Digital billboards purchased as part of Watchfire Signs’ innovative new pre-sold advertising program are being hailed as a way for digital billboard owners to guarantee advertising revenue and save on the purchase price of a new Watchfire digital display. Click to Tweet.
Through the Watchfire Advertising Plan, billboard operators can save tens of thousands of dollars on the purchase of a new billboard. For example, a billboard that’s part of the plan for three years with a traffic count of 100,000 vehicles daily could receive an immediate incentive of almost $60,000.
Grace Outdoor, a family-owned outdoor advertising company founded 30 years ago in Columbia, S.C., acquired two 14’ x 48’ digital billboards using the Watchfire Advertising Plan, which connects billboard operators with Blip Billboards in order to deliver pre-sold advertising in return for an upfront incentive on the display purchase.
“Any time we put up a new billboard, it takes time to fill the advertising slots as companies wait to align budgets as their advertising contracts expire,” said Hal Stevenson with Grace Outdoor, which owns more than 150 billboards throughout the southeast, including 30 digital billboards. “Through the Watchfire Advertising Plan we have instant advertisers from the moment we turn on the boards. Even better, we receive an incentive on the price of our boards and are exposed to potential new advertisers through the Blip marketplace.”
The Grace Outdoor billboards, located on I-240 at Poplar Boulevard in Memphis, Tenn., are viewable by more than 180,000 vehicles daily.
Through the Blip Billboards marketplace, advertisers can buy as many or as few digital billboard spots as they want, which allows for advertisers of all sizes and with a wide range of budgets to purchase space on digital billboards across the country. Grace Outdoor devoted one advertising slot per board to the Blip marketplace for one year, which enabled the operator to offset the cost of their boards by thousands of dollars.
“The Watchfire Advertising Plan was intriguing because the incentive lowers the purchase price of the digital billboards and it creates a way to introduce small businesses, who may have never used outdoor advertising, to begin to utilize our medium,” said Stevenson. “Our hope is that once these new advertisers get a taste of outdoor advertising they will become ongoing customers.”
Watchfire customers who opt into the Blip program receive an upfront price incentive on a new billboard purchase. Incentives are straightforward calculations based on the number and length of spots committed to Blip Billboards and the traffic count of the display, and are applied directly and immediately to a new digital billboard’s purchase price.
“Sometimes digital billboards have unsold space and this space is perishable,” said Darrin Friskney, Watchfire’s Vice President of Digital Outdoor and Marketing. “The Blip program minimizes unsold space and guarantees a financial return on the day the display is ordered.”
The offer is limited to the first 50 billboards.
