MBP Overview: The Scoop on Digital Billboards

Out of home advertising is a growing $6.8 billion industry, and digital billboards are expected to be the fastest area of growth within the medium. Billboard companies such as Clear Channel Outdoor and CBS Outdoor are quickly launching digital networks or replacing old billboards with digital, but some controversy surrounds the new technology. While the Outdoor Advertising Association of America calls the display on a digital billboard "similar to static billboards," and mandates that an image not change more often than every six to eight seconds, some reports in the media describe the billboards as "plasma TVs" and wonder whether they pose safety hazards.

What Exactly Are They?

Digital billboards create displays that look much like static billboards, but they allow advertisers to remotely and instantaneously change messages as needed to suit the needs of their advertising campaigns. For example, a sign may display changing interest rates or mortgage rates, lottery jackpot updates or sales specials.

With some digital networks such as Clear Channel's, advertisers can purchase campaigns by day part, location, or specific demographics, allowing them to run more highly targeted campaigns. Billboard companies can sell more advertising for a single board because they create a continuous loop of ads, with each ad being displayed for between 6 to 8 seconds.

Digital billboards have also been used to display AMBER Alerts to help find missing children, and to display other law enforcement and emergency information.

Some companies have used digital billboards to interact with viewers and to personalize the messages that the billboards display. MINI USA, for example, launched a campaign in which digital billboards flashed personal messages to Mini drivers as drove by the signs. Calvin Klein invited passers-by to text message answers to questions posed by the billboard. The answers were then displayed on the sign.
The Outdoor Advertising Association of America's Code of Industry Practices dictates that digital billboards do not feature animation, flashing lights, scrolling, or full-motion video. The standards call for static messages.

The Size of the Market

Alternative out-of-home media spending surged 27.0 percent to $1.69 billion in 2006 and is projected to grow at an accelerated 27.7 percent rate in 2007, according to a study from PQ Media.

The study found that of the three sub-segments of alternative out-of-home media, digital billboards and displays is the fastest-growing, with spending soaring 55.4 percent in 2006 to $233.2 million.

Currently, only about 500-plus billboards out of an estimated 450,000 total billboards in the United States are digital, according to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America. But it is estimated that several hundred digital displays may be built each year and that there may be as many as 4,000 by 2017.

Concerns

The lead researcher on a Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) study released in early 2004 said that neither visual behavior nor driving behavior changes measurably, even in the presence of the most visually attention-getting billboards. Another study, from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety based on crash data and prepared for the Foundation by researchers at the University of North Carolina, said items such as CB radios, billboards, and temperature controls are not significant distractions. And in 1996, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued a memo that said changeable-message billboards are acceptable if allowed by state-federal agreements.

But other driving safety researchers say there isn't enough research to prove that they are safe, and that digital signs may tax a driver's awareness more than static signs.Deanna Singhal, research associate at the Traffic Injury Research Foundation, a driving safety group in Ottawa, believes that not only do digital billboards keep drivers' eyes away from the road more, but that they are also more "cognitively demanding."

A study commissioned by the Federal Highway Administration has recommended more research into whether the signs present risks to drivers, and the federal government has also allotted $150,000 for a study of digital signage. That study may not be completed until 2009.
While more than 40 states currently allow digital billboards, some cities have expressed concern over the technology, and others, such as St. Paul and Des Moines, have gone so far as to ban the technology until studies on when and where the signage should be allowed can be completed.