How billboards compete with today’s digital advertising
Billboards have waned as an effective marketing tool due to their high premiums and contracts in comparison to fluid, cost saving tools used in digital advertising.
The Basics
The basic goal to any marketing strategy is to reach your audience. This simple fact leads to one obvious question: Where are they? Your audience is more than likely connected to the Internet. Traditional marketing took to the streets and grabbed attention by posting along highways. Tall, easy to read billboards once grabbed attention and brought consumers off highways and into shops and businesses; but this method has waned in value. Billboards still hold a place in the advertising industry, but for most they seem out of date, dull in comparison to digital advertising, and expensive.
Effectively, billboards have decreased in their value as an advertising tool. With the surge of the Internet, people are more likely to be motivated by their own searches rather than a sunburned advertisement. The magic is in fluidity. A billboard has one chance to make a statement and grab a driver’s attention, while most do this successfully; the staying power is where weakness lies. In most circumstances, billboards do not repeat along the same stretch of road, allowing a consumer to easily forget. On the contrary, digital media is waiting. With a simple click or search, consumers access an ad that for a moment interests them lending a business leverage to market their product or service. Similarly, ads can correlate to searches on the Internet that continue to voice appeal while the consumer’s attention is held.
Cause and Effect
Online advertising is the happy medium of promoting because it’s the easy to access resource for your audience and it’s the easy to assess resource for your businesses. The majority of consumers use digital avenues for entertainment, research and routine searches. For this reason, digital platforms can be highly successful in bringing traffic to websites. Simple strategies connect consumers with markets by the touch of a button and the ironic fact is, consumers are generally seeking the markets themselves.
It is important to note the valuable, data driven resources businesses will enjoy with digital advertising tools. Tracking and measuring web traffic is a tool. With an online presence, the amount of traffic to your website can be tracked along with the amount of time audiences spend on each page. Beyond reaching an audience, the power to gage what interests visitors is attainable. Not only does this method of advertising allow for fluidity, such as changing ads, updating information, etc.; it delivers the opportunity to know your market on a daily basis. For example, any online news source has complete knowledge of what stories their readers click on and how long they spend reading the article. The simple equation to this is, if you want your audience to return to your site —feed them.
In comparison, billboards can only assume their
market is traveling within view. Certainly billboards have a time and place along roadways. The obvious, is the waterpark each driver is speeding towards with a car full of kids. A large, easy to read billboard with the specific exit number is more than handy. Furthermore, billboards require contracts; therefore businesses that rely on traffic to a specific location most likely prefer a contract. For this reason, billboards that hold value typically point out location, which is key. A great example would be the latest housing development shoppers never knew about as they were simply driving around to get a feel for the neighborhood.
The Data
It’s worth noting that a large portion of out of home advertising does get noticed. According to the 2013 Arbitron Out-of-Home Advertising Study 69% of drivers recall seeing a billboard advertisement in the past month. With the amount of time drivers spend behind the wheel, billboard advertising still has a time and a place in marketing. This study build an attractive model until you compare it to the amount of time consumers spend on the Internet. According to Statistica’s consumer research study, by 2017, U.S. adults are expected to increase daily Internet usage to 258 minutes. Given these findings, and the contractual strings that generally devour a healthy budget, digital advertising wins as the accessible, feasible and effective measure in marketing.
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