• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, November 15, 2006

Clear Channel Outdoor is expanding its digital signage network with a number of new installations in the cities of Tampa, Florida, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the company announced today. In Tampa, three new digital billboards are going live ahead of a planned total of nine for that city's network. In Milwaukee, Clear Channel is bowing six new digital signs.

Measuring 14 by 48 feet, the new signs are standard LED billboards capable of displaying multiple messages, and all are located near heavily trafficked roadways. Segmenting commuter traffic into "day parts" could allow Clear Channel to charge a premium for periods that see heavy commuter traffic--a strategy that Randall Mays, the president and CEO of parent company Clear Channel Communications, has described in public statements.

Paul Meyer, the CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor's global operations, said the expansions are an important benchmark for the outdoor company: "Our goal for 2006 was to deploy fully networked digital signage products in four to six markets, and by year's end we will successfully reach the upper end of that goal." While touting the new digital billboards, he worked in a dig at traditional media that view technology as foe, not friend: "New digital technologies provide us with the capability to execute both general market and targeted advertising campaigns that consumers can't mute, fast forward or erase."

Clear Channel Outdoor has positioned itself as a leader in the outdoor ad market--one of the few traditional media to enjoy a boom in recent years. A division of the company, Clear Channel Spectacolor, has begun building an ambitious "city center" composed of giant outdoor signs in Westgate, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. Westgate's planned "downtown" will include 30 signs of various sizes, including some that are 100 feet tall--as tall as an eight-story building. Animated and electronic signage are to be heavily featured.

Meanwhile, Clear Channel is working with technologies that may make its new LED billboards obsolete. In a July interview, Meyer said Clear Channel is testing a new digital billboard technology in Europe that could cut the costs of outdoor advertising ten-fold. The system, developed by an Israeli company called Magink, involves smearing a paste of molecules one micron in length on tiles that then receive electrical charges. The charges cause the molecules to rotate in predictable patterns, reflecting different wavelengths of light to create precise, variable images. The technology works on surfaces as thin as a traditional vinyl poster, and the images are of the same quality as vinyl. Even better, after a single charge the molecules will remain in configuration until they receive another charge--meaning that the system doesn't require a continuous power supply. What's more, each display can be "re-imaged" about 70 times a second, implying a potential capacity for video-like animation.