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September 1998
Image Driving SalesBillboard advertisers use more than simple car counts in evaluating locations Planning a billboard ad campaign used to be simple. The more cars or pedestrians passing by a particular site, the more expensive it was to rent billboard space there. Now, however, sophisticated research techniques are making the business of billboards more complicated, says Marketing Toolsmagazine. Advertising companies are finding ways to determine not just how many people see a particular billboard, but whether these people are likely consumers of their clients' products. One ad company photographs license plates of cars as they drive past their clients' billboards. This enables the company to find out where the drivers live and then make an educated guess about their income. Other companies use "geodemographic clustering," which identifies neighborhoods where consumers with desirable demographics live, work and go for entertainment, and concentrates outdoor ads in those areas. Techniques like these are fairly costly and, thus, not widespread. But even without them, research suggests billboards are a good way to reach affluent consumers. A study called The Media Audit by International Demographics in Houston, TX, shows that heavy consumers of billboard advertising – people who drive 200 or more miles a week in their metropolitan area – are more likely than consumers of other media to be between 25 and 54, live in a two-income family, hold a professional or technical job and have a household income of $100,000+.
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