New technology and new ideas are constantly improving the effectiveness and efficiency of outdoor advertising.
As technological advances allow advertisers to better target consumers, messages will become more and more customized to individuals. Customized advertising that reaches consumers at specific times during the day is messaging for the future.
Enhanced Services
Technological innovation means a greater availability of information. The outdoor industry is dedicated to improving operations in the 21st century with a commitment to better quality, speed, reliability and service. Bar coding is allowing outdoor companies to immediately inform advertisers when a message is installed. Using the same technology as checkout stations at supermarkets, outdoor personnel swipe a code affixed onto billboard structures when a message is placed. This produces a record of exactly when each message was installed on every outdoor location.
Satellite controlled illumination is on the horizon, too. A single control source will allow outdoor operators to constantly monitor every location to determine if any lights are burned-out. Replacement bulbs or other repairs will be made immediately.
Outdoor Advertising Looks Better Than Ever
Vinyl and Computerized Painting
Vinyl and computerized painting were introduced to the outdoor marketplace in the late '70's and have since revolutionized the medium. Images printed on flexible vinyl give advertisers creative versatility, vibrant color, durability and precision image reproduction. Today 70 percent of the industry's bulletins in the U.S. use vinyl instead of hand painted messages on wood or steel panels.
Some Vinyl Products
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Three Dimensional and Special Effects
Special effects and 3-D billboards have captured the imagination of creative designers and the minds of advertisers. The creative genius behind billboard props comes from fine arts professionals, engineers, sculptors, and building experts who offer their expertise to advertisers. Three dimensional ads include motion, lights, and other dramatic effects.
Moveable Message Technology
Where traditional static structures advertise a single message, moveable message signs revolve to display three different images or messages on one sign structure.
Backlighting
Backlit billboards house light boxes or cabinets of florescent bulbs placed one foot apart to illuminate billboards from behind the image. The images are digitally printed on both sides of translucent flexible vinyl to bring depth, color and density to the night time images.
Digital and LED Technology
Advertisers use digital technology on billboards for a number of creative effects. A shopping mall in Century City, California used a billboard all year to count down the days left before Christmas. In Chicago, visitors are welcomed with a digital display billboard featuring up-to-the-minute messages. Samsung Electronics recreated an exact billboard replica of a digital car stereo complete with a time of day LED readout.
In Manhattan, street-level LED screens are being installed at the stairwells leading down to subway stations and they will be linked as a single network allowing immediate messaging updates across the city. Electrically charged paper can illuminate signs at night without the need for light bulbs. Digital ink makes it possible to instantly change a message by charging the ink on a display.
On taxi tops, digital units can be wired with GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) devices that locate the exact position of the taxi at any time. By having this information, the message displayed on the taxi can be changed, based on the demographics of neighborhoods, depending where the taxi is traveling, at a specific time of day.
The GPS guided messaging on taxi tops is already in use, as are bus shelters that communicate with PDA devices. In the near future, look for outdoor units that interact directly with smart-car technology (telematics) allowing advertisers the ability to beam information into passing vehicles from outdoor locations.
From roadside signs at the dawn of the automobile age to the promise of high-tech digital messages, the outdoor industry has remained at the forefront of innovation over the past two centuries. The next 100 years should be just as interesting.
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