Billboards are a part of our everyday life.  If you drive or ride anywhere in your own vehicle or use public transportation, they are unavoidable and a powerful advertising tool!

What Makes Billboard Advertising Effective?

A good billboard plan has strategic locations placed along busy roads, highways and intersections that hit the audience that the marketer has determined most relevant for it’s product or service. It hits them as they travel back and forth to work, out for leisure or maybe at the doorstep of the billboard advertiser’s competition. They are large, eye-catching, and hard to miss. You may be able to click on an internet ad or watch a tv commercial, but a billboard is bigger than life and hard to avoid as you go on throughout your day.

Bulletin Billboards

Bulletins are static images with printed messages on vinyl stretched across the billboard like a giant bed sheet and held onto the board with hardware. They are usually in a very large size in the range of 14 feet tall by 48 feet wide. There are other sizes bigger and smaller, but this size is the most common. Most are usually illuminated so your message is working 24 hours a day. 

Posting Panel Billboards

Posting panels are the smaller versions of billboards that are put up like wall paper or have a vinyl sign stretched across it’s structure. They are usually 12 feet high by 26 feet wide and usually illuminated too. Again, 24 hours a day messaging.

Digital Billboards

One of the most current styles of billboards are the digital billboards that are electronic and made up of pixels. The messages change every :07 to :10 seconds depending on the specific outdoor companies policy. This means your message will be up once a minute for the designated amount of time that billboard company allows. The cost for production is much less as all they need is a digital file sized appropriately and they can put your message up on the digital billboard versus the cost to print vinyl or paper along with the installation costs. The images are very bright and inviting, but when the sun is facing them it can wash away the power of the images vividness. 

Billboards Have Enormous Reach

Billboards allow you to reach a large audience on a daily basis as busy roads and highways can have incredible volume in vehicle numbers passing that location every day. And remember that vehicle can have more than one person in it.

Effective Billboard Design

The creative on a billboard has to be attention getting and the text used must be minimal. Remember people are driving and will see your message, but they have a very limited amount of time to see it and read it. Brevity is your friend on a billboard. Because of this many people say billboard advertising is the most creative of all mediums due to getting a message to resonate in such a short time. Remember, you may also  get a viewer of your billboard multiple times a day and many more times a week and month during their travels throughout town, so your message will get a chance to get great frequency too.

Billboard Advertising Costs in Las Vegas

Billboard rentals are almost always quoted on a 4-week basis as opposed to a 1-month period. That means an annual contract would be 13 four week periods of rental.

In addition to the rental cost of the billboard is the production cost to get your message up on the billboard. If you use a static bulletin the cost will be artwork and printing of a “vinyl” that will be put up on the billboard like a giant bedsheet stretched across the structure with hardware. The typical cost of a 14 foot by 48 foot vinyl can range in price from $400 to $750 per vinyl depending upon the vendor you choose and how many vinyls you order.

If you are doing digital billboards the production cost is the artwork and transfer fee (if any) of digital artwork to the billboard company.

Location, Location, Location (and Impressions) – The Basis for Billboard Advertising Cost

The best locations get you the most impressions for your message on a billboard and this can determine the rental cost of the billboard. Other factors can be the approach to the billboard or how long of a read you have while driving up to and passing the location. The prestige of the location…a billboard on the Las Vegas Strip or at the airport can have a bigger cost even though the impressions may be less than another lower cost billboard. 

Always keep in mind:

• The position of the billboard in relation to the road
• Traffic volumes

The typical billboard sells for a CPM, or cost per thousand impressions.  A freeway billboard that gets 400,000 impressions in a 4-week period will be priced much higher than a billboard on a country road with only 30,000 impressions.  You can usually get impressions data from your billboard company to verify what sort of CPM you are paying.

If you work with Geary Company Advertising, our  billboard experts can negotiate the best value for you to get the biggest bang from your billboard campaigns. We have been doing billboard campaigns across the country for over 50 years.

The Geary Company Advertising: Over 50 Years Experience with Billboard Advertising

If you are looking to get the best value for your billboard advertising dollar along with break-through creative that gains attention from drivers and passengers all over town, reach out to The Geary Company and you’ll get the expertise of a company who has been doing outdoor advertising for over 50 years with incredible success.