Advantages Of Billboards

Exposure

• Billboards offer enhanced opportunities for ad exposure. Commuters or regular travelers might pass a given billboard every day, which contributes to a high frequency of exposure. At the same time, billboards in urban locations or along heavily trafficked roads draw large numbers of viewers, with seasonal upswings during holiday travel periods and the summer vacation season. Viewers have no means of avoiding billboards as they do with Internet and TV advertising.
  
  

Permanence

• Billboards are permanent, full-time marketing tools. For those with lights that make them visible at night, the advertiser's message is visible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The fact that billboards are stable makes location selection even more important. Advertisers can select billboards that are close to the point of sale, or direct drivers to the location by giving an exit number or even turn-by-turn directions.
  
  

Advantages for Owners

• Property owners who lease space for a billboard, or maintain a billboard that businesses can lease to display an advertisement for a given amount of time, enjoy the advantage of a cost-effective form of ad revenue. Billboards have low production costs, which allows owners to offer advertising space for competitive rates that even smaller businesses can afford. Maintaining a billboard also is relatively inexpensive once the billboard is installed and might consist of nothing more than property taxes and the electricity and bulbs for lights to illuminate the billboard at night.
  
  

Drawbacks

• Despite the advantages they offer advertisers and owners, billboards also include some drawbacks that lead advertisers to pursue other forms of marketing. One of the key disadvantages is that customers only see a billboard for a short amount of time, while driving past. Advertisers also have limited options for controlling the demographic composition of who sees the billboard. This makes billboards less precise in terms of targeting a particular audience than ads on TV, online or in periodicals. It's also hard for advertisers to measure the effectiveness of billboards, and the lack of hard data might make some reluctant to spend money on billboard advertising.