There are innumerable attempts to create time- and place-appropriate advertising. What about ads that evoke “wow” simply by their size and cost?

Advertising is much more than an effort to show a product to the consumer. It is an art in which sociology harmonizes with the means of expression. There are no shortage of attempts to create time- and place-appropriate advertising. And many succeed. But what about ads that elicit rapturous cheers solely because of their size and spectacle? Yes, we’re going to talk about the biggest and most expensive billboard.

THE MOST

It’s not easy to answer this question right away. Still, it is not quite clear who will take the laurels: North America or a “bastion” of luxury and opulence in the Middle East – Dubai. If we take into account only the facts, the most expensive advertising construction is located in Times Square. It was installed in the heart of the square in late 2014.

The horizontal size of this screen is comparable to the length of an American soccer field. Its resolution is 2368×10048 pixels. Look how small the people next to it look!

So, how much does it cost the advertisers of this world? A whopping $625,000 a week! Or about a hundred thousand dollars a day. The advertising structure is rented out in 4-week periods. That is at least $2.5 million per campaign. Yes, the cost is record, but every day, hundreds of thousands of people see the billboard, and not just notice, and look at him. For many advertisers, such an investment pays off.

But despite the fact that it is one of the largest advertising structures in the world and certainly the most expensive, it is still not the largest. And not even the tallest! The right to be called the tallest belongs to another carrier in Times Square. And the biggest billboard in the world is in Saudi Arabia, its length is almost three soccer fields (note: this year the title of the largest was taken over by Ford’s billboard in Madrid).

The advertising market nowadays is saturated with various offers in the field of promotion of its goods or services. Therefore, it is necessary to clearly understand the benefits of a particular type of advertising. The advantages of billboards include:

• The low cost of developing an advertising concept and the ease of making the poster itself.
• Billboard is a reliable way to enter the market, for young companies. In addition, the billboard is taken seriously by people and looks quite representative.
• Most often billboards are installed in crowded places (squares, main roads, downtown and the like), which provides advertising for high coverage.
• In addition to purely advertising purposes, the billboard can be used to provide information on various promotions and discounts. In addition, the billboard can be used as a signpost.

There are three basic recommendations, compliance with which, as practice shows, significantly increases the effectiveness of this type of outdoor advertising. They include:

• Bigboard should be simple and clear. Overloading the poster with various text and graphic inserts is undesirable because a large amount of information is difficult to absorb in the short amount of time while a person passes or drives by the poster.
• When designing a poster it is advisable to focus on three basic elements: concise and accessible text (including a slogan), an illustration and contact information for the advertiser. This type of poster with the least likely to burden the viewer and, as a result, is unlikely to lead to irritation or disregard.
• Overloaded advertising material of different types of contacts with the advertiser is also undesirable. The optimal number of contacts for placement on the billboard is considered two different contacts, such as phone number and address.

POTENTIAL CHALLENGER

While the giant screen in Times Square has no equal in cost, it does have a competitor. It is none other than the advertising structure of Skydive Dubai (which organizes skydiving), installed in 2012 in front of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper. This, of course, is a prestigious place, but how can it cost more than $625,000 per month?

The answer lies in the peculiar nature of the display. Technically the design is quite simple, but its opening was accompanied by a performance: a stuntman in a jetpack flew around the shield for 30 seconds.

According to a press release from Skydive Dubai, each second of the flight cost $500. If the company had decided to run the ad campaign for a month, it would have cost it $1.3 billion. The jetpack is expensive and, if the cost of operation doesn’t come down, the billboard in Dubai could theoretically become the most expensive in the world.

FURTHER REFLECTIONS

So we’ve looked at two of the most expensive billboards in the world. One is a giant screen in the heart of the United States. The other is in an even richer location and its exposure involves an atypical effort. These are two diametrically opposed approaches, but which one is “better”?

Undoubtedly, the Times Square screen appears to be a safer media investment. The enormous cost is justified by the prime location and the fantastic quality of the display. What makes a billboard in Dubai so expensive comes down to an innovative performance. Although the performance serves as a great topic of conversation, the entire event can hardly be considered a reliable media investment. So if you’re in a similar choice situation, bet on the safe option. After all, there are reasons why companies like Google are so eager to sign a multi-month advertising contract in locations like Times Square.

GOOGLE BUYS THE WORLD’S WOODEST BILLBOARD

As we reported earlier, Google bought the most expensive billboard in the world. The company will have to pay $ 2.5 million for placement on the billboard in the center of New York.

The advertising space in Times Square belongs to Clear Channel. It spans eight floors and is 2,322.5 square meters. The screen display shows an image with a resolution of 2,368 × 10,048 and at 24 million pixels. The resolution of the new billboard exceeds that of any other display of this size. The previous largest electronic billboard was also in Times Square. It covered 1,393 square meters. Google leased the display from Nov. 24 to early 2015. The company would pay $4 million for that period.

Now the largest billboard in the world looks like this: