What’s better, a right-hand read or a left-hand read, top panel or bottom panel, field side or road side? The answer is simple: it depends.

Although in general TAB places a higher number on right-read, road-side panels in its valuation for outdoor ratings, that should never prevent you from buying a left read or field side panel location. Sometimes these supposedly less-valuable boards are your best option, for both pricing and marketing purposes.

Some customers are so demanding of the right read-road side panel that they price themselves right out of a campaign. If you get too selective with your locations the Outdoor Company considers your campaign ‘premium’ or ‘cherry-picked’ and will likely charge you more for the promotion. On the other hand, if you select a mix of left and right reads with good visibility in a general market approach, your campaign costs tend to be the lowest possible.

The fact is that visibility valuations on billboards vary with each location. There are no hard and fast rules. There are no ‘must follows’. Right-hand readers are often obstructed by trees, on-premise signage, state signage, etc. Many left-hand readers have the best views in the market. Imagine a location you drive straight into for half a mile and then the road turns right. The left hand read at the turn has an amazing read-time straight in front of you. There are some customers who would turn it down strictly because it is a left-reader.

One of the worst market rides I ever took was with the new GM of the local professional soccer team. He had just purchased a three-month 75 GRP poster showing. As we got into the car to ride the locations for the promotion his first comment was, “I don’t want to see a left hand read all day.” It was a most agonizing ride spending most of the time trying to convince the client that the boards would be all great reads, but some would be left hand and some would be right hand. Some would catch traffic driving toward the arena and some would catch them driving away. It took about seven hours, but he saw the logic after the ride and appreciated the distribution and targeting of his outdoor campaign.

To be an effective buyer of any outdoor campaign you need to take many factors into consideration. You need to get the biggest bang for your dollar and take advantage of a great medium and all it has to offer.

If you are in a situation where you have a left read across multiple lanes of traffic, simply design/alter the creative so it is easier to read. Here is an example of a left hand read we purchased in Houston, TX on I-10 targeting over 800,000 adults per week. It had great numbers, but was across 10 lanes of traffic. We simplified the creative to take the most advantage of the situation.

Here is another very effective left hand read we purchased outside Milwaukee at Hales Corners reaching over 200,000 adults per week.

Our sales results on both of these samples were tremendous. Imagine turning our backs because they were left hand readers.

The bottom line is that you should not reject non-right read, road side panels out of hand. Often they are just as effective to your campaign and you can avoid cherry-picking premiums.