We sell one of these two things, so read this with the appropriate scepticism. We have tried to write the version we would want to read if we were spending the money, including the section on when a billboard is plainly the better buy, and the one on when you should not book either.
The short version
| Static billboard | Vehicle advertising | |
|---|---|---|
| What it buys | Reach at one point | Frequency across a catchment |
| Audience | Whoever passes that site | Whoever is in the suburbs you pick |
| Targeting | Site selection, from what exists | Suburb selection, essentially unrestricted |
| Lead time | Often months; fixed booking cycles | About a week; month to month |
| Message length | Six words, read at distance | Name, category, offer, contact |
| Proof it ran | A photo of the site | GPS log, weekly photos, coverage map |
| Scales down to | One site, and that is the floor | A single car |
Reach against frequency
This is the actual distinction, and almost every other difference falls out of it.
A billboard is a reach instrument. It sits on a corridor and is passed by an enormous number of people, most of them once or twice, many of them travelling through rather than living nearby. You are buying breadth.
Vehicle advertising is a frequency instrument. A car working Werribee does the school run past broadly the same families, the shops past broadly the same shoppers, the same arterial at the same hour. Fewer distinct people, seen far more often. You are buying depth in a catchment.
Advertising research is fairly consistent that recall needs repetition. A single exposure to an unfamiliar local business rarely does anything. Four exposures over a fortnight, in the suburb where that business trades, is a different proposition, and it is the one a fleet of cars is shaped to deliver.
The part nobody mentions: availability
You cannot buy a billboard where there is no billboard. Melbourne’s outdoor inventory is concentrated on freeways, major arterials and the inner city, and several councils, Boroondara, Bayside, Whitehorse and Manningham among them, restrict new outdoor advertising heavily.
The practical consequence is that some of Melbourne’s highest-value residential catchments have almost nothing available at any price. If your customers are in Glen Waverley or Doncaster, the billboard question is often not “can I afford it” but “does one exist”. A car does not need a permit to drive down Whitehorse Road.
What you can actually say
A billboard is read at 80 km/h from 100 metres. That is a hard constraint and it caps you at about six words. Every billboard that tries for more is wasting the extra.
A car is read from two metres away, often stationary, frequently by someone with nothing else to do at a red light. That buys you a name, what you do, an offer and a way to get in touch, and in slow inner-city traffic, a QR code somebody genuinely has time to scan. It is a materially different creative brief.
Measurement, and why the comparison is unfair in both directions
Billboard audiences in Australia are measured by MOVE, an industry-standard system with real methodology behind it. Vehicle advertising has no equivalent, which historically meant vendors invented their own numbers, and the invented ones were flattering.
So when you see a car campaign quoting impressions comparable to a billboard’s, be suspicious. When we rebuilt our own estimates against Victorian traffic data, the honest figure came out around nine times lower than what we had been quoting, the whole rebuild is published here, numbers and all.
Where vehicles win the measurement argument is on delivery, not volume. A billboard gives you a photograph proving it went up. A vehicle campaign with GPS gives you every kilometre it travelled, a heatmap of exactly which streets, the suburbs reached, and weekly photographs of the sticker still on the car. You cannot verify that a billboard was looked at, but you also cannot verify that a car actually drove, unless someone tracks it, which is the entire point of doing it that way.
When a billboard is the better buy
Genuinely, and not rarely:
- You need mass awareness fast. A product launch that needs a whole city to know a name in a fortnight. A fleet cannot manufacture that kind of reach.
- Your audience is defined by a corridor, not a suburb. Everyone driving to the airport. Everyone on the M1 at 7am.
- Presence is the message. On some sites, being there at all signals a scale of business that a car cannot signal.
- Your catchment is genuinely metro-wide. If any Melburnian is a plausible customer, buying suburb-level frequency is buying the wrong thing.
When neither is right
If you need a click, a form fill or a booking this week, buy search or social instead. Outdoor advertising of any kind builds familiarity and does it slowly. It is a poor direct-response channel and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a billboard.
Outdoor works best on top of something that already converts. It makes the search ad cheaper, the cold call warmer and the shopfront more familiar. On its own, with nothing behind it, it is an expensive way to be vaguely recognised.
How to actually decide
- Draw your catchment. Where do 80% of your customers come from? If that is three suburbs, vehicles. If it is all of Melbourne, billboards.
- Check what exists. Ask an outdoor broker what is actually available in your catchment for your budget. Sometimes that question answers the whole thing.
- Count your words. Under six, either works. More than that, vehicles.
- Decide what proof you need. If you have to justify the spend to someone else, the medium that hands you a GPS log and weekly photographs is an easier conversation.
Common questions
Is car advertising better than a billboard?
Neither is better in general. A billboard buys reach at one fixed point, so it wins when you need scale on a single corridor. Vehicle advertising buys frequency across suburbs you choose, so it wins when your customers are local and you need to be seen repeatedly. If your catchment is a fifteen-minute drive from your door, vehicles usually fit better.
How much cheaper is car advertising than a billboard in Melbourne?
A small fleet of cars generally costs less per week than a comparable static billboard site, and covers a spread of suburbs rather than one location. On a cost-per-thousand basis the gap narrows, because billboards generate very large impression counts and honest vehicle numbers are modest. Compare on catchment fit before comparing on CPM.
Can you target specific suburbs with a billboard?
Only by choosing which site you buy, and only from the sites that exist. Many Melbourne councils heavily restrict outdoor advertising, so in large parts of the eastern and bayside suburbs there is almost nothing to buy. Vehicle advertising has no such constraint. You name the suburbs and drivers are matched to them.
How long does it take to launch each one?
Premium billboard sites are often booked months ahead and sold in fixed cycles. A vehicle campaign takes about a week from approved artwork to cars on the road, and runs month to month.
Related: what car advertising costs in Melbourne · how impressions are counted · where we cover