ROI of Digital Billboards

Probably for as long as you can remember, you’ve seen billboards. They dot the sides of interstates and buildings. They’ve built your anticipation for roadside attractions and made you yearn for a specific restaurant or shopping experience.

But billboards are the old way, right? We have so many other methods for advertising now with web and mobile ads. Are billboards still worth the hefty investment?

In a Word…Yes

“Every single board has had an ROI in excess of 25%.”

That number comes from Outfront CFO Don Shassian. You may have turned your focus to digital media for your advertising, but digital has reached billboards, too, and those boards are where Shassian is seeing these numbers.

Measuring ROI

In the past, many advertisers have avoided out of home advertising because they couldn’t be completely sure it was working. Digital billboards are changing that by adding new ways to measure effectiveness.

For example, digital billboards allow you to:

• Track engagement. For posters and other street-level displays, you can set up content that encourages passersby to interact with the display by playing or downloading games, checking out menus, filling out forms, or more.
• Push ads, apps, or other content to any web-connected devices that come in range of the billboard.
• Customize website addresses or phone numbers to each board so you can see exactly where your impressions are coming from. If using web addresses, you can combine the individual addresses with the ability to push data so viewers can immediately go to the website.

Some Statistics About Digital Billboard Advertising

In 2015, Nielson published a study on the effectiveness of digital billboards. They found some interesting numbers:

• 42% was the average ad recall for respondents who remembered seeing a digital billboard in the past month.
• 75% of respondents remembered seeing a digital billboard in the past month, while 60% of those respondents recalled one from the past week.
• 22% of the respondents changed their plans so they could visit a store featured on a digital billboard.
• 55% of respondents who remembered seeing a digital billboard in the past month were able to recall the message either every time or most of the time.
• 77% of respondents agreed that, “Digital billboards often catch my attention.”

The Added Bonus of Digital Billboards

You can change the content from the comfort of your office. No more hiring people to take down the old messages and put up the new ones. This means your digital billboards will have lower operating costs than static billboards while allowing you to advertise multiple messages at the same time.

Two Birds, One Stone

If you want to capture the benefits and ROI of digital advertising while still utilizing the far-reaching impact of out-of-home advertising, look into digital billboards.