Along the way, people ask through my CONTACT FORM on this blog for a billboard site on EDSA Guadalupe. I ask them, "Sir, why would you want to be on EDSA Guadalupe?". Their usual answer is that they refer to EDSA Guadalupe as the prime area for billboards. Ergo, all EDSA Guadalupe sites are prime sites.
I think we really have to reeducate advertisers on the objectives of being in Guadalupe given cost vs. reach analysis. I am not saying that all EDSA Guadalupe sites ARE NOT PRIME. I am saying that NOT ALL Guadalupe sites ARE PRIME.
Some advertisers are just happy to be on Guadalupe. Let them be. I am not like that. I believe in a Guadalupe site if the price is right and all other factors in terms of site quality are good. And besides, when I say a Guadalupe site, we are not just referring to those by the side of the river. The billboards near MMDA building are Guadalupe sites too as they are technically in Barangay Guadalupe.
Overall, what we have to remember is that traffic patterns have changed even before COVID-19. Furthermore, consumer habits have changed. Travel patterns have also changed. In addition, I wrote an article back in 2020 about the effects of the newly developed bus lane in the middle of EDSA (click here for the article). That has also changed the quality of the sites on the other side of the road.
I hate to say this in view of my friendship to some vendors but some sites are really not visible anymore because of the new bus lanes.
All of these lead me to say that what may have been PRIME before, are no longer prime today. We have to deal with that fact. I am not saying this as shooting from the hip. There are metrics in place to verify this. I am aghast that some well known brands are still keeping their sites from 2007 even though these are already invisible to the moving audience. To say it in Tagalog, "Wala lang, site na namin yun eversince so we'll just keep renewing it". I think that is an unwise move as there are so many beautiful sites I see nowadays which are vacant and could be acquired at a lower rate. Better visibility too.
These are much better than what are normally perceived as "PRIME SITES". If you are an advertiser reading this, I urge you to have your sites audited. Get an agency to do an honest to goodness audit. That way, your OOH spend is justified in hard times like these.
Stay safe!
The writer, Lloyd Tronco, is an Out-Of-Home Media Strategist. He is a constant subject matter expert on matters pertaining to Out-Of-Home Media and Digital Signage. He is also the industry journalist for OOH in the Philippines.
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