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Pricey digital billboards blink on in Tampa Bay area

The high-tech signs avoid the cost and time of conventional posters, but they are taking their time catching on.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published January 12, 2007

Many industries are wrestling with their digital future. Now it's the billboard industry's turn.

Motorists on Brandon Boulevard east of Westfield Town Center mall - as well as drivers in Pinellas Park and Tampa - can catch a passing glimpse at Clear Channel Outdoor's first digital billboards in the Tampa Bay area.

They look like 48-foot-wide big-screen TVs.

Only without a moving picture, but more on that later.

"The message can really leap out at you big time," said John Garner, right of way operations director for the Transportation Department who monitors 17,000 billboards statewide and already asked Clear Channel rival Lamar Advertising to dial down the brightness on one of its first digital boards in Florida.

Billboard companies, however, are pitching their new ability to change ads any time of the day while dodging the cost and time of printing vinyl posters.

"If you don't like the results of your creative, you change it on impulse and it costs nothing," said Tony Alwin, spokesman for Clear Channel Outdoor, which accounts for about a third of the revenue of the radio station giant.

Tampa Bay, where Clear Channel owns about 1,000 billboards, is among the first markets to join the national network. Clear Channel plans nine of them here within 18 months and hopes to more than double its digital revenue to 5 percent of its billboard business in 2007. Lamar recently installed one in Lakeland.

The boards are not equipped to show animation or full-motion video. Florida forbids moving images on billboards by state roads as a safety hazard. It also forbids a two-second dissolve between messages.

So Clear Channel sells a rotation of eight six-second ads that repeats 1,350 times a day. The state picked 6 seconds after studies found a passing motorist needs that much time to comprehend a message.

So smart marketers make billboard messages seven words, tops.

The boards cost $300,000 to $500,000 each, about three to five times as much as their predecessors.

Clear Channel charges a bit less than for an old board. But it's more expensive if you consider the potential audience is split eight ways.

"It's expensive, but I'm keeping them on my radar screen," said Jan Kartt, top media buyer at FKQ Advertising in Clearwater.

Clear Channel doesn't have enough boards up for national accounts yet. Among its local advertisers: a plastic surgeon, Topper King truck covers and Sun Toyota.

"The board engages the eye, but we have to see how effective this is or if it becomes just another out-of-home medium," said Paul Daigle, president of Dallas' Pyper Paul Kenney Advertising.

Digital billboards are not new. A cruder version tried two decades ago in Pinellas County flopped. But as technology improved, some towns decided full-motion video ads add to the bustle of entertainment hubs such as Times Square in New York and the Las Vegas Strip.

The evolution of the digital sign - the guts of which are tiny red, green and blue light-emitting diodes, or LEDs - grew from small red-on-black background signs in bank lobbies and McDonald's drive-through windows. CVS and Walgreens use them to promote daily specials.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified January 11, 2007, 08:00:21]