Digital LED billboards and traditional billboards both serve as powerful advertising mediums, each with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. While the digital billboard maybe brighter and more attractive during the night, during day traditional billboards may sometimes be more effective.
Traditional and digital billboards both are necessary when it comes to building your brand in countries especially like India because of the dense population. But where should you advertise for most customer accusation?
Digital LED vs Traditional Billboards For Outdoor Ads
When comparing Digital vs Traditional Billboards for outdoor advertising it is important to note that they both serve the same prepose, which is building your brand in a city may it be a tier 1, tier 2 or 3. Nowadays online advertising has become very famous because of accessibility but their effectiveness is muss less than a outdoor billboards let it be digital or just a normal traditional billboard. Let's dive into details and understand what's best for your brand.
1: Why is Billboard Advertising So Important in 2024?
While discussing which one's better, Digital vs Traditional Billboard advertising, the first thing that come to mind is, why do it? Why not just do advertisement in Facebook, Google or YouTube instead? You can do targeted location-based ads in social media also!
More than 49 percent of people finds social media ads annoying. Also, though the social media ad can reach vast number of people but the effectiveness of those ads are only 7% of an outdoor billboard ad.
You can place a billboard advertisement in a specific location of a city to maximize your brand value amongst your target audience, but social media ads cannot be that specific. In a specific location if you put your ad on a digital of a traditional billboard, it can be viewed by all the people going through that road with almost 100% certainty but with social media that is not guaranteed.
This is now pretty certain that billboard advertisement is a better way to build a brand amongst your location city than social media advertisement, especially after COVID when people care more about going outside than staying and look at their phones all day long.
2: Pros & Cons of Traditional vs Digital Outdoor Billboards
Visibility:
At night: Traditional Billboards are required to have lights to make them visible during night but 20 days out of 30, for reasons like missed bill payment or just because no one is available to turn the lights on, stays dark and unreadable or invisible at night. While the digital billboards are smart and can turn itself on at a specific time. Also, as because they are digital LED screen billboards, they are 100 times more visible during night.
At day: During daytime both kind of billboards are at the lowest on their visibility due to sunlight, but at the morning traditional billboards can offer better visibility and after that digital billboards will be better for the rest of the day and night.
Position:
Traditional billboards are usually placed at an extremely high building and that height is usually out of the field of view of the people passing by. Because of the technology digital billboards are placed at a much lower height from the ground and offers best visibility.
Value for Money or Durability:
Traditional billboards are made of plastic or paper. After just a normal windy night a the traditional billboards get torn apart and you don't get refund in case that happens. Costing you a huge loss of money but digital billboards are made of LED boards and is extremely durable and it does not get broken. though natural disasters or electricity malfunction can affect digital billboards also. Still digital billboards offer a better value for money.
Overcrowded:
Traditional billboards in India have become so overcrowded that it does not make any sense is advertising them anymore. If you look at the image above, we have shown the condition of traditional billboards in India. You can clearly see there's more billboard than there should be which make advertising in them a really bad idea as it hurts your brand more than it grows.
Meanwhile, digital billboards have just started getting installed in India and is currently the best way to build your brand and get sales. Advertising in digital billboards is not just about building a brand but also a status. Advertising in Digital billboard means that your brand is a valuable brand. It's considered an honor advertising in billboards in New York city, so it is in Indian cities.
3: Comparison of Cost of Advertising
The cost of advertising in digital billboards are nearly half of traditional billboards. A traditional billboard can cost you more than 2,00,000 per month, where a digital billboard advertising costs hardly 20,000 per month (depending on location).
"Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time" - Henry Ford
Digital billboard advertising cost compared to social media advertising:
Click here to calculate the cost as per your requirement.
4: Type of Advertising
Images are so 1980s. According to a report by databox, 67.55% brands confirm that video ads drive more website visits and leads to more sales. It has been scientifically proven that videos drive better engagement than images. While images are much easy to look at, but it does not turn eyes and if the traditional billboard is with low visibility and in between 10 other traditional billboards, then it is even worse. If you look at a place where you can see both kind of billboards, traditional and digital, you'll notice that you aren't even noticing the traditional billboards.
Conclusion:
While thinking about Traditional vs Digital Billboards, we have to remember that both are extremely important when it comes to building your brand. You should not ignore one to use the other. Both kind of billboards should be used reasonably and properly to maximize your brand value and sales in long term. You should also do social media advertising for the best output and brand recognition.
Hamid Moomin