It is an icy cold, grey December afternoon in New York’s Times Square. Admittedly, it’s not the right hour of the day for visitors to see the place in its celebrated state of electronic razzle-dazzle, but this time, a bad weather forecast takes me there early. I am there with a mission – to see one of the largest hoardings in the world, unveiled just a few days earlier. Hung on the Marriott Marquis hotel, it spans an entire block between 45th and 46th streets and goes on to wrap itself around a corner. According to several reports in the media, it is eight storeys high, as big as a football field (77.69 ft X 329.65 ft), contains some 24 million LED pixels and is interactive. Google is renting the space till the end of January, and kicked off its advertising on this billboard with its androidify campaign where users can create android avatars and see them exhibited on this hoarding.

I spend about half-an-hour there, staring at the screen, taking pictures, desperately trying to arrest its mammoth form in my relatively miniature Canon point & shoot. It is a squeeze, of course. By now, the avatar activity seems to have run its course and there are other ads for android and Chrome.

A post on its website by Clear Channel Outdoor, whose unit Clear Channel Spectacolor has been selected as the sales agent for this piece of advertising real estate, says the sign is visible from virtually every vantage point in the Square’s bowtie – the space formed by the blocks between 42nd and 47th street. The billboard was built by Vornado Realty Trust, using Mitsubishi Electric’s display technology. That also means it is the highest resolution HD screen at 2,368 x 10,048 pixels.

The digital outdoors David Grabert, a spokesperson for Clear Channel Outdoor, tells cat.a.lyst that the sign is also outfitted with cameras that allow for the crowds to interact with the screen via video, in addition to social media. The attention this screen has earned focuses on the advances in out-of-home (OOH) advertising. Says Grabert: “Digitisation of outdoor media is a significant trend in advertising today and this is contributing to the growth of OOH ad spending. OOH is a growing medium, along with digital (online/mobile/social), and this compares favourably to other advertising mediums that are seeing declines in spending.”

Clear Channel will not disclose more information about advertisers or how much they pay but Google is rumoured to be paying over $2.5 million for the few weeks it is renting the space – in an area where rental fees per billboard can run into a few millions every year. The display can accommodate sectioning to allow advertisers and messages to share the space. According to Clear Channel, over 4.6 lakh people visit Times Square everyday, 5 lakh vehicles go through it each week and nearly four lakh commuters touch it on their way to and from work. It is home to 25 per cent of all New York City hotel rooms and 80 per cent of tourists to the city visit the place, with 83 per cent saying that in its billboards lies its appeal.

Impact outlook Advertisers will not only benefit from the exposure these statistics translate into, but broadcasts from media outlets nearby and of events in the vicinity can boost their visibility. The biggest billboard in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records website, stands at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and measures 32,291.6 sq ft (over 820 ft x 39 feet). LG is the advertiser and JC Decaux ATA is the outdoors agency in charge of the installation.

During the 30 minutes I spend in Times Square, the ads on this big new screen are fairly static, set off against a white background, and I am disappointed to not see all those millions of colour pixels in action. It is a superbly crisp white but still looks rather bare, and dare I say it – I am underwhelmed. No one else seems to be paying the billboard any attention. People on stilts dressed as Statue of Liberty criss-cross the area, someone dressed as Batman breaks into a dance and then poses for photos with tourists, and people dressed as popular cartoon characters try to wangle you into a snapshot with them for a price. This is Broadway, and there are several people advertising cheap tickets for shows and coming up to ask you if you want any.

I ask one of them, a woman in her twenties, what she thinks of the hoarding. “It’s pretty crazy!” she says. When I prompt her to elaborate, she shrugs, and remarks that it seems to be the biggest one around, but does not seem excited by it.

As I move on, I wonder how long it will be before this billboard is overtaken by a larger one, and whether it wouldn’t get lost in the glittering and teeming-with-tourists location that is its home.

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