Age Advertising President Andy Goodman has 33 years experience siting and developing billboards.  Today he talks about West Hollywood’s embrace of digital billboards.

17 new digital billboard faces

I really like what’s going on in West Hollywood.  I worked in that market with CBS Outdoor when we did a double faced digital sign on the Key Club property.  I always knew they would come around and start doing additional digitals.  They are going to approve 17 new digital faces.  With 8 spots on each digital face that’s 136 new faces going in on top of what’s already up there.  The strip is only a mile and a half long.  It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with ad rates.

West Hollywood wants iconic sign structures.

I like the idea of creative architecturally interesting signs.  It will be interesting to see what the ad agencies decide about demand and rate. For so many decades the ad agencies have been telling us that they only want standard sizes and now we will have various types, designs and sizes. Now you will go to Sunset Boulevard and you’re going to have curvature and you’re going to have architecturally interesting signs and the standard size and format is going to be limited.

There’s a public art component

The other part of the code that I really like is the art portion of it.  The City is going to mandate that there is a public art program.  What concerns me is the City mandating that 17.5% of all flips have to be public art.  I believe the City has established a rule that at the top of the hour you have to have an art flip. So 10 ½ minutes of every hour will have to be public art.

The development agreements are expensive

The development agreements are very expensive.  I’ve taken a look at some of the agreements and they’re ranging from $500,000 to $1 million per year.  That’s a lot of money.  And the City is looking for the minimum annual guarantee or 40% of revenue, whichever is greater. I believe the first digital deal was $1 million annually to the City,  but was amended, because of covid, down to $500,000.  I don’t know how long that will last.

You can reach Andy Goodman at andygoodman.age@gmail.com.

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