Out of home advertising is as old a form of marketing as newspaper advertisements. Promoting products to people when they are out of the home, in the high street, railway station or driving down the highways is an effective method of marketing.
Outdoor signs are everywhere, from posters and billboards along the high street, to advertisements in railways stations and shopping malls. And it is not just in the day time that they are effective.
While we may not quite live in a 24-hour world, the cities don’t sleep when the sun goes down, with out town areas still busy with people during the night as people make use of the bars, theatres and restaurants.
Many outdoor adverts are designed to not only provide marketing content during the day but also at night. Many of the totem and six sheet static advertisements along our high streets are displayed on illuminated light boxes. During the night, these light boxes turn on, enabling the display adverts to be read.
But high street advertising is changing as more and more digital signs are replacing these static advertisements., which are not only more effective during the day, providing moving images and more engaging content, but at night they really come alive.
The great advantage of outdoor digital signage during the evenings is that it is readily noticeable. With LCD systems, there is already a backlight to produce the screen brightness, while plasma screens produce an intense and bright image anyway.
This makes outdoor digital signage even more effective at night as the content really stands out helping to draw the eye. Indeed, in some locations outdoor digital signage has transformed the backdrop to the city. Time Square and London’s Piccadilly Circus are good examples. Once locations covered in neon and light bulbs, they are now areas of giant LCD and plasma screens.
And even small towns and cities re generating a sense of modernity at night with the outdoor digital signage displays lighting up and providing illuminated content.
