Outdoor Ads: Billboards to Digital Signage with a Local AV Company

Have you ever wondered how or when torn poster billboards changed to sprawling digital displays? AV Planners, your local AV company, dives into the history of digital outdoor ads here.

We’ve come a long way since the earliest forms of outdoor advertising. Budding in the 1830s by local establishments with simple painted signs or posters, flash forwarding to today, where digital signage, like its early predecessor, is a marketing must-have embraced by local businesses.

Interested in seeing just how we got here? 

Walk Through the History of Outdoor Ads with Your Local AV Company

Here is a brief history of outdoor advertising in the United States:

1830s

Much like today, businesses just needed to grab the attention of passers-by, so they started simply, by painting signs or putting posters up on walls to advertise whatever the business was selling, or promoting or just letting people know what merchant was there. Of course, now we have digital signage, but the idea has always been simple, efficient, and to the point, and it’s probably why it’s stood the test of time.

1835

Jared Bell first went big, creating 50 square-foot posters to promote the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey’s circus- in New York, of course!

1860s

By the 1870s, it was clear there was a new form of business here, so billboard leasings became an everyday thing. Soon sign painting and bill-posting companies began to sprout out.

1900’s

National campaigns became an essential part of advertising for big companies such as Kellogg and Coca-Cola and government-sponsored war effort or public service advertising; who doesn’t remember what Uncle Sam wants you for?

1920s-1980s

Outdoor advertising took over a life of its own, from huge partnerships and mergers to creating associations for standardization in terms of size and spacing to third-party data gatherers that analyzed just how much traffic a specific ad could receive. Although this was great for building name recognition for businesses, many still tried to pass anti-billboard laws and initiatives.

Today

By 2005 we had the first digital billboards… and now, it seems like we are right back where it all started, as digital signage becomes increasingly popular among businesses to attract customers or inform guests; in 100 years, we just traded the paint for the pixels, but the message is still the same.

AV Solutions with Your Local AV Company

Are you ready to install some digital ads for your business or workplace? Contact your local AV company, AV Planners, to learn more.