[We get lots of questions about in-bar advertising, so we’re giving you a quick primer.]

Bars are social hotspots. Think of all the reasons you go to the bar. Are you watching the game? Playing trivia? Meeting a co-worker? Out on a date? Girls’ night out? Guys’ night out? Many different people go to the bar for many different reasons. Don’t miss the opportunity to reach them all at a ridiculously low price.

While in-bar advertising is a no-brainer, the hard part is figuring out which kind of ad is right for your product or service. There are a lot of different options for advertising in a bar. Let’s look at some of the most common bar ad options.

COASTERS
Coasters are a super cost-effective way to get your logo and brand out there. There are myriad different materials to choose from, including paper, cardboard, plastic, cork, leather, and more! You can even get coasters made from recycled and environmentally-friendly materials.

POSTERS
Posters come in all different shapes and sizes. Maybe you want a giant poster on one of the bar walls. Or maybe it makes more sense for your smaller poster to go above the urinals in the mensroom. Posters give you the opportunity to play with placement and creativity at an affordable price.

TABLE TENTS
Table tents sit on the top of the table or bar, bringing your message to the captive masses as they wait for food and drink. They can’t help but to read and reread what’s right in front of them. Make sure it’s your ad they’re staring at.

TOUCHTUNES
The best time to hear some killer tuneage is after downing a few brews. Bars figured this out and bought jukeboxes, but it was hard to accommodate everyone’s unique musical taste. TouchTunes has since stepped in and offered a vast digital library of music to bar patrons. They allow you to advertise on their digital jukeboxes with video or image ads. You can also buy spots on their mobile app. They recently announced a partnership with DOmedia and Rubicon Project that will “allow advertisers to execute programmatic advertising across the largest digital out-of-home (OOH) advertising network in the United States.”

BUZZTIME
Buzztime is a real-time trivia network where you can play along on smartphones, tablets, or those weird keyboard things from the ‘90s. Buzztime lets you get your ad in front of people in the form of a trivia game or poll. This is definitely something to consider if you want your ad to be a little outside the box.

Welcome to the fourth post in our series on bus ads. In our first two posts we took a deeper look at side panel bus advertisements and front and back end bus advertisements. Our last post was on full wrap bus advertisements. In this post we’ll be taking a look at interior bus advertisements.

Up until this point we’ve looked at different wraps and advertisements that can be placed on the outside of the bus. These kinds of bus ads are great at targeting commuters, motorists, and pedestrians. What if you want to specifically target the people actually riding the bus? To that do, you’d use interior bus ads.

Interior bus ads are very affordable and can be made to fit every marketing budget. Public transit numbers are growing so why not give all those commuters your ad to look at? While most people think of card displays on buses, there are actually a few different options, making it is possible to get creative with interior bus ads. Let’s take a look at some common examples!

Top Interior Bus Displays

Top interior displays go inside the bus, between the window and the ceiling. Passengers will be have these in their view their entire trip.

Front Interior Bus Displays

Front interior displays go inside the bus, positioned at the front. They are generally larger than the top interior displays, offering more creative space and higher impact.

Ceiling Interior Bus Displays

Ceiling interior displays are attached to the inside ceiling of the bus. While they’re not always in view for passengers, these ads definitely demand more attention once they are noticed.

Grab Handle Interior Bus Displays

Grab handle interior displays are ads placed on or around the grab handles in buses. These are great if you want to do something a little different with your interior bus ad.

Audio Interior Bus Advertising

Not all interior bus ads have to be visual. Have your own audio advertisement play over the bus speaker system.

We’ve taken a look at quite a few different billboards in our Notable Billboard series. Whether they were advertising milk or bug spray, we’ve seen a large amount of creativity put into a wide variety of ‘boards. Today, we’re going to take a look at three more outdoor ads we love.

1. The Ballyhoo

This time it isn’t a specific ad we love, but the way in which the ad is served. According to their website, The Ballyhoo is a custom built, 58 ft vessel equipped with back-to-back, 46 ft, state-of-art, high definition screens. Essentially, it’s a double-sided digital billboard attached to a boat. It travels the coast of Miami Beach, turning the heads of beachgoers in high traffic areas.

Land and sky advertising are nothing new, but the market for on-water advertising is largely untapped. It’s nice to see a company taking an inventive approach to boat-side advertising. Check out the video below to see The Ballyhoo in action.

2. Lost Cobra

‘Lost Cobra’ #billboards drum up footfall to retail store https://t.co/pvUnfb9UAN via @Adweek #OOH #Reach #Action #Resultssssssss pic.twitter.com/5xo6dSJZ3N

— Outsmart (@OutsmartOOH) July 19, 2017

The above is a billboard for Betabrand, a retail clothing store in San Francisco. What we love about this ad is the way it unabashedly calls for attention. Few things will make people double take as much as seeing “LOST COBRA” in all caps, fifty feet in the air. It’s definitely a risk for a clothing company to advertise on a billboard without featuring any merchandise, but hey, whatever gets people into the store.

