Digital outdoor takes a beating
Barnaby Page, over at Screens.tv, has an article up on the beating Daktronics has been taking in the downturn. The money quote:
Earlier this year, said the company, “we were notified that our largest customer in our outdoor-advertising niche was decreasing its spending on digital billboards from approximately $100m annually to approximately $15m annually, effective for calendar year 2009. We were one of two primary vendors of digital billboards for this customer.”
It appears that 3Q ‘09 is down half from the 3Q ‘08. Still, a big decline. And, if a billboard on average costs $500k, it means going from 100 units down to 50. My guess is that they’ll be cutting back from the 3,300 employees they have, if they haven’t already.
Oh, and the worst part, is they don’t anticipate recovery in the digital billboard space until 2011. I’m glad our displays start at $699, not $500k.