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Billboard advertising

Billboard advertising, without the billboard company.

A billboard is the one advertisement that cannot be targeted, skipped, blocked or served to you alone — everybody who passes it sees the same thing. Billboardly keeps that and drops the rest: 5 billboard faces on one drawn city block, at this address, each with its price written on it and nobody to ring up.

See the boardEvery price

The cheapest face is $2 right now. No account, no brief, no sales call.

What billboard advertising actually is.

Not the roadside part — the properties underneath it. These are what people are buying when they buy a billboard, and they are the reason it still works in a world of feeds.

It is public

Everybody sees the same one. There is no version tuned to the reader, no segment and no audience list — which is exactly why being on one reads as a statement rather than an impression. A screenshot of a billboard is evidence; a screenshot of a targeted ad is a screenshot of your own profile.

It is one message

There is no fold to scroll, no second paragraph and no landing page attached. A billboard is as long as it can be read at a glance, which is a constraint that improves almost every message put through it.

It is scarce

A wall holds one advertisement at a time, and so does a face here. That is what makes it worth something: a feed can carry every advertiser at once, so being in it says nothing about you.

It is not asked for

Nobody logs in to see a billboard and nobody consented to it. That is the trade — huge reach, no permission, no idea who looked. It is a bad medium for measurement and a good one for being seen.

The difference

The wall is a drawing, and that is the whole trick.

Billboardly owns no roadside advertising space and brokers none. It is a drawn city block with 5 billboards on it, and the people who see it are the people who come to the site — which is a smaller audience than a motorway and an entirely different transaction. Nothing is booked weeks out, nothing is printed, and there is no media owner between you and the wall.

What survives the move is the part that mattered: the faces are public, scarce, and carry one message each, at a price anybody can read before deciding.

Whether this is any use to you.

Good for

Launching something and wanting a public artefact of it. A hiring notice. A message to one specific person that you would like other people to witness. A small brand that wants a share card nobody else could have made. Anything where the point is that it was posted in public, at a price, and can be linked to afterwards.

Not good for

Reaching a measured local audience. If you need impressions by postcode, a guaranteed number of eyes, or a report your finance team will accept, buy roadside out-of-home from a media owner — that is what it is for, and this is not a substitute for it.

What you get afterwards

A permanent public address for your placement, and share creatives rendered from the billboard itself rather than a screenshot of it. There is no impressions dashboard, because there is no honest number to put in one.

What it costs to find out

The price of the cheapest face, which is $2 at the moment, paid once. There is no contract, no minimum and nothing to cancel afterwards.

The five faces, and what they cost.

This is the whole inventory — five faces, each its own contest, each priced on its own. The price you see is the price to take it at that moment.

Prices in USD

Five faces is the whole inventory — there is no sixth, and none of them is a package with another. Take one on the board.

How you buy one.

  1. Step 1

    Pick a face

    Five shapes at five prices. Left and right are the same product in a different place; the centre is four times the area of a square and priced for it.

  2. Step 2

    Make the advertisement

    Upload an image and crop it to the face in the browser, or type your words and let the board typeset them. Every face takes either. You see the real shape while you work.

  3. Step 3

    Pay, and it is up

    Pay more than the face is held at and it is yours from that moment — no auction to wait out. You keep it until somebody pays more than you did.

What has been on the board.

1 in all

Every one of these was paid for, and most have since been taken by somebody who paid more. The full archive keeps them all.

Questions.

What is billboard advertising?
Advertising on a fixed surface in a shared space, where everybody who passes sees the same message. Its defining properties are that it is public, unskippable, carries one message at a time, and is scarce — a wall holds one advertisement, not a feed of them. What it does not offer is targeting or reliable measurement.
Is Billboardly a real billboard?
It is a real advertisement on a drawn billboard, seen by everyone who visits the site. It is not roadside advertising space: Billboardly owns none and brokers none. If you need a physical board on a motorway, buy that from a media owner — this is a different thing at a different price.
How much does it cost to advertise on a billboard here?
The two square faces open lowest, the two portraits next and the wide centre board highest, because the price ladder follows the size of the board. Every live figure, in your own currency, is on this page and on the pricing page. It is one payment per placement with no contract.
Do I need an agency, a designer or a brief?
No. There is nobody to contact and nothing to brief. If you have artwork you upload and crop it in the browser; if you do not, you type your headline and the board typesets it for you. Every face accepts either.
How long does my advertisement run for?
Until somebody pays more than you did for that face. There is no booked period, no expiry and no renewal — it may be an hour, it may be indefinitely. When you are outpaid, the placement keeps its own permanent public address.
Can I see how many people looked at it?
No, and that is deliberate rather than an omission. A billboard has never been able to tell you who looked, and inventing a number would be worse than not having one. What you get instead is a permanent public link to your placement and share creatives rendered from the billboard itself.
Who can buy one?
Anyone, from anywhere, with no account and no signup. Prices are shown in your own currency automatically, and a private manage link — not a password — is how you get back to your placement afterwards.

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