Interestingly, Metromedia Technologies, the company that brought computer painting to the market, is owned by billionaire John W. Kluge, who's been a major force in the billboard business for four decades. Other innovators are adding three-dimensional structures, digital tickers, and continuous motion to outdoor ads. Broad social trends also favor billboards. Americans are spending fewer hours at home, where TV, cable, magazines, newspapers, books, and the Internet all clamor for attention. Billboard salesmen like to say that they reach consumers when they're on their way to spend money at the supermarket or the mall.
Billboards are the cheapest way to reach mass audiences.
Other buyers aim for narrower targets. Startec, a global telecom company, buys posters outside ethnic food markets to sell its international phone service to immigrants. It all sounds like a simple route to media moguldom of a sort, but it's not. Just ask General Electric, Gannett, and 3M, which floundered when they tried their hand at billboards. Better yet, ask Karl Eller and Arte Moreno, who are neighbors in Phoenix, the nerve center of the global billboard industry.