The New York Times Square billboard–in today’s current pop culture, it’s a prestige marker and a sign that you’ve “made it” if your ad appears there. This is an investigation into what being shown in Times Square really means, how the digital collides with physical space, and other kernels of detail that might’ve gone unnoticed before.
[Times Square averages around 330,000+ pedestrians a day during peak tourism season, with the busiest days attracting 460,000 pedestrians](https://timessquarebillboard.com/blog/times-square-traffic-patterns-peak-hours-and-visibility-data/#:~:text=Peak pedestrian density occurs 5,Times Square's peak tourist seasons?). Although this seems like a huge amount of foot traffic (which it undeniably is – 78,000 viewers an hour!), the real allure of being featured in Times Square lies in the countless photos that are posted to social media, featuring advertisements in the background. This city block has garnered a reputation for glamour and prestige throughout the years, with campaigns like the 1943 Camel cigarettes merging physical spectacle with brand messaging for the first time, 1977’s “I ♥ NY” paving the way for billboards to be used as social movements, or 1982’s “I Want My MTV!” creating a surge in demand for MTV, artificial scarcity, and turned the Times Square billboard into a medium that drives the advertisement’s messaging. The city block is also a tourist attraction and spectacle in itself–rather than fighting for five seconds of time online, advertisements displayed at Times Square get an organic audience as people seek out the location on their own.
The prices for billboard space add up quickly–there are a lot of companies with screen real estate in Times Square, and it can cost anywhere between $5,000 and $50,000 for a day at the most premium level. But large-scale billboards can cost up to 4 million a year. Thus, many people opt for street-level displays over those that span far overhead, as they reach passersby more directly, with digital personal displays costing as little as $150 for 24 hours. Of course, these lack the potential virality of a big screen far above your head. So the real cost there is in losing the organic marketing generated by social media posts.
Prices peak in holidays, major events, and tourist seasons; in fact, prices in December run up to two to three times their usual price due to New Year’s. It can get quite costly, but many find that using Times Square’s glamor and trading up increases the value of their product being advertised. Along with netting roughly 1.5 million impressions daily, products featured by advertisers also gain legitimacy from the success of previous successful companies that used Times Square to advertise. The square mile is a “cultural pulse point”, with huge concerts hosted there and the annual New Year’s ball drop. Pedestrian patterns can also be maximized in planning, and **stats specific to Times Square are detailed in [this article](https://timessquarebillboard.com/blog/times-square-traffic-patterns-peak-hours-and-visibility-data/#:~:text=Peak pedestrian density occurs 5,Times Square's peak tourist seasons?).**
Contemporary technology developments have transformed billboards from static 2D images to units that are interactive or 3D. One recent billboard reflecting the shift in technology is the 3D IKEA home video, which runs in a 15-minute loop to showcase the material pleasures of a room as time shifts from day to night. There’s also Coca-Cola’s 2017 first implementation of a 3D robotic sign, which earned it Guinness World Records title for both the first and the largest 3D robotic billboard. Coca-Cola took the spotlight again with a gamified billboard connecting their past and present history. It spanned 42 x 68 feet and featured a game of pong, using two controllable digital paddles to bounce a ball on screen back and forth. The objective was to score 10 points. Coca-Cola ties in this modern gamification with the red-white colors it’s branded under for more than a century.
2017 also saw M&M’s #UnsquareCaramel Campaign, which featured an augmented reality arcade and a scannable QR code to enter said AR space. Times Square has also been home to promotional material for game launches like Star Wars Go Rogue or Marvel Studio’s Midnight Suns. In essence, if it’s a big name, it’s been in Times Square under the big lights.
We see new technologies being embraced as time passes, with new gimmicks to grab attention in a space that’s visually crowded and historically the heart of advertising. Flashy and new things only make sense–there’s a lot going on in the digital real estate of Times Square and so many other billboards create visual noise to distract from an advert put up. Advertisers have needed to find newer and flashier ways to draw attention, and that’s definitely why a gamified billboard like Coca-Cola’s stood out so much. Novel things like that Times Square digital pong game are very sharable online, and Coca-Cola gained traction from social media presence in addition to the billboard itself.
A pattern that has begun to form is the social media posts or reporting on the Times Square billboards doing more to bring attention to the advertisers than the actual screen in the Square. Examples of really successful Times Square billboards include Forever21’s billboard that captured real-time footage of the passerby below. However, you don’t necessarily need to shell out tens of thousands to gain customers–instead, target the psychological and sociobehavioral habits of people to make any ad work, regardless of its location. Psychologically, individuals are more likely to notice advertisements at eye level or in areas with high foot traffic and long dwell times (think a street intersection, or near a tourism attraction). Ads placed in these locations will leave a stronger, enduring impression on viewers. Placing an ad in proximity to where you could obtain the goods or services promoted will also increase foot traffic to said location.