Outdoor banners are making a comeback and it’s due to one simple phenomenon: Banner Blindness. It is no secret that the average consumer spends the large majority of their time online and thus the digital arena, it would seem, is the ideal place to advertise.
Increasingly though Australian consumers are experiencing what experts refer to as Banner Blindness, which means that they are simply passing over adverts, completely ignoring them, or opting out of them all together. Ad blockers are now available for iPhone operating systems and the world’s most popular ad blocking tool, Adblock Plus, has been downloaded over 500 million times.
What this means for advertisers is that they need to turn their attention to more traditional forms of advertising – after all, most people between the ages of 18 to 34 are more likely to ignore an online advert than a traditional one. Outdoor banner advertising is one such method of traditional advertising.
We Australians might spend a significant amount of time on the internet, but most Australians also have one other thing in common – they leave their homes every day and go to work. This time spent in traffic or on public transport, as well as walking to various public destinations (from Melbourne to Sydney), exposes people to outdoor banners that they cannot pass over or ignore.
Not all outdoor advertising is created equal. Billboards, for example, are very expensive and (increasingly) have a low return on investment compared to what they cost, making them a better choice for large and established brands. Smaller companies however should be focusing their efforts on local outdoor banner displays. In fact, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America has revealed that local outdoor advertising (such as outdoor banner flags, A-frame banners and bunting banners) are the fastest growing outdoor advertising medium with 17%growth over the past 5 years.
Outdoor banners for businesses as a form of advertising can have several positive effects. They are a much more cost effective means of advertising than other traditional forms of advertising such as television and radio and they also allow for a targeted geographical reach. This makes it ideal for small to medium sized businesses.
One of the companies that understand Australian outdoor banners better than most is Ausign Signage. They have been providing multipurpose outdoor banner signage to businesses for many years with great success. A call to them today will get you all the advice you need on whether or not outdoor banners are suitable for your company?
