For the modern marketer, billboards are not the go-to platform for getting a clear and concise message out to a targeted audience. In the age of social media and e-commerce, most marketers will look at digital advertising to achieve their goals. This does not paint an attractive picture of the future of billboard advertising. However, when you scratch the surface of what is so obvious to see, beneath there is an interesting turn of events that could change the outlook of billboard advertising.
Billboard advertising has evolved
Over the last few years, businesses have continued to adapt to more revolutionized forms of billboard ads. Some have gone for the more thought-provoking screens that take the television to the streets, while others especially those that target local customers have stuck with the traditional led signs. For those that want to appear intriguingly creative, custom neon signs have come in handy.
All these are part of seemingly struggling billboard advertising market space. But according to industry experts, the struggle could be overstated. In fact, billboard advertising could still continue to play a crucial part in most businesses’ advertising campaign for several years to come. Billboard advertising could be something different from what we know today within the next few years. Here some of the things that could re-invent billboard ads.
Smart billboards
Billboards could leverage intuitive sensing technologies like the ones used by social media apps to sense friends that are nearby. By using this technology, they could be able to sense when particular people are close by. So, for instance, if you visited an advertiser’s social media page earlier in the day, billboards could sense this and show an advert related to what caught your interest earlier. This form of billboard advertising could play a crucial role in implementing omnichannel marketing. They could also be fitted with cameras to have a sense of what is around them.
Integration with augmented reality
Augmented reality (AR) is yet to gain traction in the market, but it is gathering pace. It is already being deployed in design and construction projects, education, as well as, the media research industry.
Since it is pretty much about platform display, then it could be easily utilized in billboard advertising in such a way that customers interact with advertised products to determine how good a fit they are before buying.
Real-time data analytics
This is an interesting feature that some companies like Outfront Media Inc. (OUT) are already utilizing at strategic locations. Ideally, the billboards are fitted with intuitive analytics software which sends real-time data to advertisers thereby helping them to make an informed decision on their marketing campaigns.
Conclusion
In summary, billboard advertising has leveraged technological advances to turn a crucial corner in the past five years. There is a time when social media, TV, and radio appeared certain to take over and relegate billboard ads to the stone age, but the outlook now appears to be changing.
It looks like billboard advertising has illuminated some compelling lights to the skies to paint its own future. This will be interesting to watch in the coming years.