Aerial Advertising: What Can It Do For You?

The importance of advertising is plainly understood by most businesses. A significant part of their budget is devoted to it. If finances are tight, many try to build business through word-of-mouth from satisfied customers but that can take a while.

Alternative advertising methods include high cost radio or television ads, that might be targeted at a local community. However, too often people channel surf during the commercials and never even hear what is offered. Printed matter can be effective to reach a community but what percent ends up as wrapping for fish? Internet advertising is growing but may reach for a local business a much larger market than is useful.

To quickly and effectively inform a local population of a product or service, one novel plan is to use aerial advertising. This is the way it works. A firm is hired to make a large banner displaying a product or service message. Scheduled around a popular event such as a sporting event, beach, parade, or concert, it grabs the attention of the crowd, causing them to look up, read the ad which then sticks in their memory. How much does it cost? A lot less than you might think.

Aerial advertisers claim that their method reaches more people in a more effective way for much less cost than other traditional advertising methods. For example, a few years ago a particular Miami beach was targeted for an aerial ad and then 2000 of the people were surveyed thirty minutes later. The result was that 88% of the people were aware an ad flew by, 79% could recall the product or service, and 67% could recall at least half of the exact message. Could the printed media or radio and TV ads match this effectiveness at a reasonable five dollars per thousand people targeted? While some spend as much as 20% of their budget on advertising, aerial advertising can reach as many people for only a comparable 8% of the same budget.

People are curious. They will look up, see the banner, and wonder, "What does it say?" or "Who's spending a lot of money trying to get us to know about their product?" For as much as seventeen seconds, they are able to read the banner several times. Some will have it memorized in that time. The uniqueness made an impression. They will remember the product.

Those interested in a cost effective means of making their product or service known in a specific local area would do well to consider aerial advertising - especially with the increasing problem of traffic gridlock (one example - there are many each day), which provides even more opportunities for savvy advertisers to get their message in front of a captivated audience.