Billboard advertising is more than a century old — how can the industry be modernized to fit into the digital landscape of 2023?
Dan Levi, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at Clear Channel Outdoor, is answering that very question. During Variety Studio presented by Canva at Advertising Week, Levi spoke with his colleague Nolan Panno, manager of research and insights, and Claudia Chang, director of product operations at Radar, about their evolving industry.
“We’re in the billboard business, it’s literally the world’s oldest advertising medium,” Levi said. “Oftentimes, people talk about legacy media as if it was a negative. I love the fact that we’re building on the positives and the strengths and the power of our media, but bringing it into the 21st century and modernizing it. And the only way to do that is to bring in people who have a different perspective, different background, a different view on it.”
Levi added, “So our data platform is called Radar. And what we try to do with Radar is be able to measure any kind of outcome that our clients are looking to drive with billboard advertising.”
Panno noted that it’s a collaborative process for the Clear Channel team, with some employees working on research, like himself, and others focused on data, like Chang.
Chang said of their company ethos and dynamic, “Something we say a lot is that nothing is really sacred, there are no holy cows, we really like to be vulnerable and learn from each other. Because every single day, we teach each other something new, and learn something from each other.”
Levi spoke more about updating the billboard business to adapt to our technological age, bridging gaps between the material and the digital.
“The things that are most exciting to me, and certainly from a more contemporary standpoint is connecting the physical world of billboards with digital behaviors,” he said. “So app downloads, app usage, online conversions, being able to prove something that we all know, because we go about it in our daily lives…we carry a phone with us and we respond to the world around us.”
Panno said that the company can take inspiration from social media platforms: “There’s a lot to learn from the short form content that people are creating on YouTube, TikTok, whichever platform you you might choose. And it’s the ability to tell a story in a really succinct way, a very clear way — in many cases, less than 60 seconds.”
Chang furthered the conversation by explaining that Clear Channel can look to the long history of billboards to improve their brand.
“And to tie that back to data, because I have to, in thinking about user generated content, we as a company have a century of content that we have been building and displaying…really thinking about how to take that, and then translate that into brand goals. And again, going back to that impact point, there’s a lot that we can do in terms of contextual targeting, to understand what drives a really good campaign, what’s really resonating between all the different generations or the target audience.”
Watch the full conversation above.
