Getting the Most Out of a Digital Billboard Ad

90% of  Advertisers aren’t using digital outdoor right… and it’s our fault.

After operating digital displays for the last 10 years, I can honestly say that this is generally the case. Local advertisers are not using digital outdoor the right way because we, as operators, are not doing a good job of insisting that they do. I have been guilty of it for the sake of “getting it posted”. I see it on other operator’s digital boards, as well.

State law changed in 2014 to prohibit property tax on signs

The city of Milwaukee scored a legal victory Tuesday when an appeals court upheld real estate tax assessments on billboards owned by Clear Channel Outdoor between 2009 and 2013.

Clear Channel had paid around $7.2 million on the roughly 850 billboards it owns in the city, but challenged the real estate assessment as invalid.

Reno, NV – Continuing a nearly two-decade fight over how to interpret a voter-approved ban on new billboards in the city of Reno, the council on Wednesday extended its moratorium on digital billboards for another year.

The council also halted the city’s practice of creating “banked billboard receipts,” which let billboard owners demolish an existing sign with a promise from the city that they could build it in a new location at a later date. Billboard owners have been saving up such credits with the hope of using them to erect digital billboards once the city’s moratorium expired.

The LED has certainly become a major component for lighting, signage and display. I’ve watched it happen over my 25 years in the business of providing brand and image solutions. Many of those solutions involve digital displays. There are many forms of these visual displays including the electronic message center, or EMC. There are also numerous manufactures of these EMC displays that supply and serve the sign industry. Among them are Watchfire, Optec, and Lightking Outdoor.

Watchfire, formally Time-O-Matic, got its start in 1932. Through the years they went from making control systems for chaser lights that went in theatre marquee signs to making the first time and temperature signs to now manufacturing a wide range of EMC signs. Optec began making their displays in 1985 and installed the world’s first full color RGB LED display in Washington state 20 years ago. Lightking Outdoor was founded in 1967 providing LED signs and billboards. With a focus on technology they continue to improve EMC signs with LEDs including their patent pending series of billboard displays.

Cruising down the highway on the way to work, running errands while the kids are at school, or maybe a family road trip across the country; thousands of drivers a day pass by the advertisement you purchased on a prime location billboard in the hopes of boosting your revenue, but how many of them actually notice and absorb your message? What is the difference between the billboard your ad is on from the next one, and the next one? Now upcoming on the horizon is the new LED billboard freshly installed, bright, eye-catching. The driver can’t help but read its rotating messages as they drive past, first about the local ER, next a Cajun restaurant advertising a delicious looking signature dish just off the next exit, without realizing it the driver absorbed 2 messages in the 20 second window the LED board was in view.

However, your static message went unnoticed!