What is a billboard advertising?
Billboard advertising is an outdoor advertising medium displayed on large structures alongside roadways or pedestrian walkways. As the majority of viewers of billboards are mobile, advertising messages are highly visual with eye catching graphics and colors and simple ad slogans.
While primarily used to promote brands, products or public service announcements in modern day advertising times, billboards began as a basic communication mechanism for highly illiterate populations. Archaeologists have found billboards dating back nearly 3,000 years offering a reward for an escaped slave and centuries later, billboards served as an artistic respite for pedestrians walking along the streets of Paris.
In the United States, billboards were found in the late 18th Century on wagons traveling between cities to herald the arrival of a traveling circus group. Billboards quickly caught on as permanent fixtures in city spaces as companies hung large format billing boards at construction sites and later on completed buildings.
As more and more Americans took to the road in their cars, rural communities found an additional revenue source in allowing advertisers to paint barns, fences and buildings visible from the roadways. Billboards remain a valuable asset to any road warrior as signposts on upcoming hotels, restaurants and entertainment – a fact well noted by the travel and tourism industry.
Billboard content and messaging is also kept under serious scrutiny, with the Outdoor Advertising Association of America keeping watch over industry legislation making tobacco billboards illegal (since 1999) and banning alcohol billboards within 1000 feet of a school.
While the original painted billboards are still around in some larger cities like New York City and Los Angeles, more modern incarnations of billboard advertisements have shadowed society’s technological advances. Lighted billboards started appearing in the early 20th Century, followed by ‘specialty’ billboards with graphic extensions that creatively enhance the format of the standard rectangular billboard. Today’s billboard advertisers use a variety of eye catching tactics, from Web-driven content to real time interactive people-driven content.
