Does going digital really allow a billboard to cost only $1.00?

With the rapid advancement in technology there has to be some good coming  ……  out of it doesn’t there? Only a few years back we would never have dreamt we could video call the other side of the world completely for free while we were out doing our grocery shopping and now it seems that extremely large digital billboards are being sold at $1.00 each, so go figure that one out?!

For those of us with a passion for minimizing our carbon footprint on the environment then you will be all in favour of ‘going digital’ –  less inks, less off-cuts and less discarded materials.   But for those of us that type with 2 fingers this may be a little less appealing!

One of the benefits of the ‘digital revolution’ is the ‘unbundling’ that is now possible.  No longer do you need to buy an advertisement in a newspaper that is read by everyone in the circulation area. Google AdWords (Google Ads) allows you to buy that advertisement and only show it to HALF the people in the circulation area!  – we could never have anticipated this option previously.

What about billboards? Previously it would have been a little harder to imagine a quarter of the printed skin being installed for each of the 4 different advertisers and it certainly would have been near impossible to visualize changing it every 5 minutes for each advertiser!

Well going ‘digital’ has really has opened up a multiple of opportunities, including the ability to put 5-10 or more advertisers on one billboard scrolling through each one in a slide show format.

So, do you think that this means the end of what could be is possible? Sorry, think again –  Why stop at 5-10 advertisers?   If you’ve got 450 eight second slides in an hour, why restrict to a limit of requiring 5-10 advertisers rotating their adverts?   Digital Billboard Advertising (www.DBA.kiwi) has recently adopted a unique digital approach of selling to a completely fluid environment, made possible from recognizing that the viewer is operating on a purely digital foundation. They sell every single slide or slot as one single sale, just like Google Ads sell their adverts for 1c/click.

For example, the national television news could purchase the advert slide on the billboard immediately prior to the time they air.  The advert could say something like “TV1 News live stream at 6pm via App”, or, “Don’t miss TV 1 News at 6pm” .  The single advert may only cost the Campaign price of $5.00! The regular “Set & Forget” pricing of premium billboard space is only $1.00/ea.

And like mainstream websites like www.Stuff.co.nz that sell their advert space on their websites to the highest bidder at the last minute, it appears digital billboards are also going that way too.  With RTB (Real Time Bidding) meaning when you book Google Ads your advert could also appear on Stuff, TradeMe or an extremely large digital billboard in the middle of a town somewhere from the click of a mouse and for well under $100.00.

Going ‘digital’ is certainly going to open up a multitude of new possibilities in the sign and display industry!