Coca-Cola is now operating its own digital billboard network, made up of 29 digital faces in 20 cities. It is leasing the actual space from outdoor media owners such as Clear Channel Outdoor and Boardworks, but it has acquired the billboards themselves for an estimated cost of $250,000 apiece.

Coca-Cola currently spends about $30 million per year on outdoor media, per Kantar Media, writes Screens.tv.

Billboard Learnings to Inform Digital Strategy

Coca-Cola calls the digital billboard space “an adventure we wanted to own,” according to Beatriz Perez, senior vp of integrated marketing for Coca-Cola North America. “As a company looking for different ways to get our message out faster and make it more relevant and targeted, we started to look at different approaches,” she says (via AdAge).

The beverage giant is testing programs with partners on the billboards, writes MediaBuyerPlanner. Currently, for example, the company is offering special edition Daytona 500 Coke cans in Kroger stores, which are being promoted on the billboards in cities including Atlanta, Dallas, Las Vegas, and Phoenix. “The partner benefits by increased traffic to their locations. And for us, the benefit is an increased presence in the stores and extra promotion,” Perez says.

Coca-Cola plans to closely monitor how different messages on the billboards are received in order to delve into data such as the optimal number of messages per daypart that consumers can handle before tuning out. The company will apply its learnings across other digital media, including its buys on in-store networks and perhaps even its Facebook presence, Perez says.

Expanding Networks

The Outdoor Advertising Association of America estimates that there are currently nearly 2,000 digital billboards nationwide, with several hundred coming into the market each year. Coca-Cola is looking to add an additional 15 to 25 billboards to its network.