‘Billboard Police’ Help Advertisers Get Money’s Worth

Trying to attract more listeners during the summer, radio station KTWV-FM, “the Wave,” plastered many thousands of dollars worth of billboards all over town.

The outdoor ads, which said “Because life’s too short for ordinary music,” were purchased from several big billboard companies for as much as $5,000 a month each.

With those kinds of price tags, KTWV executives decided not to just take the word of the outdoor ad firms that all the boards would magically appear on the prescribed dates. Instead, the station hired a company that specializes in monitoring billboards. What they discovered was appalling. More than 20% of the billboards that the station purchased were not up on time or were in some way damaged.

“It’s not that the billboard companies are trying to rip anyone off,” said Bonny Benedict, director of creative services at KTWV. “It’s just that there are so many billboards in Los Angeles. It’s a huge animal to control.”

So KTWV, like some others, turned to a relatively small Paramount company, ACI Outdoor Audit, which has made a business out of doing the dirty work for outdoor advertisers.

During the night, ACI sends crews out in trucks to make certain that every billboard, bus banner or transit shelter ad a client pays for is up--and in good condition. Call them billboard police, if you will. Some billboards are damaged by vandals or weather. Some have lights that fail to go on. And worst of all, some ads aren’t even up.

Clients are charged 1% to 2% of their outdoor ad budgets. Generally speaking, the company charges $5 each to check smaller billboards and bus signs, and $25 each to monitor giant painted billboards. That can add up fast, considering that many of its clients have from 100 to 500 billboards to monitor.

It is no irony that ACI chose the Los Angeles market. With so many commuters, the Southland is the largest outdoor advertising market in the country, with an estimated 40,000 billboard, transit shelter and side-of-bus ads. As a result, advertising executives say, nowhere is the problem of billboard discrepancies more acute than it is here. Radio station KTWV, for example, was given many thousands of dollars in future advertising credits as a result of ACI’s billboard audit.

“Outdoor (advertising) is the only business where advertisers spend millions of dollars and never know if they’re getting full value,” said Ben Somers, who two years ago founded ACI’s billboard inspection division. Magazine advertisers usually get copies of the ads. And radio and TV advertisers are often sent signed affidavits that the ads appeared. But generally speaking, there is no accurate verification for outdoor advertisers.

“If you’re a billboard advertiser here, you’ve got to audit,” said Jack Kornarens, a billboard industry consultant in Studio City.

No one is saying that the billboard companies intentionally rip off clients. But whatever the reason, said Somers, billboard advertisers often don’t get everything they pay for.

Not surprisingly, the big billboard companies take exception to that. Gannett Outdoor Advertising, one of the billboard giants, figures that its billboard postings in the Los Angeles market are correct about 98% of the time--and nearly 100% in other markets.

“In Los Angeles we generally don’t make 100% because of the size of the market, the sheer number of ads and all of the last-minute changes by advertisers,” said Robbynn Lystrup, sales service manager at Gannett. But she said Gannett has no objections to these new audit companies. “We’re not afraid to find out when we’ve made a mistake.”

The other giant billboard firm in Los Angeles, Patrick Media, declined to comment.

One of the largest Los Angeles companies that specializes in buying billboard space for advertisers insists its clients get what they pay for. “We place 25% of the outdoor business in Los Angeles,” said Mark Barnes, chief executive of the Sherman Oaks-based office of Outdoor Services Inc. “And less than 1% isn’t up on time.”

Executives at the Outdoor Advertising Assn. of America, an industry trade group, said it was the first time that the notion of outside billboard monitoring had been brought to their attention. “It’s certainly the right of any client to have any oversight they want,” said Kippy Burns, a spokeswoman.

Of course, many commuters in Southern California might feel that the fewer billboards around the better. So what if some billboards or bus shelter ads get blitzed?

Well, advertisers certainly don’t feel that way. Recently, KNX radio was informed of nearly $27,000 in outdoor advertising discrepancies after a billboard audit by ACI. “I’m a big believer in outdoor advertising,” said Fred Bergendorff, director of advertising and promotions at KNX. “But I wouldn’t do it without some type of auditing.”