After you took care of the designer, you must absolutely take care of the content he/she creates for the LED billboard. Here the basic rules of content.

First rule of content: complex vs. simple.

There are two different schools about the ad content. The first claims that the ad should be as creative as possible, in order to get the attention. It seems a pretty clear and justified goal: a paying customer should get the most memorable ad possible.

The second school, on the flip-side, claims that the memorable ads may boost the agency pride, but not the customer's profits. So making an ad too funny or too memorable, might not be the best for your customer. Usually this would happen because people concentrate so much on the content, to become blind to the brand or product. From my point of view, in this case as everything in life, balance is the best solution.

Second rule of content: fresh is king.

On your LED video wallthere must be always be some fresh, updated, curious or useful content. Not ads only. Otherwise people get accustomed to the LEDwall and will stop looking at it. You must always provide constantly updated content: ideally you should upload new useful content every day! Yes, every day.

Even basic information as the temperature, the weather forecast for the next few days, the fact of the day, the name day, the random quote of the day will incredibly increase the stickiness to your LEDwall.

If you manage to get people looking at the screen over time, for example because they are curious about the next random quote, you simultaneously achieve two results: 1. people will start commenting and therefore talking about the LED screen, which is free publicity and 2. probably most important, you get an incredibly strong selling point with your Customers because you can somehow prove them the reason why people will look at the screen and in the end why they should advertise on your LEDwall.

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Here we go with other terrible mistakes you should absolutely avoid when creating new content for your LED screen.

As you can very well imagine, the KEY role in the LEDwall content creation is the designer. Many people don’t realize how fundamental this role is, because they are too concentrated on selling the ads spaces. The point is, if you have a good designer, your ads will sell themselves. If you don’t have a good designer, it doesn’t matter what a great salesman you are… you will not sell a single space!

So the first rule of designer is: one more little effort.

If you installed a digital billboard, you probably have made quite an investment. I know at this point you don’t want to hear about further expenses anymore. I perfectly understand that. But please, please, do not make the unforgivable mistake to save on the Ads designer. Having an inexperienced person creating the ads (i.e. your teenage nephew) is like giving your brand new Ferrari to a first-time driver. I know you already spent lots money, but try not to waste more by poorly managing your investment.

Second rule of designer: know what you he/she does!

Sometimes I look at ads that are so badly designed that I actually would like to call and complain. I feel like even I could do better than that and I bet other people think the same. To avoid such situations, send your ads designer in front of the screen at least 1 hour a week, to check by person what is he doing and how the ads appear to the final audience. I promise you that the first few times, he will change 50% of the content of each single ad of your electronic billboard!

If you want to get the most out of your digital billboard (and you Customers) in terms of recognition from the audience, this article will tell which are the worsts mistake people make when creating a new Ad.

If you read the past few posts, you know why text and numbers appear blurry on a LEDwall with virtual pixel. You cant solve that, but at least try not to make it worse! The FIRST Rule of formatting when creating text (ie. the address, phone number etc) for a LEDwall Ad is... Ready? MAKE LETTERS BIIIG! At least 1/4 of the screen! I cant understand those designers that create super small text, that might look nice on their PC or MAC monitor when they create it, but its terrible when broadcast on the LEDwall.

Second Rule of Formatting: Do Not Apply Shades or Glossy Effects On Text.

Get it? As said before, this fancy effects might look nice on the monitor, but they definetly they are not cool on the electronic billboard. The reason for it is that, despite of its huge size, the LEDwall has actually LESS pixels than you PC monitor. MUCH less pixels. So it is pointless to create special shining effects on a 5 centimeters letter that look big on a PC but its invisible on a LED screen.

Third Rule of Formatting: Use Sans-Serif Fonts ONLY.  

If the text looks blurry on the LEDwall, we should make any possible effort to make things better. Serif fonts (ie. Courier, Times New Roman etc) are very nice on the PC monitor but they do have the Serifs which add pointless "noise" to the text and make it look less clear. Imagine this situation amplified by the "blurry" effect of the virtual pixel. Not good. Instead use Sans-Serif fonts such as Verdana or Tahoma, as they appear much more readable on the LED billboard. And if you absolutely have to use a "noisy" font, at least please use it in BIG size.

