Out of Home CPM Measurement

Out of Home advertising is one of the oldest and most popular advertising mediums. Advertisers can use billboards to get their message out to the masses for a competitive rate. In addition to billboards, OOH includes various types of advertisement displays in public places such as government buildings, transport stations, entertainment venues, retail premises, schools, and colleges.

Digital marketing strategies can deliver highly personalized messages to your target audience. However, many people are growing more concerned about privacy issues and will work to actively block messaging in the digital ad space and avoid strategies marketers use to collect data. This makes it harder to deliver the right message and even harder to ensure it will be seen. Digital ads are also considered a nuisance when they interrupt customers on the web, and younger generations will ignore the ads they view as an inconvenience.

OOH advertising remains popular because it works. They offer an ad space that users don’t have to click on to see, and they can’t block or mute them. In many cases, your advertising message provides a welcome distraction in places where your target audience is waiting. Traditional media can reach a coveted market population in areas across the country and raise brand awareness, all for an incredible cost per impression.  

What is billboard CPM?

Media companies typically use CPM to determine the billboard cost. CPM, or cost per thousand, refers to the rate you will pay for every thousand impressions or views that your ad receives during the campaign duration. Unlike other methods of advertising, the CPM pricing structure does not focus on the size or popularity of the audience but instead on the number of times the ad will be seen by consumers over a certain period. 

This pricing structure offers advertisers a number of benefits, including transparency and easy comparisons to other types of advertising media. With digital billboard advertising, you can take the CPM rate and compare it with customer behavior collected from location data to see exactly how well each billboard advertising performs. 

CPM also gives advertisers an estimate of how much they should budget at different stages in their campaign, which allows them to adjust their spending depending on whether they are drawing more interest than anticipated or not meeting expectations.

What is a good CPM for billboards?

The average CPM for billboard is between $3-18. For smaller media, like posters, the CPM rate can be as low as $1. Finding a good CPM is useful when you’re getting ready to launch a new outdoor advertising campaign because it can help you predict how far your ad spend will go. However, the CPM alone can’t give you enough information to determine the value of your investment. 

Calculating a billboard’s ROI is a much more effective way to measure the value of your ad spend. In order to maximize your ROI, it’s crucial to find the outdoor advertising space you know your target audience is likely to be. OOH ads can appear in malls, on buses and taxis, and on billboards on the highway or in major downtown areas. This can help you target your messaging to reach your high value demographics and maximize the value of every advertising dollar.

OOH attribution measurement can help you calculate your ROI and give you key insights about how to adjust your messaging and where your ads are performing best. This can also help you determine how much to budget billboard CPM. 

How is billboard CPM calculated?

Calculating CPM for traditional billboards is relatively simple. Media Divide your total billboard advertising cost by your total number of impressions to get your CPM. For example, if you paid $150 for 1,000 billboard impressions: $150 / 1,000 = $0.15 (or 15 cents). Your cost per impression is $0.15. 

If you use another company’s platform and they charge a flat rate for all ads, you can multiply that rate by your impressions and divide by 1,000. For example: If they charge $5 flat rate and you bought 2,500 impressions: $5 * 2,500 = $12.50 (total bill), / 1000 = $0.125 (CPM). Your cost per thousand is $0.125.

Most media owners will already have the data to determine the CPM for your billboard ad. However, there are many factors that can affect whether or not your ad will actually see the promised traffic. This might be something as simple as a week of bad weather, or as complex as a pandemic. 

Keep Your Messaging Relevant With Smart Billboards

Most OOH ad spaces are offered on monthly terms. WIth a static billboard, the production costs mean you’ll need to focus on an evergreen message and leave it up for longer to get the most value from it. While evergreen messaging can work, staying relevant can help you connect with customers or surprise them and ensure they will remember your company when they are ready to make a purchase. 

Digital billboards give companies the flexibility to adjust their messaging to keep up with current events, like changes in the weather or wins from local sports teams. You can also transition your messaging by the time of day, so you can target the people who are most likely to see your ad. While the initial investment may be higher, the cost savings of keeping your message relevant will increase your ROI significantly.

You can find a message that connects with someone during rush hour, and shift it to an evening message when younger people may be out and about enjoying the nightlife. By planning the placement of multiple ads throughout a geographical space, you can tell a story that meets your customers where they are and exposes them to different aspects of your business. 

The Role of Location

The location of a billboard has a major impact on the cost per impression. Geographical location will define your target audience, but even the placement within a town or city makes a difference in its visibility. You should consider the following issues before you determine if a billboards’ cost is worth the price of admission:

• Is the advertisement at a natural eye level for the audience?
• Is there anything interfering with the view(Don’t forget to consider upcoming construction)?
• What will people be doing when they see it?
• Are you competing with any eyesores?

For example, a billboard that faces oncoming traffic will be visible to the driver and the passengers, whereas one on the opposite side of the freeway is much easier for drivers to miss. You should also consider how someone will actually interact with the ad and what frame of mind they might be in. Airport advertising is highly visible to affluent travelers and key business decision makers, where subway ads will target people of a wider income range. 

Popular locations will almost always be more expensive to run. A billboard in the suburbs is likely to be cheaper, whereas placements in crowded spaces in the city can cost tens of thousands of dollars. For instance, a billboard rental in Atlanta in the downtown area will likely cost you more than on the outskirts of the city.

Try to define your target customer and picture what they do each day, and your ad placement will be much more effective, no matter what the CPM turns out to be.  

Take Your Message Online

Your OOH campaign can easily integrate with social media advertisements and other digital marketing efforts for more effective campaigns. Smart billboards can interact with a potential consumer through their location settings so you can target ads for people that have recently seen your billboard. A customer is much more likely to engage with your ad or check out your website after they’ve already seen your billboard. Before long, you can use email campaigns or notifications from an app to nudge them down the pipeline and make a conversion. 

Find the Best CPM For Your Ad Campaigns with True Impact Media

At True Impact Media, we offer a simplified way to purchase and implement OOH ads. Our platform can help you choose to compare CPM on millions of ad opportunities with data driven insights and continued performance monitoring. 

We’ll help you manage your ad campaign every step of the way by measuring the reach of your campaign and deciphering which ads had the highest number of impressions so you can get the most out of your ad spend. 

Our platform is designed to make OOH accessible to businesses of all sizes, and we can help you find the best value for your budget so you can increase your brand visibility. With the right messaging and creative use of the spaces, your firm can become a household name within a matter of months. 

Contact us today to start comparing prices on billboards throughout the country.