Slicing up billboard audiences
We've been seeing new digital billboards popping up along the city's busy thoroughfares and they're getting lots of attention from local and industry media.
The safety concerns are obvious: as electronic billboards become more attractive, they become more distractive to commuters. That's common sense. The very idea of targeting the commuting public flies in the face of all traffic safety initiatives. And although some state laws are prohibiting animated, moving or flashing campaigns, the wholesale concept of taking drivers' attention from the task at hand is a dangerous one.
On the other hand, the outdoor advertising market has been hit hard by the economic slowdown, so the outdoor industry is struggling to innovate. And in the digiboard, they've found some new life.
But in claiming "more advertising opportunities", they're making a very thin slice of the audience even thinner. Now instead of knowing your image will appear on a busy highway 24/7, you now only get a few seconds.
The advertising market is clearly heading for a state that's so fragmented that the only survivors will be large corporations who are in a position to use duplication and automation technologies to multiply thin local profit margins into usable revenue on regional and global scales. In that vein, there's no economic benefit to small businesses, nor the local community at large.
The fact is that what's bad about billboards is even worse when you digitize them.
The safety concerns are obvious: as electronic billboards become more attractive, they become more distractive to commuters. That's common sense. The very idea of targeting the commuting public flies in the face of all traffic safety initiatives. And although some state laws are prohibiting animated, moving or flashing campaigns, the wholesale concept of taking drivers' attention from the task at hand is a dangerous one.
On the other hand, the outdoor advertising market has been hit hard by the economic slowdown, so the outdoor industry is struggling to innovate. And in the digiboard, they've found some new life.
But in claiming "more advertising opportunities", they're making a very thin slice of the audience even thinner. Now instead of knowing your image will appear on a busy highway 24/7, you now only get a few seconds.
The advertising market is clearly heading for a state that's so fragmented that the only survivors will be large corporations who are in a position to use duplication and automation technologies to multiply thin local profit margins into usable revenue on regional and global scales. In that vein, there's no economic benefit to small businesses, nor the local community at large.
The fact is that what's bad about billboards is even worse when you digitize them.