Fourth Rule of Formatting: Use Contrasting Colors.  

Over 20 years ago Ms Karen E. Claus published a table, indicating the color-match with the best contrast ratio. She did it for the classic static signage, but the principle is still valid today. According to her research and studies, the best matches are: Black on Yellow - Black on White - Yellow on Black - White on Blue - Yellow on Blue - Green on White - Blue on Yellow - White on Green. Please use text colors in such combinations and try to avoid such things as Pink-on-Red.

Fifth Rule of Formatting: The Most PLAIN the text is, the better.

On LEDwalls, you have 10/15 seconds to make your Ad memorable. It means that if the text is not clear at the first sight, people wont give it a second chance. Remember that they are most probably driving at about 35 km/h and hopefully they are more concerned about the road rather than about a fuzzy headline.

Ok, thats it for now. If you have any further question, use the yellow form in the homepage to contact me. Ill be glad to answer your questions. Oh, before I forget, in the next post, we'll discuss about the importance of a key role in the Ad creation process for LED video walls...

As promised, here we go with a few tips that might be useful for you (or your designer) you when creating the next Ad for your LED video wall.

If you dont have a LEDwall yet, but you are thinking about getting one to start your advertising business, Im sure you will find the next few posts very interesting as well. So lets start.

First of all, the AD DURATION

Some people make the HUGE mistake of creating 30/40 seconds Ads. 30 seconds? Are you crazy people? Your audience is not sitting on a sofa waiting for the next TV show. They are most probably driving-by at 30/40 Kms per hour and hopefully they are more focused on the street rather than your screen. Still they should be able to see the entire Ads, from start to end while passing by. What's the point of creating a wonderful Ad, if they can not read the advertiser's phone number and address at the end because the Ad is TOO long?!

From my experience an Ad should be maximum 10 seconds in length (rarely 15). Longer Ads are pointless because either your target sees the beginning but not the end, or vice-versa. In both cases (1) you didnt get the message across, (2) the audience did not find an interesting message on your LED screen, therefore will have no interest in doing it again in the future and (3) your Customer didnt get much in return for his investment, which should be your very first concern if you want him to come and buy your services again in the future.

Of course there are exceptions to the "10 seconds" general rule, say for LEDwalls installed in pedestrian areas, where people have more time to watch the LEDwall... But as I said, those are EXCEPTIONS. They are rare. And anyways 30 secs is still too much, even in these cases.

In the next post we will explore another fundamental topic in Ad creation, which is the Formatting. Don't miss it!

I thought I said everything about the Virtual Pixel technology on LED billboards, but today I realized I didn't.

I forgot to mention a side-effect that Virtual Pixel has, regardless of the technology used (geometrical/squared or Interpolated).

Basically, LED giant screens are perfect (well, no all of them...!) to show images and videos. But due to the virtual pixel, they have some problems in showing letters and numbers.

I understand it might look strange. You are probably asking, how come that such a technologically advanced equipment has a problem with the most basic LED sign?

Well, I guess we could compare these problems to those that a Formula One car (say a Ferrari) might have in driving on a normal street.

So why giant screens with virtual pixel can not show perfect numbers and letters? Simply because by visualizing a pixel that doesn't physically exist (the virtual one), the screens "smooth the edges" of each adiacent pixel (please note this is an extreme way to summarize what really happens: our technicians would kill me if I said that in front of them!). Such effect greatly improve the quality of videos and sliding pictures, where images are moving.

But "smoothing the edges" is not a good thing for text, because then it is perceived as blurry.

Is it so terrible? No don't worry. From a certain distance you will not notice any difference (remember the human eye cant notice small details at long distances).

But when designing an Ad, I always recommend my Customers to use BIG letters (usually at least 1/3 of the screen in size).

Oh, there are a few more things you should keep in mind, but I don't have time to mention them all now... So I'll keep the Advertising Design Tips for electronic billboards, for the next post. See ya!