Check out this great new blog written by account manager Hayley Berger, as she talks about the opportunities of billboard advertising.

We’ve all seen them, whether you were going on a family vacation or driving on the highway to work, billboards; a symbolic icon of the American road trip. Even with the rise of digital advertising, billboard space is still at a premium and choosing an effective message can make a statement for your dealership. These days, digital billboards give the freedom to choose when your message is shown as well as give the vendor more opportunities to use their space.

BMW and Audi for example had a “billboard war” a few years ago when Audi posted a billboard challenging BMW with “your move”; BMW came back with “Checkmate.” Clever and compelling, this billboard war is an example of how traditional media can make impressions on thousands.

Now today for the first time ever, digital billboards have stepped up their game. We now have the ability to have gender recognition software built within the billboard that can display a different message for a man or woman. Imagine being able to specifically target different demographics, maybe for a man feature a truck and for a woman feature a crossover. In the UK, a company is using gender-identifying billboards inside bus shelters to help promote a charity for women in Africa. Using a software that measures facial features it can identify a women or man. If a woman is watching, than a 30 second video shows, with the thought being that a woman would be more interested. If a man is watching, the website for the organization shows up, with the thought that men would not care for a video and would rather be called to action by a website.

Where, will this lead? Who knows, but what we can expect is advertisers to use customized demographics to target specific people catered to their shopping habits.