The Economics of Everyday Things
00:15:25 · S1, S2, Zachary Crockett, Anna Bager
[00:15:25] S1: Who knew Walmart Business could help a thriving office motivate their employees? Pamela knew. She uses Walmart Business to get the assortment of items her team needs at the prices she loves. [00:15:34] S2: As the office manager, it's my job to make sure my team stays on top of their game. I can get the basics like cleaning supplies and paper towels, but what they really care about, snacks. [00:15:43] S1: And she can get everything they need when they need it. [00:15:45] S2: Greg loves wheat crackers, Brenda Cave sour candy, and Max, oh boy. He needs protein bars and milk and apple sauce and a jerky [00:15:52] S1: Built for your business. Knew? [00:15:59] S4: As the president and CEO of the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, Anna Bager often has to respond to the suggestion that billboards are outdated. Internet ads now make up more than 70% of all advertising spending in The US. But Bager says the digital age has been a boon for billboards. [00:16:21] S6: It's a very shareable medium. So even though we are an old medium with big signs and we're out in the real world, we are a connector into the rest of the media world. It creates a public conversation. You can't skip us. You can't block us. [00:16:36] S4: Technology, as it advances, only enhances our medium. Billboards are also immune to the polarization that other advertising channels face.
00:16:36 · Zachary Crockett, Anna Bager
[00:16:36] S4: Technology, as it advances, only enhances our medium. Billboards are also immune to the polarization that other advertising channels face. [00:16:46] S6: If you're a Democrat, you're gonna read certain news outlets and watch certain TV shows and avoid everything else. And if you're a Republican, you're gonna go certain ways. Billboards are very serendipitous. We're out there in the real world who will expose audiences to messages that they would normally maybe avoid, but they might have liked if they had seen them. [00:17:05] S4: But billboards have also embraced the digital revolution through imitation. Today, many static billboards are being converted into digital billboards. Billboards. Between twenty eighteen and 2023, the number of digital billboards in The US more than doubled. And these new signs come with a big advantage for the companies that own them. While a static billboard displays one ad, a digital billboard typically rotates up to eight different ads that run for around eight seconds each. [00:17:35] S6: One billboard becomes eight billboards, becomes eight times more revenue opportunity. So there's a financial gain too if you can convert a static to a digital. [00:17:45] S4: Unlike static billboards, which are rented out for set periods of time by advertisers, space on digital billboards is sold in programmatic auctions, much like the ads on websites and in podcasts like this one. Again, here's Dan Levi of Clear Channel Outdoor.
00:17:45 · Zachary Crockett, Dan Levi
[00:17:45] S4: Unlike static billboards, which are rented out for set periods of time by advertisers, space on digital billboards is sold in programmatic auctions, much like the ads on websites and in podcasts like this one. Again, here's Dan Levi of Clear Channel Outdoor. [00:18:03] S5: Programmatic advertising is a way of automating the buying and the placement of advertising. You basically set the parameters for your ads. I wanna reach this audience. I wanna deliver this many impressions. I wanna spend this amount of money. I wanna drive this result. And the computers talk to each other. When there's a digital billboard and there's a spot that it's about to change to that doesn't have an assigned ad, what ends up happening in milliseconds is a signal gets sent out to these computers saying, I got an ad here that reaches this type of audience. Does anyone want that? Then a bidding process happens where that spot is auctioned to the highest bidder, and then the ad is dynamically delivered. [00:18:47] S4: So it's less buying a specific billboard on a specific freeway and more sort of tapping a new distributed network of digital ads that could be anywhere that reach a demographic that you wanna reach, and that process is done automatically. [00:19:01] S5: Exactly. [00:19:04] S4: Digital billboards also allow for more creativity.
00:19:04 · Zachary Crockett, Dan Levi
[00:19:04] S4: Digital billboards also allow for more creativity. [00:19:08] S5: You can change your creative based on different times of the day. So you can have a fast food restaurant that promotes breakfast during morning drive, but dinner during evening drive. Hot drink when it's cold outside and a cold drink when it's warm outside. We have advertisers that incorporate sports scores into their creative. You can incorporate news headlines into your creative. All of this happens by having a feed of data that goes into the ad. [00:19:36] S4: This isn't the only way that technology is being leveraged by billboard companies. Traditionally, says Levi, billboards are what's called a one to many advertising medium. You set up in one spot and hope to get recognition through broad exposure to a lot of people. But advertisers increasingly want to reach a more targeted audience, and the billboard industry can help them, thanks to the location tracking data on the apps you use on your phone.
00:19:36 · Zachary Crockett, Dan Levi
[00:19:36] S4: This isn't the only way that technology is being leveraged by billboard companies. Traditionally, says Levi, billboards are what's called a one to many advertising medium. You set up in one spot and hope to get recognition through broad exposure to a lot of people. But advertisers increasingly want to reach a more targeted audience, and the billboard industry can help them, thanks to the location tracking data on the apps you use on your phone. [00:20:06] S5: Every smartphone has a unique identifying number on it. We don't follow individuals. We don't know anything about specific people, but we have the ability to understand the prior behaviors of those devices that we've seen. We look at the composition of the devices that we see going past that billboard. So if you have a coffee shop and you're trying to advertise to people who drink coffee at Starbucks, for example, We could show you two billboards, each of which deliver a million impressions a week, but one of them, half the audience has been seen in a coffee shop, and the other one is only 20%. And all things being equal, the one with half drinking coffee is the right one for you. We try and minimize the inefficiency of buying a Billboard by making sure that the highest composition of those lots of people align with who you're trying to reach.
00:20:06 · Dan Levi, Zachary Crockett, Anna Bager
[00:20:06] S5: Every smartphone has a unique identifying number on it. We don't follow individuals. We don't know anything about specific people, but we have the ability to understand the prior behaviors of those devices that we've seen. We look at the composition of the devices that we see going past that billboard. So if you have a coffee shop and you're trying to advertise to people who drink coffee at Starbucks, for example, We could show you two billboards, each of which deliver a million impressions a week, but one of them, half the audience has been seen in a coffee shop, and the other one is only 20%. And all things being equal, the one with half drinking coffee is the right one for you. We try and minimize the inefficiency of buying a Billboard by making sure that the highest composition of those lots of people align with who you're trying to reach. [00:21:02] S4: These advancements are welcome to advertisers, but billboards aren't without their critics. Since the beginning of the interstate highway system, if not before, people have complained that they're an eyesore. The nonprofit Scenic America has been fighting new billboards for more than 40, and billboards are outright banned in Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, and Vermont. [00:21:28] S6: Not everyone loves a billboard, but most people don't mind them. [00:21:33] S4: In Anna Bager's opinion, billboards are actually some of the least intrusive advertisements in modern society.