a venue can sign an annual agreement and run all of their upcoming events without accumulating production charges with every copy change.  They also have the ability to daypart messages and split copy to promote one event more frequently than another.
   
• Entire Shopping Centers/Downtown Merchants - Instead of relying on co-op marketing contracted by the property owner or downtown association, many of the merchants who share retail proximity are pooling their funds to purchase time on a digital board.  The copy may have the shopping center or downtown association colors, logo and branding (i.e. “Visit us at Westgate Center”), but each rotation features a different merchant.  Other times the shopping center owner may purchase the space and then re-sell it to multiple tenants.
   
• Arcade/Children’s Entertainment - These businesses use personalization in their digital outdoor message to drive sales and increase bookings for children’s parties.  Birthday party meccas like arcade/pizza places, skating rinks, and other children’s entertainment locations are using digital outdoor to post a birthday message as part of a party package.
   

As one digital billboard owner I know once put it, if you sell a digital billboard like you would sell a static billboard, you’ll just be cannibalizing your own market. You have to sell the dynamic nature of digital, and when you do that, you open up a whole new world of prospective advertisers.

Learn more about selling digital outdoor in our free video, “Selling Digital Billboards as a Dynamic Medium.”