Advertising and Marketing: New 50-ft 'Times Square' Border Billboard Captures 24 Lanes of U.S./Mexico Traffic With Text-Messaging, Sight, Sound and Motion

Advertising and Marketing with a New Twist: Call it the ultimate plasma TV – or the world’s largest drive-in movie. Whatever you call it, since January 20, a new, larger-than-life 50-ft. billboard has been playing to six lanes of traffic inching down the NAFTA highway where Laredo meets Nuevo Laredo.

Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) April 14, 2006 -- Call it the ultimate plasma TV – or the world’s largest drive-in movie. Whatever you call it, since January 20, a larger-than-life 50-ft. billboard has been playing to six lanes of traffic inching down the NAFTA highway where Laredo meets Nuevo Laredo.

A sister billboard on the San Diego/Tijuana border has held 24 lanes of traffic captive since 2004.

Laredo is the number one inland port of entry between the United States and Mexico. More than 4 million drivers a month cross the San Diego/Tijuana divide, the busiest border entrance in the world.

Because cars must wait for up to two hours to get across, most drivers have little choice but to take in the sight, sound and motion produced by two LED display video boards, one billion colors, two ticker displays, a 23 mm. pixel pitch and a 140-degree horizontal viewing angle, all communicated in – pick your pleasure – English or Spanish.

Border Billboard owner/CEO Jennifer Stefano says no billboards exist in the U.S. like the two mega-signs she operates from the company's headquarters in Las Vegas. “The only billboard comparable to ours hangs above Times Square in Manhattan -- and you can’t hear that billboard and you sure can’t text-message it.”

A typical commercial sells for $10,000 a month and plays 144 times a day. To ensure optimum "face time," Stefano says the billboards are placed where “cars cannot even make a U-turn.”

The board is a hit with flirtatious young people who use cell phones to text-message each other across the 40-ft. amber ticker displays.

“Hola Senorita, in the green Ford Explorer,” writes a high school boy to a pony-tailed teenager stuck in traffic near him. Within sight of thousands of commuters observing the exchange on-screen, the couple arranges to meet for a coke at a nearby MacDonald’s.

Security software filters out “inappropriate messages,” backed up by a human editor working behind the scenes.

Interspered between commercials from advertisers such as Circuit City, Hummer, Best Buy, Coca Cola and Saturn, drivers are entertained by CNN news, weather and performances by Tejano recording artists. A low frequency radio station provides sound. Advertising is aimed at the 35 to 50-year-old demographic.

“We are capitalizing on the power of the $700 billion U.S./Hispanic market,” says Stefano. “Advertisers love our captive audience,” she says.

Stefano says the company is expanding next to the El Paso/Juarez border.

For more information about Border Billboard call Jennifer Stefano or John Keeney at (877) 838-8855.

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