Outdoor - "Billboards", Transit Ads, Kiosks and Other Outdoor media

Outdoor advertising is BIG Business! Big boards, big visibility and big budget...likely but not necessarily out of the question for a local small businesses.

Most people, when they think of outdoor advertising, think of "billboards". Other common types of outdoor advertising include:

• Transit Ads,
• Kiosks, Islands, bus shelters, subway stations, airports
• Sky and aerial banners, blimps and inflatable Ads
• Stadium promotions
• Shopping carts and in-store displays
• building exterior ads.

Let's start with Billboards...only don't call them billboards. In the industry they are Outdoor Poster Boards and Painted Bulletins.

Poster Panel Boards - These are the smaller outdoor boards that generally line city streets and expressways.
Click for examples: example 1 | example 2

Size: They are about the size of our chalkboard wall running 24' 1/2" by 12' 1/4". (About a 2 to 1 ratio aspect rectangular viewing area)

Production: They are printed, usually on either mylar or opaline (plastics) but may be heavy stock paper at 70 lb. strength and up.

Coverage and Viewing Size: poster panels come in 24 sheets, 30 sheets, and bleed options (cover to the edges with no border.) Each step in the options reduces the board margins and results in a larger viewing size on the board.
click for examples

Installation: Most are self adhesive, similar to "contact paper" for lining your cupboards at home. However, they may be glued and pasted like wallpaper.

Painted Bulletins - These are the large outdoor boards that generally line the freeways, highways and some expressways. Most are illuminated.
Click for examples: example 1 | example 2

Size: They are about twice the length of our chalkboard wall and a couple of week taller, running 48' by 14'. (About a 4 to 1 ratio aspect rectangular viewing area)

Production: They are usually hand painted on 4' x 8' wood panels by artists in a warehouse. Modern technology is beginning to use computer generated painting.

Coverage and Viewing Size: The whole board space is generally used without a margin. Options to extend the viewing space are available called Embellishments:

• extensions = artwork
• enhancements = mechanicals and three dimensionals
  click for examples: example 1 | example 2
  

Installation: The wood panels are transported to the site and installed (bolted) directly to the board.
click for example

Community Considerations - Every community has its own regulations regarding outdoor advertising. There may be county, city and community regulations and restrictions to comply with. For instance, in Santa Cruz Count, Outdoor boards are outlawed, with one or two exceptions that were grandfathered into the law. The highway 17 Ocean Chevrolet/Honda board on State highway land outside the city limits is such an exception.

Who Owns the Boards and the Land? - The boards are individually owned or owned by large outdoor advertising media companies. Patrick, Gannet Outdoor, Naegele and Foster & Kleiser are three of the bigger companies. Usually they build the boards and install them on rented locations. In other words, the media companies rent the land from various government agencies or private individuals then build the boards on the rented land.

Risk Factors - Generally the media will insure the boards. Occasionally a community will require property and liability insurance to cover traffic accidents and injuries to motorists beyond the normal coverages due to high risk board ideas that might be considered a hazard or nuisance. (One Step Beyond example)

Advantages of Outdoor

• Size is a powerful attraction for the eye
• Special lighting, movable features and outstanding colors and graphics
• 24/7 exposure
• speak to an immediate need
• show off distinctive packaging, logo and branding
• good reach and excellent frequency

Drawbacks of Outdoor

• Can't carry complex messages
• many locations aren't necessarily suitable of worth the money
• may be cost prohibitive
• Serve as background, secondary to the driver's attention
• Criticized as a form of visual pollution
  

Buying and Scheduling - TAB, or the Traffic Audit Bureau, specializes in and is the source of most outdoor media measurement, just as Neilsen similarly specializes in television and Arbitron specializes in radio.

The key measuring tool is traffic counts. Each car driving by is an impression (proximity not necessarily viewing the board).

Circulation is the number of boards and a pattern of board coverage purchased in a given geographic area.

Gross Impressions = circulation x frequency (duplicated reach)

GRP = Reach x Frequency; a measure of comparative effectiveness

Reach and Frequency - Frequency is always very high with outdoor advertising due to driving patterns. A person in a car is likely to drive by a board twice a day or even more in a given week of commuting to work and generally driving about. Imagine how often that person is exposed to that board over a month. Reach is also strong but depends more upon the showing —the number of boards and pattern of distribution of the boards— purchased by the advertiser.

Showings - Outdoor boards are sold by "showings" where a showing is a selected group of board locations that will yield a given amount of gross impressions per month. On a rate card a showing will be expressed as relative to the population in a given geographic area.

A base 100 showing equates to a number of impressions equal to the population but doesn't guarantee that each member of the population is reached...just a number of impressions equal to the population and it does include duplicated reach.

Another way to say it is: A Number 100 showing equals Gross Impressions equal to maximum circulation (population) in a given geographic area NOT reaching 100% of the population.

Example: Population = 100,000 people:

#25   showing = 25,000 G.I.'s
#100 showing = 100,000 G.I.'s
#150 showing = 150,000 G.I.'s

Note that a #100 showing could be achieved by:

1,000 people seeing the boards 100 times each yielding a reach of 1 (1,000 out of 100,000 = 1%)

- or -

100,000 people seeing the boards 1 time each yielding a reach of 100 (100,000 of 100,000 = 100%).

Options - When purchasing showings for a given area you will have some options to choose from that may enhance your reach and frequency measures.

Rotating Bulletins - every 3 months or so the boards are rotated, or in other words re-posted in new locations within the geographic coverage area and the old board locations given to someone else.

Illuminations - Your showing may include combinations of lighted and unlighted boards

Cost - usually 3 month minimum; about $3,500 per bulletin or #5 showing

Lettering on Boards - If words are important enough to include on a poster board or bulletin then we should give due care to the rules of typography and readability, just as we would for a print ad.

The following chart is a guide for readability based upon distance. Other factors for assuring readability include

• driving speed
• illumination
• color contrast
• font
• proper spacing

click for example: example 1

Messages - Obviously your message must be kept short and simple and devoid of large amounts of text, usually a headline only. The headline should be 3-5 words in general. People are driving by and occupied as they read. You have little time to deliver a message. The visual illustration must carry the feelings and attitudes you wish to convey and the headline must quickly confirm what the viewer is seeing.

Getting Creative - Even though you are limited with what you can do with the message on a board, you are unlimited in terms of creativity. Mechanicals and embellishments are common. Other ideas include:

• Live actors
• combining boards
• evolving messages
• illumination that changes the boards illustration at night
• more?

click for examples" example 1 | example 2