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The ability of smart boards to display a targeted message at different times of day makes them particularly compelling. McDonald's, for example, could advertise an Egg McMuffin in the morning and a Big Mac in the afternoon on the same board, or a local TV affiliate could plug soap operas during the afternoon and an upcoming evening-news bulletin to commuters on the way home. "Selling day parts has never been an option for out-of-home advertisers before," says Jodi Senese, executive vice president of CBS Outdoor, which will unveil a network of 75 high-definition LCD subway-station signs this summer in Manhattan. In London since December, LED screens have been traveling around the city, mounted on a fleet of 25 buses. Advertisers can update ad messages within 10 minutes, using a GPS modem to flag their latest offers or even match an ad with the neighborhood the bus is passing through. "Once you introduce that kind of flexibility," says Jon Lewen, who is overseeing the effort for Viacom Outdoor, "even those advertisers who traditionally wouldn't consider it do."
Not only are digital displays nimble, but they also allow outdoor ad agencies to sell the same real estate more than once, which has its own obvious appeal. Since July, Clear Channel Outdoor, based in Phoenix, Ariz., has been conducting a test of seven large-format LED boards in strategic locations in Cleveland's metro area. Each sign runs seven 8-sec. spots a minute. If the current rate of ad sales continues, Clear Channel's Meyer estimates that the boards will produce revenue of $2.3 million in 12 months. Those seven displays in their static form generated $380,000 last year. "An ad medium that historically has been viewed as cumbersome and slow to react is now as flexible as broadcast," says Meyer.
It's possible that, given the mobile lifestyle of today's consumers, billboards can reach more people more reliably than TV commercials. A survey released by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research last month found that 78% of advertisers think traditional TV commercials have become less effective. Since TV audiences are so fragmented, insiders argue, outdoor ads are a surer way to reach more people more frequently than other forms of advertising. On average, says Senese, out-of-home signs are seen by 90% of adults in a given geographic area over a four-week period.
Television execs wouldn't buy that pitch, but on one selling point the outdoor industry is on solid ground: much improved metrics. How many people see an outdoor ad and when they see it can be tracked much more accurately than ever--a key measurement for national advertisers who want proven results. Since 1933, the only equivalent of TV's Nielsen ratings for outdoor boards came from the Traffic Audit Bureau (TAB), which counted how many people passed a given sign. That antiquated system worked in local markets but couldn't capture the breadth of a national campaign. So the industry has invested heavily in research, recognizing that big-time advertisers demand accountability. Says TAB's president and CEO, Joseph Philport: "We realize the challenge has been not just to deliver the size of an audience that sees an ad but to determine how many in the audience notice it."