Market Overview and Why Advertising Works Here
Billboard advertising in Atlanta isn’t at a shortage; in fact, it’s on a steady rise. Atlanta is the capital of Georgia, with a population of more than 486,000 residents with a median household income of $53.4k USD. It’s a place where opportunity for alluring billboard advertising continues to flourish. Home to a $304 USD billion-dollar economy, the 8th largest in the U.S., and hosting more than 35 million visitors each year, Atlanta is a force to be reckoned with for advertising. Drivers in Atlanta spend approx. 32 mins driving to work, and there’s more than 74,000 businesses located here. Judging by this information, it’s the perfect chance for more billboard advertising to prove to be effective on Atlanta residents and people driving through the populous city.
Atlanta includes the country’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, while helping more than 1000 international businesses operate from the metro Atlanta area. As the “hub of the southeast”, Atlanta has 13 Fortune 500 companies located within it and it has sparked a large tourist following. There are 30 colleges and universities in Atlanta, so the post-secondary student market makes a large enough reach for advertising to touch those campuses. Impressions in Atlanta can reach just about 6.5 million people, as there are many faces running around the city on a given day.
Let’s take a look at current billboard companies providing quality ads in Atlanta, the way MARTA advertises to its commuter targets, the costs of certain billboards depending on provider, and digital billboards existing to help drive the modern influence of outdoor advertising.
Current Billboard Advertising
Currently, there are more than 10,000 billboards in the Metro Atlanta area. Lamar Advertising is a huge contributor to the billboard advertisements now seen in Atlanta. Lamar offers permanent billboards, vinyl billboards, 3D billboard extensions, and digital design billboards to help crush the market of billboard advertising in Atlanta. Along with Lamar, OUTFRONT Media, partnered with MARTA Advertising, have been forthcoming about developing billboard advertisements for the Atlanta area. They believe in hitting 98% coverage of consumers who are exposed to nightlife advertising, legal advertising, auto advertising, and more.
Brooklyn Outdoor is another company that specializes in creating digital billboards and transit advertising around the Designated Market Area (DMA) for Atlanta. The DMA spans over 51 countries and reaches more than 6.4 million people. Brooklyn Outdoor reported that, “digital ads are highly engaging for 55% of consumers, who notice the ad display most of the time. As many as 89% of commuters travelling past a digital bulletin can recall a specific ad seen in the last month, while as many as 14% will patronize a business after seeing its ad on a digital display.” (Brooklyn Outdoor, 2019). Looking at those statistics, it is easy to point out Atlanta advertising makes more than just a quick impression on people.
MARTA Advertising
MARTA is Atlanta’s transit service that allows for billboard advertising to spring to life. They partake in station domination, a term meaning taking ownership of the entirety of the transit service including floor graphics, elevator wraps, ceiling banners, as well as all traditional ad space. MARTA does advertising on both the exterior and the interior of their 38 rail stations. They do interior and exterior bus advertising, as well as bus shelter takeovers. Something unique that MARTA does is connecting with CommuterAds to sell on-bus audio and digital text scroll messages that play at a given GPS location at specific times of the day. MARTA gives advertisers the chance to experiment with reaching out to commuters at an affordable CPM.
The Cost of Billboard Advertising:
Overall, the cost of billboard advertising in Atlanta is around $1000-10,000 depending on location, visibility, and length of time it’s up for. One of Atlanta’s most prominent billboard advertiser’s, Times OOH Media, offers an average cost of $2425 USD per billboard, with the ability to reach the entire population. They are comfortable to say they garner more than 808k weekly impressions, and approx. 3.23 million monthly impressions. Blue Line Media billboard advertising per location per 4 weeks of bulletin (large) billboards will run you approx. $3000 USD, digital bulletin (large) billboards are around $4000 USD, 30 sheet posters (medium) will be around $950 USD, and digital 30 sheet posters (medium) are approx. $1450 USD. Take into consideration that these prices aren’t fixed and, depending on who you choose to advertise with, can shift by company choice. These are just two examples of popular companies in Atlanta who price competitively for outdoor billboard advertising.
Existing Digital Mobile Billboards:
Digital mobile billboards in Atlanta are primarily used to target consumers at large scale sporting events. LED digital mobile billboard trucks can be seen at the Atlanta Braves, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta Thrashers, Georgia Force, and the Gwinnett Gladiators games. Aside from that, Atlanta is emerging as a leader in banking and commerce, so digital mobile billboard companies have the open opportunity to promote financial services around places where cash is king. This is when digital mobile billboards can make use of target, and advertise banks or legal offices in areas that already have a high interest in those fields. Mobile Billboard Miami (MBM) has provided both dedicated static and digital mobile billboard trucks to the 2019 Super Bowl in Atlanta. They used 5 static billboard trucks (10ft by 22ft), 6 digital LED billboard trucks (7ft by 14ft), and 1 digital LED billboard XL unit (8ft by 16ft) to broadcast messages with the hopes of alluring the eyes of Super Bowl patrons. However not done by Atlanta specifically, MBM harnessed the power of digital mobile billboards during one of the busiest times of the year for Atlanta. That is an advertising stunt done correctly.
Looking at the sports focused culture of Atlanta, as well as the ever-growing environment for tourism and commerce, and the benefits of MARTA advertising, there is a remarkable demand for billboard advertising in the “hub of the southeast”.
Movia Media provides quality static mobile billboards that would meet the open culture of Atlanta’s advertising industry. Our truck fleets can bring custom advertising to the metro Atlanta area. Atlanta is yet another hotspot of meaningful messages with clear targets in mind that work with today’s billboard evolution.
References:
Author Unknown (2019). Digital billboard displays, bus advertising, & bus shelter advertising. Brooklyn Outdoor. Retrieved from: https://brooklynoutdoor.com/outdoor-advertising-market/atlanta/
