How does a company gauge the effectiveness of a billboard?

[Dennis S]

I can't think of a way to do it.

[$tevie]

You can't, not really. You know the estimated number of views and you pay for that and cross your fingers.

[testcase]

Never gave it any thought.

[bazookaman]

number of bullet holes?

[hal]

sales before

sales during

sales after

compare and contrast... how else can it be done?

Of course if we are talking 1 of 100s nationwide... dunno...

[clay]

you could use a custom URL mycompany.com/billboard and watch traffic on that specific URL (even if it just redirects to mycompany.com). That's what lots of retailers do in magazines to try and track effectiveness.

[mattkime]

car crashes

[cbelt3]

clay wrote:
you could use a custom URL mycompany.com/billboard and watch traffic on that specific URL (even if it just redirects to mycompany.com). That's what lots of retailers do in magazines to try and track effectiveness.

clay-

As a billboard reader and driver, I believe that this sort of thing is.. INSANE. Almost criminally insane. Imagine your putative consumer driving by at 70mph in heavy traffic, while adding vvv.clay.com/34hjas01 into his smartphone ?

Crash !

[clay]

I'm not saying I LIKE the practice, but that's one of the only ways to effectively track it.

[Seacrest]

You don't.
You judge the effectiveness of your whole campaign.
Oftentimes, they will do consumer research that gauges people's awareness of a brand or ad campaign, but those stats are aggregated, and 87% of them completely made up.

It's more art than science, though, I imagine.
I don't work in advertising. If I did, I would have already killed myself.