Poster Advertising: Does It Deliver High ROI?

The Impact of COVID-19 on the billboard industry

As the drastic economic impact of coronavirus continues to spill, brands and agencies are forced to re-evaluate the current advertising methods they are using. Recently, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) surveyed nearly 400 media buyers and brands. The results were surprising: 74% think the coronavirus pandemic will have a larger impact on their advertising spend than the 2008 financial crisis. According to the President of Interactive Advertising Bureau, David Cohen, “Typically marketers will press pause for a moment, take a breath, assess the situation, replay and reevaluate.”

The traditional out-of-home advertising is expected to be largely impacted. The estimated ad spend declined 51% in March and April and another decline of 41% is expected in June 2020. Fewer people are outside reducing the appeal and effectiveness of billboards and DOOH. Advertising in malls, at bus stops, and bus shelter advertising are fast becoming replaced by in-home advertising. The impact of COVID-19 has kept the consumers inside their homes. Hence, the best ways to reach the audience will be to take your advertising message to them indoors.

Adzze has been re-evaluating the current tactics and adapting to a more sensitive message. The operations team has working on extending its reach to offer advertising methods that can reach the consumers at their safest place: at home. One of these tactics uses pizza boxes as advertising space. Think of this as small moving billboard that consumers receive in their homes and place on their dinner tables. Ad data demonstrated that this type of ads can lead to an 80% recall rate (8 out of 10 individuals recall seeing an ad on the pizza box) with an average ROI of 150%. This means, for every 1 dollar the advertiser invested in a pizza box advertising campaign, they received at least additional 2.5 dollars of sales. For more details, see the article Estimating the ROI of Pizza Box Marketing.

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising is the oldest game in the business. Despite the increasing preferability of digital advertising, OOH advertising is still significant. In 2018, businesses spent $41.8 billion on OOH advertising, which is estimated to hit $55.9 billion in 2024. Poster advertising is one example of this traditional avenue of advertising.

Is poster advertising worth the money?

Posters and billboards make up the bulk of outdoor advertising media. For a long time, outdoor display media and TV advertising, which make up traditional advertising media, have ruled the advertising industry. However, this could change by the end of 2019 in the US, where digital media will account for 54.2% of the advertising industry.

The outdoor advertising media targets drivers and passengers in vehicles as well as pedestrians. Given the number of people who go about their businesses outdoors, the target audience is enormous. Around 90% of Americans drive to work, which suggests that a business that runs a poster advertising campaign with posters placed at strategic places on highways has many impressions.

However, the campaign has the potential to generate many more impressions, were it not for an inattentive audience. According to a 2018 survey of young drivers in all the 50 states in the US, 36% of the text while driving. Interestingly, 51% of the young drivers who admitted to texting while driving are familiar with texting and driving laws of their states. Besides causing accidents, texting while driving implies that the drivers pay scant attention to posters by the roadside. As such, the ad might not reach as many people compared to unconventional advertising tactics like using bar coasters.

The OOH Industry will change after the pandemic

The use of OOH and billboards will most likely experience more decline in the coming weeks, given the growing number of cases of infection in the United States. Businesses that dearly need to get the word out about their enterprise will have to embrace new-age advertising to stay in business. This means more customers will abandon billboard advertising to adopt indoor ads; a strategy which brands trying to avoid the cut-throat cost of sign advertising have happily been using to market themselves in recent times.

The New York Times aptly described the effect of the pandemic on outdoor advertising as a ‘seismic shock’. Even Coca-Cola is among the companies that have limited their ad campaigns during the coronavirus crisis, the New York Times report says. Long story cut short; a lot of companies are hitting the brakes on billboard ads and other forms of OOH advertising and are also pulling back until the coast clears.

Visual pollution

The idea behind posters and banners is to use creativity to attract as many eyeballs as possible. However, the result is not always the same for all viewers. According to a BBC report, too many posters cause mental overload for the audience. As such, people begin to view the posters and banners as a stain on the scenery of the city or the highway.

Overcrowding of posters and banners across many cities has sparked a global campaign to ban the outdoor display of ads. Mainly, Sao Paulo was among the first cities to enter an ad-free era. In 2007, the implementation process of the Clean City Law in Sao Paulo kicked off. Later, other cities like Chennai, Paris, Tehran, and Grenoble joined in. These began to lean towards the replacement or banning of outdoor advertising, notably posters, banners, and billboards.

Door Hanger Marketing will replace the traditional outdoor ads

The business of marketing is changing in the age of COVID-19. Whether its effects are brief or prolonged, marketers need to be nimble in these challenging times, and pivot when needed while optimizing performance throughout the crisis.

Advertiser will have to find alternative channels to reach consumers and many already pivoted to In-Home Advertising using food deliveries. This model represents the new market trend in advertising as an alternative to traditional OOH advertising channels. As delivery orders are being fulfilled, active advertising is on-going simultaneously. Ads are placed on pizza boxes and shopping bags and delivered into the hands of customers. The amazing part is that the ads enter people`s homes and stays in their faces.

New age advertising methods as seen at Adzze, will not only attract more clients but will effectively engineer the on-boarding of major businesses as many begin to see the tremendous benefit of in-home advertising. With innovative methods such as ads placement on door hangers. This concept guarantees definite impressions of your brands on prospective customers because our approach delivers the brand directly into the hands of your target audience at their homes.

Your advertisement is printed on door hangers and distributed to the households in the zip code or areas that were selected according to the marketing campaign. Adzze technology solutions are used to target demographic profiles such as income, age, ethnicity, marital status, so that we hit your exact target-market ensuring the door hanger delivery. In addition, the segmentation method enables to evaluate annual spend criteria so that you have a better insight into the spend behavior of the target audience. The consumers will be positively surprised if the door hanger brings them value as coupons or discounts. The advertiser must partner with the capable door hanger distributors to ensure to track the door hanger delivery to the targeted addresses. Typically, the return of the Door Hanger Advertising investment is 3x, this means for every $1 invested, the advertiser receives $3 back.