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Digital displays’ effective CPM appeals to tight budgets.
Recently, I was speaking to associates about the lessons I’ve learned in the digital-billboard business. I was pontificating ad nauseam about the revenue-generating potential of on-premise color displays when a wide-eyed young friend asked a very practical question that stopped me in my tracks: “How do you price the advertising?”
This very simple, obvious question probably explains why many business owners hesitate to explore digital displays. If a salesperson doesn’t understand the ad’s value, then how does he or she sell it?
The reality is, my young associate, who, by the way, makes his living selling digital displays, knows far less about the display’s use than its technical aspects. Ouch. How did we get to this point? We’ve been so entrenched with nit ratings, gamma settings and pixel sharing’s relative merits we’ve forgotten entirely why our customers purchase the display.
I realize display technology’s high demand has so spoiled us that we’ve focused our sales efforts on measuring technological features against our competition, with little regard for the technology’s actual usage.
This revelation arrived at a difficult economic time when clients want to maximize each media dollar. Those who understand advertising’s value and the medium’s power can tell a very compelling story about display advertising’s effectiveness, compared to other advertising options.
Digital displays’ CPM
We’re currently faced with media dilution, when unprecedented media categories, and more options in each category, exist. Formerly, a business chose between four TV channels, five radio stations, the newspaper and direct mail. The challenge was to balance the mix for maximum exposure.
TV now offers hundreds of stations. Satellite options have infiltrated radio’s domain. Unsolicited specialty “magazines” assault us at home. The Internet has diminished newspaper circulation. Such changes have complicated exposure options for a company’s products and services.
How does the digital display compare in this cluttered, media-advertising world? The previously mentioned media are broad-based, meaning they blanket a wide, geographic area. However, on-premise digital displays are place-based, or targeted specifically at the daily passersby. A digital display’s flexible technology can serve as an onsite, visual broadcast center to deliver an endless stream of timely messages tailored to the particular audience.
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