Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Billboards go High TECH

March 28, 2007 Lee County --

In Albany and Lee County, it's a sign of the times, billboards are changing. Digital billboards are already up in 44 states from California to Connecticut.Last week they were erected along Dawson Road and Ledo Road. Twenty years ago the city of Albany adopted a sign ordinance that prohibits flashy, rolling signs. Now, leaders are trying to determine where these signs fit into the law. We're here on Ledo Road in Lee County because this board will be the first one on. They're testing it tonight, but the city of Albany is concerned about the billboard on Dawson and how it might affect driver's attention.
"Twenty years ago to put up a billboard you had to send two guys out there and have them paint and it took two days, now with this you can have a message change with inside an hour," said Lamar Advertising General Manager James Locke.
By using the Internet, Lamar Advertising's newest digital billboard can hold six ads that can change as frequently as the customer wants to update the information.
"The ads change every ten seconds, it's a seamless change, there's no blinking, no flashing, no scrolling or anything like that, it's just a quick change," said Locke.
One of the main concerns with these new digital billboards is signs like Darton's that change rapidly with animated graphics is that they could distract drivers.
"The state ordinance allows as it stands right now for the frequency of these electronic type signs to change every ten seconds. We as a community are of the opinion that, that's very frequent," said Sr. Manager of Development Services, Tracy Hester.
Albany is looking at amending the city's sign ordinance to address those concerns. "We are addressing an amendment to the sign ordinance to put in a frequency of change or a duration of change to prevent that," Hester said.
The city wants to expand the frequency to as much as three minutes before driver's get a look at the next ad.
"The frequency of change, the light intensity, the actual motion picture ability of these signs is there and that's something I think we need to guard against for security and safety purposes," Hester said.
Thursday, drivers along Ledo Road will get the first look at the billboard, and the billboard along Dawson Road will be turned on Friday. For the first several weeks, Lamar Advertising will just be testing the boards to make sure they work, but after that you'll start to see real advertisements.According to Lamar, the ads on these board are expected to look pretty much like most billboards you see, just flat, static, images, nothing flashing and no animation. So far they have sold ad space to several banks, restaurants, and even a local hospital.
Lamar Advertising installed a similar sign in Valdosta in December, with only positive feedback.

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