Effectiveness of Billboard Advertising Essay Example

Yes, advertisements are popular, can get the attention of a consumer, and be easily noticed, but none of that matters if billboards are not effective in achieving the goal of a company in using a billboard. With the popularity and wide use of billboards and outdoor advertisements, it is shocking how little research has been done in this area. In light of the increase in revenues from outdoor advertising in the last 20 years, very little to no extensive research has been done.

In fact, it is still “one of the least researched in any mass medium” (Katz, 2003, p. 92). Is it wrong for companies to assume that a billboard will be effective and successful if invested in? Or is it a correct assumption that if a billboard meets certain practical criteria to appeal to a customer that it will bear positive results for a business or company? In regards to the effectiveness of a billboard, there are essentially four broad categories that are at play: tangible response, local presence, visibility and media efficiency (Taylor, Franke, & Hae-Kyong, 2006).The tangible response is how good the billboard is at bringing in customers, both returning and new, to increase traffic, and to build sales. Local presence is the proximity in which a billboard is to the place of business. From other research, it has been discovered that there is a very close link between a billboards ability to bring in customers, and its distance from the business location (Taylor & Franke, 2003).

Visibility is the ability of a billboard to make a visual impression on the consumer. Lastly, media efficiency is the broad and frequent exposure to the

target market. Taylor et al., (2006) summarized the importance of these four factors by stating, “for a billboard to be effective, it must communicate a relevant message in a clear, interesting, and readable manner to the appropriate audience. It must also be at an appropriate location in order to be seen by the target audience” (p. 24).

An original study was conducted by Taylor et al. (2006) to find out which of these factors businesses viewed as most important, and how successful billboards had been so far for those businesses. Some aspects of a billboard’s success are obviously intangible. However, the study still did a tremendous job of finding out from a good sample of businesses how successful their personal billboards have been in light of what the goal was in using a billboard advertisement in the first place. The test was done by sending a questionnaire to 1,315 companies through random selection of 5,000 who were known to have used or currently use billboards.

Usable responses were received from 348 companies, 16 of which were not advertising via billboards at the time. Those 16 were kept in the analysis to have broader perspectives of billboard usage.This means that there was an effective response rate of 30. 4%. This may seem low, but in the area of business literature, it is a normal percentage.

There was investigation into the unresponsive companies to see if it was a reason that could skew the results and make them unreliable. However, the reasons for the non-responses did “not appear to be related to factors that would likely cause bias in the results” (Taylor et al., 2006). The questionnaire sent to the

businesses contained items that would statistically show reasons for the use of the billboards and the overall effectiveness of them. There were different sets of questions for each of those two categories, and each used a 7 seven-point response scale.

All questions had been reviewed and tested with many advertising firms to make sure they would be usable, provide accurate information, and be reliable. All the information received then went through a complex series of analyses. The explanation of these analyses can be found on p. 25 of Taylor et al.(2006). First of all, the results of the research show why companies, generally speaking, decide to use billboards. The order of influence from highest to lowest is “visibility, media efficiency, local presence, and tangible response” (Taylor et al., 2006, p. 26-27).

Not surprisingly, visibility is at the top. Companies choose to use billboards because they are highly visible to a broad audience, are easily seen, and are visible twenty-four hours a day. The second factor is more surprising and shows that a lot of it has to do with simple economics. Companies use billboards for their economic efficiency. That is, they can reach a wide audience for a very low cost per exposure. The final two factors, local presence and tangible response are surprisingly not as important to businesses.

Companies admittedly care more about simply getting their product or brand noticed rather than making sure that a billboard investment converts into a sale or higher traffic for the business. The second key part of the study that pertains to this paper comes from the second and third research questions asked at the beginning of the article (Taylor et

al., 2006). Because a billboard’s effectiveness or success can only be measured based on the company’s goals with the billboard, it is mportant to figure out how company’s measure advertisement success in general.

According to research done in this study and others (Cannon, 1994), a company’s main measure of success logically ties in directly with their main reason for getting a billboard out there: brand identification. That is, most companies consider a billboard a success if it is able to provide brand identification. Now, of course not all companies feel this way, but if the sample size can be reliably applied to the population, then it can be inferred that nearly 90% of businesses measure billboard effectiveness in this manner. Because of that, it is quite a reasonable conclusion that billboards are indeed successful and effective. The majority of the businesses that made up the other 10% were owners of billboards who were looking to provide the right product at the right time.

For example, restaurant chains that are looking to spot a hungry motorist’s eye (Taylor et al. 2006) are not looking for brand recognition; they are looking to make a sale. Even still, those companies reported a high success rate in light of their expectations and reasons to have the billboards.Now, just because a billboard is big and can be seen by thousands of people does not guarantee success. It is very possible that a billboard could fail miserably. More than likely, this would be due to poor design, too much to read, doesn’t have anything memorable, or is just an all around bad representation of the company or product.

This is where a company’s marketing

department must shine and be able to come up with an advertisement that is able to both get the consumer’s attention amidst all the other advertisements around it (Godin, 1999), and retain that attention (Assael, 1981).If a billboard is not able to meet both of those requirements, then no matter what the goals or objectives are of a company, the billboard will more than likely fail to meet those expectations. The original question posed in this paper was that in spite of the popularity of billboards and outdoor advertising in general, are billboards truly effective and successful? The few tests that have been done on this subject seem to come to the same conclusion: due to the expectations and measures of success that most businesses have on their billboards, outdoor advertising with billboards is extremely successful and effective. The sample data is very clear, and biases were confirmed to be non-existent.

As previously stated, simply having a billboard will not guarantee positive results. As long as some logic and simple guidelines are followed, it would not be foolish for a company to expect some good ramifications to result from their investment. Are there a lot of unknowns on this subject that should be researched? Yes. However, has sufficient research been done to reliably know if billboards are effective? Absolutely.

References

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