Advertising LED Billboards | |
One of the main uses of the big screen is for the purpose of advertising or for broadcasting advertising messages in pedestrian shopping zones, on the side of the road, at traffic lights or in any busy areas. Theoretically wherever there is a traditional advertising billboard it could be replaced with a LED big screen. These big screens are used mainly by advertising agencies who buy them and then sell on the advertising space. The big screen is usually bought as an add-on to their service and offered for integrating fixed panels, advertisements, fixtures, etc. The main difference compared to traditional billboards, obviously excluding the technical differences, is the chance to sell many customers advertising space on the same screen. Spot broadcasts, generally from 15-20 seconds per customer, appear in sequence on the display. Furthermore, the advantages in terms of creating and replacing advertising announcements are immense: instead of having to create, print and go and replace the advertising billboard, you can just create a spot and put it into the play list. Many applications make this procedure fast and easy. You can also edit the spots, for example for customers who want to promote seasonal sales offers, without having to edit the whole announcement. Some advertising big screen operators give their customers the chance of editing their spots online which are then broadcast on the big screen by updating the play list. Displays acquired from advertising agencies and used for publicity purposes will not generally allow for exclusive broadcasting on the spot commissioned by its clients. Often some spots are reserved for broadcasting general information such as the latest news, the temperature, the weather forecast, etc. By broadcasting this information, the yield from the display is optimized. Tomas Pukas, the Director of the Lithuanian Actual City Media company owns 10 big screens which are in use in five of the major Lithuanian cities and in just 4 years he has become very successful which goes to show the importance of including general interest spots together with the advertising spots "People do not treat our screens as if they were the typical means of outdoor advertising, they know that by looking at the screen they will also find out about events, the weather forecasts for the following day, etc. It means that they naturally prefer the screen to the static outdoor stand". It is also possible for an advertising big screen to broadcast information concerning the town in which the display is installed. In fact, a town will often ask for a certain number of spots free of charge to provide information to its citizens in exchange for an authorization permit for the installation. In other cases, it may be the advertising agency that puts forwards a similar offer so that it can be granted authorization. Authorization permits are, in fact, a delicate subject, which we will be examining in the chapter concerning LED big screen regulation constraints. |