Digital billboards in Madrid / CLP-city
Placing advertising in the streets of Madrid is highly effective and has tremendous reach. Madrid is a metropolis and popular tourist destination. Annually, over 7.7 million (2018) national and international travelers are visiting the capital of Spain. Small alleyways and pompous promenades take turns. Madrid consolidates the contrasting images of being a highly modern city with a great number of refurbished historic buildings, palaces and stunning churches.
This discrepancy between old and new is especially prominent at Plaza de Callao – the Times Square of Madrid. A fitting analogy, because the plaza is located right on the street “La Gran Via”, the broadway of Madrid, and is hosting the big department store “El Corte Inglés”, many brand stores, shops, cinemas, theatres and venues. Here, the beautiful old buildings are sided by newer buildings covered by various huge light walls and digital screens to each side of the plaza. Ads that are run at Callao include the newest technology, special offers at the department store and the newest cinema movies. Day and night, the ads at Callao have extreme visibility and account for an immense branding effect.
In terms of billboard advertising, almost no old-fashioned billboards can be found. For example, the standard 18/1 billboard that is common to the streets of Berlin, is nowhere to be seen. That is, above ground! Under ground, you can find these and other poster formats, as well as video walls in the stations of the Madrid metro. Furthermore, in the more modern areas of the city, like the area around “Nuevos Ministerios”, as well as on the big roundabouts of the city, you can find city light columns. However, they play a minor role in Madrid’s advertising portfolio.
The clear focus in Madrid’s advertising scope lies on city light posters (CLPs) – digital as well as analogue. To increase visibility, they are strategically placed in busy pedestrian areas, big plazas, in the shelter of bus stops, or at traffic lights – impossible to miss for the many pedestrians, bikers, e-scooter riders, drivers, and everyone on the street. The numerous digital faces are a special eye-catcher. The ads are visible day and night and the constantly moving images are attracting the attention of everyone in immediate proximity. The Metro station “Sol”, the station under the big plaza Puerta del Sol, Madrid’s official city center point, presents the crown of Madrid’s CLP dominance. Here, advertisers can place their ads on the network of 68 digital city light posters and 20 light walls. While crossing the station, commuters will be impacted by every advertising in the program.
Atoche station host an equally effective digital CLP network. Atoche station is Madrid’s main station for intercity rail and home of the Ave, which can develop velocities up to 300km/h. Here, many digital CLPs are positioned at escalators, alongside the corridor of the shopping area of the station, as well as at the entrance to the rail gates. Furthermore, a big light wall is overlooking the main hall. The hall offers various spaces for train passengers to wait for their respective train: a restaurant, cafes, and a small tropical forest, laid out in the middle of the station. Incorporating the Atoche station network into the media plan presents an utterly effective marketing tool.
In addition to the high amount of city light posters, few city light columns can be found alongside the bigger streets and plazas in the city center. In contrast to the seeming focus on street-level city light poster, was the building wrap in August 2019. The online series provider Netflix covered a whole building in their strikingly red advertising of the Spanish tv show “Elite” close to Plaza de Colón. Atypical ads like this are extremely visible. A definite eye-catcher.
