Believe it or not, a billboard is prestige, it may occur to you that billboards were on steroids via PT Barnum, but did you know it was Ancient Egyptians? They might not have been the first culture, but a billboard was a show of control and prestige, basically a hey we own this place move.

They even used it for propaganda aims, showing off hieroglyphics that showed the control of Egyptian rulers, it would make sense why big companies like Coca-Cola can spread $4.24 billion dollars in 2019 and 20 billion last 5 years by August 2021 on advertising.

You obviously know that advertising is awareness but what it may have escaped the mind is that awareness is existence, it’s a shout of “I ‘M HERE”.

Well, the historical path that transformed billboards from a supreme ancient force to the capitalistic world would require a skip to the year 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introducing a moving type printing press to capitalism, resulting in flyers production, handbills posters and much more.

Jumping to the year 1790, Alois Senefelder made images apparent to the common passing audience via metal plates and flag stones through adherence. This method was possible due to a specific object they were to be called the lithograph then. A copying machine which did not just copy, yet have colors, resulting into exponential art work growth.

This innovation was extremely important to the market, hence exponential growth existed due to the limited amount of time of artists to manually re-produce colored objects, whilst non-color objects were psychologically less impactful on the customers or in this case audience. Not just that, the cost requirement was non-existent compared to other methods, just draw one design, copy it, post it everywhere! Facebook, is that you?

You could say today’s technology is very similar, where posting anything on social media is free, or even having a website being cheap. But no matter what, a big business will always have their billboards somewhere on a highroad showing who is the boss.

Alright America the home of capitalism, right? The first actual billboard being invented there by Jared Bell in the year 1830. He advertised a circus using a billboard, being filled with colors and designs. Other businesses followed the benefits of this advertising medium, which mostly were large posters showing off features and promotions for the shows to come.

Outdoor advertising became a mess, there had to be laws and rules, because who didn’t want their product or service to be posted everywhere? Is it okay to go and post my brand T-shirt on every tree over the street? Property had to be defined, in which businesses became required by law to either own or lease the area and structure where their ads or posts are to be.

In the year 1860 there was immense change, a business is able to legally purchase outdoor space, and by just months advertisers began a creative reformation experiment of billboards. An unburned record alive today has a recorded leasing happening in 1867 for a billboard.

Billboards might have been for the strong and controlling or the prestigious rich most of the history, however by the 19th century, it was a voice for the crowd. An education committee was made, which pushed members to donate community service advertising. The messages from the public have been continuing up until the date of this article’s writing, and hopefully beyond! In the UK, public services had billboards that contained NHS and Public Health in London’s billboards within the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Today most of the cities are covered in billboards, technology pushed transportation excessively, thus billboards had to be everywhere a car is passing by, and hence we are talking streets, streets are everywhere.

66% of the out of home are billboards, the industry evolved immensely with creative and competitive eye grabbing ways to catch the customer and advertise awareness and existence globally.

Omar Fouad Marketing manager