Every eight seconds, the message changed. Drivers whizzing by on I-95 in Northeast Philadelphia might have seen an ad for American Idol, which then flashed to ones for a Sixers game, a Target sale, 95.7 Ben-FM, and a Lenovo laptop - "so fast its obscene!"
But Greg Young wasn't tempted by any of this. Standing in front of the sign and frowning slightly, he was thinking about electricity and how many watts were coursing through the wires of this new gizmo. The sign was a digital billboard, a new breed of outdoor advertising that is growing in both the region and the nation. The problem for Young, a Philadelphia architect, is that they're energy guzzlers, compared with other signage. In a recent report, he found that the largest of them can use 30 times what a typical household consumes.
The report - funded by an independent grant but done under the auspices of an advocacy group that opposes the signs - concludes that as Philadelphia strives to become the nations greenest city, a proliferation of digital signs might not be sending the right message. Digital billboards resemble giant TV screens, the picture an array of tiny lights. Indeed, critics disparage them as "TV on a stick."
They are also one of the fastest-growing areas of outdoor advertising. The Outdoor Advertising Association of America says that among 450,000 billboards nationwide, about 2,000 are digital, with several hundred a year being added. They're big in urban centers - Times Square, the national diva. A Maryland company offers space on a digital "seaboard" that cruises the beachfront on a boat.
In the region, digital billboards are sprouting up along I-95. ClearChannel, an Arizona company that is one of the market leaders, has 20 in the region, a spokesman said. They're growing in popularity because they're vivid; they grab attention.
Messages can be changed offsite, instantaneously. Digital signs have been used for FBI crime bulletins and missing-children alerts, although those also appear on government electric highway signs. Critics have focused on aesthetics - visual pollution - and highway safety. Whether they distract drivers has been the topic of ferocious debate. Young studied a new issue.
Most digital billboards use LED technology - the acronym stands for light-emitting diodes - which is highly energy efficient for applications like indoor lighting.
Source: Apec-vc
