Are digital billboards effective? If you’re looking to grow your brand, this is a completely fair question. In fact, if you seek to advertise a product, service, or simply reach a broader audience, this question is essential – you wouldn’t want to waste precious advertising dollars.
This is especially important to consider in digital marketing, as online ads rule today’s advertising landscape. These include PPC and display and banner ads.
A whopping 65% of small to mid-size businesses use PPC advertising, yet many internet users disdain online ads. Many online users ignore if not completely block internet ads from appearing on their devices, which go beyond desktops alone.
In fact, nearly one-third of internet users worldwide use ad-blocking tools at least some of the time. Clearly, although they are frequently used by marketers, there is a disconnect between internet ads and their efficacy, since a large portion of the worldwide netizen population blocks them.
This brings us to digital billboards, a form of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising.
Although they are digital in nature, digital billboards are not online ads, which then begs the question, are digital billboards effective?
What is a digital billboard: a quick recap
The foremost tool in DOOH (digital out-of-home advertising), a digital billboard is a large outdoor board made up of a large panel with an LED display and controlled through computers. These advertising screens usually require DOOH software to power them by marketers and advertisers, whereas media owners may use their own technology.
These kinds of billboards are also referred to as digital signage and LED billboards.
They rotate every several seconds with other ads sharing ad space at a particular billboard location. An 8-15 second ad slot is known as a blip.
Have more questions or want a more thorough resource? Check out our post on what is a digital billboard.
Are digital billboards effective?
The short of it is yes, digital signage is an extremely effective method of relaying your intended messages to your target audience. While primarily associated with advertising, these bright, eye-catching signs are also used for many other purposes – those that are both advertising and non-advertising related.
Here are some of the most common use cases for these types of billboards in which they provide their buyers with meaningful results:
- All brand-building efforts: Your business is far more than what you sell. Your brand is intertwined in everything you do and stand for, and will impact your business’s legacy the most. DOOH billboards allow you to engage in all brand-building activities regularly and capture a broad audience.
- Go-to-market strategy: Releasing a new product to the public is never without risks. Digital billboards connect your new innovations with the eyes of thousands on a daily basis. They’re the most apt tools for the distribution portion of your go-to-market strategy.
- Branching out and reaching new audiences: Those looking to add more physical stores in other regions of the country will greatly benefit from these tools. However, even if you operate just one physical location, digital billboards are necessary to draw more people to your business, as many single-location businesses use local SEO and local internet targeting to reach more people and have customers patronize them digitally.
DOOH ads also help reach this goal.
- Enhancing the customer journey and customer experience (CX): As your customers wade through their customer journey with your brand, using the same old marketing efforts isn’t going to cut it. Your customers are bombarded with online ads and other digital experiences daily. Digital billboards provide another method of appealing to your customers and enhancing their customer journey, since these tools are bright, flashy and pleasant to view. In turn, your customers have a better CX with your business, making them more inclined to buy from you and remain your customers.
- Preventing ad fatigue: Ad fatigue occurs when your audience has seen ads so many times that they grow bored and weary, leading them to completely disregard your messaging. Luckily, digital billboards ward off boredom due to their size, brightness and creativity. This enables your brand to tackle any ad campaign.
- Creating brand lift: Brand lift refers to the measurable rise in the perceptions, engagements and interactions customers have with a brand after seeing its advertising campaign. DOOH ads empower you to create an ad experience that reels people in, instead of repelling them, as small, unnoticeable yet pesky online ads do. There is proof that DOOH creates a significant rise in customers’ brand interactions, just see the below section with statistics.
- Building brand trust: Brand trust is a long-term effort, but worth it to create qualified buyers, as well as to retain your customers. Few customers are willing to spend their hard-earned money on brands they don’t trust or deem suspicious in any way. By creating non-intrusive ads through digital billboard ads, you’ll gradually build a sense of trust for your brand.
How effective are digital billboards
As the previous section illustrated, DOOH ads have so many use cases and benefits. But how effective are they, statistically speaking? Here we break down the efficiency of these useful tools by the numbers.
- DOOH advertising campaigns, such as digital billboards, are between 46% and 84% effective at provoking a response from customers, according to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA).
- Digital billboards cannot be missed by most of the population. Three out of four (75%) respondents recalled seeing a digital billboard in the past month and 60% noticed one in the past week.
- Billboards aren’t just being seen, as a massive 71% of customers report that digital billboards are very effective at attracting their attention. Customers are paying their sought-after attention to DOOH.
- Over a quarter of ad viewers who encounter a digital billboard look up the advertised business and make a purchase, according to the OAAA.
- 32% visit a store thanks to a digital billboard advertisement. 25% of digital billboard viewers went to a store immediately after seeing the DOOH billboard.
Report after report highlights just how effective these kinds of advertising tools are. The verdict still stands, that digital billboards are extremely effective for your business, regardless of which campaign they are used for.
Digital billboards are only as effective as their DOOH platforms
By now, you probably understand why you’d be remiss not to employ digital billboards in your marketing and advertising campaigns.
However, it’s key to note that not all billboards are the same. And that the way advertisers access billboards certainly isn’t the same, as this depends on the DOOH supplier or platform you use.
Blip Billboards offers the most effective digital billboard advertising. This is because we grant you access to over 2,000+ billboard locations across the country. In addition, with Blip, you have full control over your digital billboard advertising.
That’s because our platform doesn’t merely connect you with billboards. Your DOOH ads are entirely in your hands, as you get to choose your locations, set your advertising budget, bid on blips, upload your ad design or use our templates and finally, launch your ad.
You can also edit and change your ad as you please; our digital billboards are super flexible. So make the most through the best DOOH platform.
