Out of home advertising comes in many different forms. It can be as small as your happy hour sonic drink to a ginormous billboard. And much more in between! The possibilities with out of home advertising are endless: car and bus wraps, benches, airplanes, billboards, sidewalks and more. Marketers have become very creative with their out of home advertisements. 

Out of home advertising have several strengths. The first one is great visual impact. You can’t get a bigger ad than a billboard, with vibrant colors. Outdoor advertising is great because everyone sees it, when you drive to work or the mall you see tons of billboards along the way. They are there all the time, not just once a week in a newspaper, outdoor ads are there 24/7. The costs of outdoor advertising are cheaper than running an ad on TV or radio. Out of home comes in so many different formats that its easy for advertisers to find the right one for them.

Out of home also has some weaknesses, the first being that it doesn’t have selectivity. For example, in magazines the reader has made the decision to read that certain magazine. They must have some similarities with what the magazine is all about. With outdoor ads everyone sees them, which can be good but it doesn’t target a specific group of people that would be more likely to buy whatever the advertiser is selling. Ads don’t always get full attention as people may be driving by. Also you can’t say as much on a billboard as you could on a magazine, newspaper or TV ad. The cost to run an out of home ad is fairly cheap, but the work behind it isn’t. Many people see outdoor ads as environmental clutter, according to Azzaro.