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Billboard Pricing: Re-Calculating the Costs after COVID-19

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Adzze Advertising

From the preceding, billboard prices punitive for businesses in large cities. Unfortunately, the correlation of the billboard pricing with audience targeting is low. In the US, many billboards appear on the sides of highways and huge buildings. Notably, the ads placed on the billboards target drivers and passengers in cars and trains. Unfortunately, many, if not all, drivers on busy highways would instead focus on the road than read a billboard. Otherwise, the inattention to the road might result in many accidents. On the other hand, many passengers on trains and cars focus on touching and swiping at their smartphones. In a word, the majority of the target audience is less attentive to billboards. The billboard pricing does not correlate with the brand recall.


Further, there is no way advertisers can say with much confidence that they know who will use a particular highway for four weeks. Therefore, it is merely a matter of faith, which does not convert to engagement for the message. Unlike other advertising techniques like ambient marketing, billboards cannot reach a specific audience. Instead, it relies on the generalization that, in the end, produces scant impressions.

Billboard pricing needs to be re-calculated

By the end of the crisis, billboard companies may not only be counting their losses in billions of dollars, many of their customers might have moved on to embrace other more pocket-friendly advertising alternatives. These alternatives are indoor-directed, and have proven to be equally effective, perhaps even more effective than the conventional outdoor methods. Aside from the fact that they are more expensive, it is difficult to track engagement for out-of-home ads. In fact, small businesses face more challenges trying to get a marketing space in the highly competitive ad industry.

The New York Times aptly described the effect of the pandemic on outdoor advertising as a ‘seismic shock’. Even Coca-Cola is among the companies that have limited their ad campaigns during the coronavirus crisis, the New York Times report says. Long story cut short; a lot of companies are hitting the brakes on billboard ads and other forms of OOH advertising, and are also pulling back until the coast clears.

The results expected from billboards usually will depend on the size of the audience viewing the displays each day. Out-of-home ad companies, especially those with a significant presence at major arenas like Times Square, will, therefore, need to re-calculate estimated traffic to capture current economic realities. Billboard pricing will need to be reviewed. This will serve as an indication to estimated ROI and may also provide insights to more strategic locations that they could migrate to or if they’d be better off by taking the wait-and-see position before crawling of their shells. Although re-calculating the numbers of impressions seem almost unrealistic because even when things were normal, a good percentage of people see billboards without actually taking in the contents, it still is a smart move to make because ad buyers will want to ensure that there is a measurable return on their investment.


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