Other than maybe finding restaurants off highways, does anyone pay attention to billboards? Are there any facts and stats on their effectiveness? (How can their effectiveness even be measured?) Hopefully, they have NOT been compiled by the National Billboard Assc., right? 
I was hoping there may be stats broken down by products vs. services…even stats on political candidates, perhaps? So, what’s the low down and dirty SD on billboards? - Jinx
I’ve watched TV shows because I saw the advertised on billboards. I’ve also gone to events ( last one was “the Human Body” exhibit) advertised on billboards because it got my attention everyday and finally wore me down. I also know more about local hospitals because of billboards. YMMV, but I suspect that they are very effective because they are in your face everyday on your way to work for many people.
“Half of all money spent on advertising is wasted. The problem is that no one knows which half.” [conventional wisdom]
I would be almost impossible to quantify. Remember, the point of most advertising is not to get you to run out and buy the product, but rather to remember the name of the product when you decide to buy later on. If a car dealer has a billboard on a major highway, a certain number of people will go to that dealership, and some may think of them even though they haven’t seen the sign in awhile.
I’m trying to think of the last time a billboard or ad caused me to purchase a product or patronize some business. I can’t recall anything.
There have been efforts to prove it. I recall several years ago seeing billboards in New Jersey that said (IIRC):
Millard Fillmore was the thirteenth President of the United States
…and nothing else./ Nobody knew what the heck it was about. It wasn’t selling any obvious product or event. Was somebody opening something called “The Fillmore”?
Weeks later, yellow strips with black lettering on them were pasted across the face of the billboards, reading:
**We knew it and we PROVED it!
People Read Billboards**
Evidently they’d sent pollsters around, asking people “Who was the thirteenth president?” When they answered “Millard Fillmore”, they’d respond “How do you know that?”
And those people spent how much money knowing that Millard Fillmore was the thirteenth president?
That’s not the point. As RealityChuck points out, the purpose of most advertising is “branding.” You want to make the audience aware of the brand and what it is, rather than cause them to rush out that second and purchase it.
If the Millard Fillmore study is to be believed, then billboards are a good vehicle for branding.
Billboards are great for products with wide customer bases. Around here a lot of them are for housing developments or car dealerships, something a huge segment of the population buys.
I have used one thing I saw on a billboard. It was for a merchant services place (credit card processing) I used them for a year or so till I got another service I liked better
An ad exec told me that the best thing a billboard can do is give directions. Sometimes they can be funny or whatever to get people to remember a product or business, but for the most part their main purpose is telling where people can find food, gas, hotels and whatever.
One of the funnier billboards I saw was for an attorney whose catch phrase was “Call Sam,” since his first name was Sam. He had a jingle and everything that played on the radio and tv. His billboard was effective, especially with all the air time he had with other advertising. The only problem with the billoard was that it didn’t have a phone number on it. All it had on it was “Call Sam”
I have personally measured the efficacy of billboards our company uses. Our goal is branding and unaided awareness. Meaing, if you ask a consumer “What companies do you know that provide service x?”, we want to be on that list.
We have measured efficacy both by comparing before and after the campaign launch (taking seasonality into account), and by controlling - putting billboards into only half of matched DMA sets. We measure unaided awareness via standard research techniques before and after, and confirm it by measuring local traffic to our website.
So to answer the OP, they are effective. There are all kinds of caveats, and ROI is a whole other issue (is it worth the cost compared to other uses of that money), but there is undoubtedly an effect.
Hope this helps.
Sam was attempting to prove how effective his total advertising campaign was by making you assume you knew his number. When in fact he was going after face/name recognition. He got you because you admit that you know him by his first name and face.
some time ago, I read about a billboard in the silicon valley area. All it said was “Call this number”, followed by some long mathematical equation on it. When properly solved, the equation gave you a phone number. If you called it, it was a special recruiting number for Google. By setting it up this way, they ensured that only qualified, obsessive math geeks would apply.
Yeah … or people who knew how to use Google. Because I recall hearing that within a few days the solution was posted online, and findable with Google.
In Utah, where I was living at the time, it was “John Tyler was the 10th President of the United States,” and it simply had a URL across the bottom: www.johntyler10.com. They kept a counter of the unique hits.
Anecdotally, I work for a business (an ophthalmology clinic that performs LASIk and other high-dollar surgeries) that uses billboard advertising, and it is very productive, in terms of hits-per-dollar-spent, compared to print or radio.
I have used them when driving in areas I don’t know well. Having a billboard that advertises a activity/attraction may get me to investigate it further if I’m looking for something to do, elsewise I would not know they were there. For resteraunts it is helpful to know there is a place I like in a area, w/o the billboard I would settle for something else. Same for hotels. Gas station signs that give me the price is also helpful, if they advertise their price from the highway is it usually a good place to fill up.
Can anyone post the equation?
Uh… GTFG?
More like “People remember really weird shit they happen to see in unexpected places.”
I’m aware of many, many brands.
But that doesn’t mean I necessarily buy them.
As Todd Gitlan has said, a lot of advertising is just vanity. They want investors to see the name of the product on the TV. It makes them feel vindicated.
Most people, however, are not idiots. For the vast majority of products, I won’t buy brand X because of an ad. I buy it because it’s cheaper, when all things are equal.