3. All You Can Eat

…another terrific outdoor ad for an all-you-can-eat restaurant. https://t.co/EMy6ntfVvE #OOH #billboards #creativeadvertising pic.twitter.com/DAmaL4MB3E

— Whimsy Outdoor (@whimsy_outdoor) June 13, 2017

This ad is for Oldtimer, a chain of Austrian rest stops and hotels. The billboard is built around a tunnel opening, so it appears as if the motorists are entering the woman’s mouth. While the design is funny enough on its own, this billboard is really clever in the way that it forces people to interact with it without requiring any additional effort from them. Anyone driving through the tunnel becomes part of the ad, creating an experience they won’t soon forget

Today’s Pro Tip is on creating and using custom KML layers. KML stands for Keyhole Markup Language. It is a fancy way of saying “data formatted to be visualized on a map.” KML has its roots in some of the most interesting and ambitious engineering of the Cold War era. But, today it is on of the most popular ways to overlay data on maps.

Mapping is one of the most popular features of both our Demand-Side Platform (DSP) for agencies and our Supply-Side Platform (SSP) for media sellers. DOmedia makes it easy to create interactive maps packed with data. But, what if you are looking for something a little more custom? That’s where custom KML layers come into play. This post will teach you:

1. How to add custom KML layers to maps in DOmedia
2. Where to find KML Layers on the web
3. How to create your own custom KML layers

Adding Custom KML layers to maps in DOmedia

The intrepid support team at DOmedia has written a step by step guide to adding custom KML layers on our support website. You can find it here. If it seems a little intimidating to jump right into our training documents, don’t worry! You can always contact our support team for help at OOHsupport@DOmedia.com (for media sellers) or AgencySupport@DOmedia.com (for media buyers).

Where to find KML Layers on the web

It seems like everything, no matter how arcane, has a following in the age of the internet. Interesting KML layers are no different. Here are a few websites where nerds like us are uploading and sharing their own KML layers.

• Google Earth lets you visualize many types of data and then download that data as a KML file
• Data.gov, a database of public data sets from all levels of government, can be filtered to show only KML files.
• State departments of transportaiton often offer free access to traffic data and much more in KML format. The Ohio Department of Transportation, for instance, recently overhauled its Transportation Information Mapping System (TIMS). It allows you to visualized dozens of datasets and then download the results as KML files.
• The DOmedia mapping tools also include a selection of popular KML data including demographics from the U.S. Census, ZIP codes and more.

How to create your own custom KML layers

While large datasets, such as traffic and demographics, can help hone strategies and deliver better results in OOH advertising, agencies and vendors often want specific KML Layers for campaigns. For instance, agencies may want to visualize a parade route or a special event. Google My Maps offers a free and easy solution for drawing on maps, highlighting roadways and much more. When you use My Maps, you are actually creating a KML layer in real time! Then, Google will let you download the KML file for free. What a time to be alive! 

Interested in learning more about creating maps with DOmedia to maximize performance in out-of-home advertising? Want to make sure you are getting the most out of your DOmedia account? Contact us, and we’ll be happy to show you more!

While it could be argued that the earliest billboards were cave paintings or even Egyptian obelisks, the genesis of the billboards we know today probably started with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the 1440s. His invention gave rise to handbills, which are small paper advertisements that were often posted in public places. The first billboards! Yes, the advent of the printing press gave birth to the Renaissance, mass communication, and billboard advertising.

The next major technological advancement came in 1796, when Alois Senefelder invented the lithographic printing process. Lithography is a type of printing that allowed artists to make copies of their work without having to carve them out into plates as they had to with the printing press. Instead, they created their artwork on a plate using grease-based materials. Once the artwork was finished, it could easily be reproduced. This allowed illustrated posters to be mass produced in color for the first time.

The first modern billboard is often attributed to Jared Bell. In 1835 he created a fifty square foot color poster advertisement for The Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus. This wouldn’t have been possible without lithography.

The circus posters gained popularity and billboard advertising evolved and became big business. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, billboard associations (including the OAAA) were created and best practices were established in the United States. The construction of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s created the perfect space for billboards to flourish. In fact, billboards were so plentiful on the interstate that in 1965 President Johnson signed the Highway Beautification Act. The act put certain restrictions on the sizing and spacing of billboards on the interstate. Many of these standards and regulations were the foundation for the billboard industry we know today.

Much has changed in the way billboards are created. Nowadays, billboards are generally printed on vinyl material using computers. There are also digital and interactive billboards. Billboards that are connected to the internet. We have certainly come a long way since Gutenberg.