Digital Mobile Billboards

The team has working on extending its capabilities to offer advertising vehicles that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these concepts uses pizza boxes as advertising space. Think of this as small moving billboard that gets delivered at the consumer’s home. Studies demonstrated that this type of ads can evoke an 80% recall rate (8 out of 10 households individuals remember to see an ad on the pizza box) with an average ROI of 150%. This means, for every 1 dollar the advertiser invested in a pizza box advertising campaign, they received at least additional 2.5 dollars of sales. For more details see the article Estimating the ROI of Pizza Box Marketing.

Among all traditional advertising media, out of home (OOH) advertising is growing the fastest. In the second quarter of 2019, the medium posted revenue growth of 7.7%. Interestingly, the growth can be attributed to the increasing digitization of OOH advertising using digital mobile billboards and other innovations.

Are digital mobile billboards the real deal?

According to this analysis, the digitization of OOH is the most significant trend in the sector right now. Notably, digital mobile billboards are hard to miss because of the flashy and graphic images used. For this reason, there is an increased adoption of digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH), which WARC expects to expand at an annual rate of 10.1% between 2018 and 2021. WARC established that DOOH would be responsible for almost all of OOH advertising’s growth going forward.

Nevertheless, are digital billboards a delight to everybody who views it? Not. A significant population sees billboards in general as agents of visual pollution. Notably, a campaign dubbed Scenic America is working towards the complete removal of billboards across the US. One of the fundamental issues that Scenic America has with the billboards is that they destroy the beauty of nature.

Notably, the problem with digital mobile billboards is that shiny ads are distracting. According to this study, digital billboards are responsible for drivers taking their eyes from the wheel hence leading to fatal accidents. Notably, the study established that drivers stare at digital billboards for longer than they would static billboards. As a result, the use of the advertising medium, going forward, could face increased pressure hence making it unfavorable.

The industry will shift to Stay-at-Home Ad options

Billboards will not be an attractive advertising method. Blank billboards and cancelled digital ads across the country and many parts of the globe is a strong pointer to how the coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world today has impacted sign advertising. The devastating effects of the pandemic on human lives could almost be likened to how terribly it has also dealt with businesses around the world. Some out-of-home advertising firms have withdrawn their earnings projections for the year as a result of market uncertainties at the moment. A good number of businesses that will survive the pandemic will most likely have to struggle to find their footing again. Reports also say that digital ad giants, Facebook and Google have also had their shares of the downturn. Even Coca-Cola has soft-pedaled its marketing drives.

Most digital ads creation companies have put a temporary stop on ads creation. A reasonable overview of the current crisis wrought by the COVID-19 spread shows that making new ad videos may just end up as a waste of time and money for the ad shoot companies as well as it is for the owners of the business. In the coming weeks, ad buyers in the USA will tilt towards new advertising ideas the more. All methods of advertising that serve as workable alternatives to OOH advertising will shine as saviors. And they’ll shine the more if they provide equally satisfying results for the clients.

Advertising trucks: the pitfalls

Advertisers have been using alternative to static billboards as vehicle advertising or digital mobile OOH. However, the use of advertising trucks during the ad campaign has risks as impact on reputation. When the truck carries the brand on the road, it plays the role of a brand ambassador. Any potential incident might risk other people on the road. If the truck driver misbehaves, the brand might suffer in terms of reputation. It is because the audience will associate bad behavior with the business. In addition, advertising trucks have several pitfalls as low return on the ad investment, difficult to track the outcomes and low brand recall. Advertising trucks cannot pinpoint the exact audience that a business would like to reach. As such, the ad campaign might generate thousands of impressions per day, but only a handful of them will lead to direct action.