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Google bags huge Times Square ad space for New Year's

Choc Factory pays millions for whacking new digital screen

Google is the first customer to book advertising space on a gigantic new billboard on Times Square, which has a going rate of more than $2.5m for four weeks.

World's largest billboard on New York's Times Square

The newly unveiled megascreen is currently showing a digital art exhibition until 24 November, after which the Chocolate Factory will be the exclusive début advertiser with a campaign that will take up the entire Christmas and New Year period, the New York Times reported.

The giant digital billboard spans an entire city block, nearly eight stories high and almost as long as an American football field. The obscenely large adverts will be displayed on the highest resolution LED of its size in the world, with a resolution of 2,368 by 10,048, far higher than 4K ultra high definition.

Clear Channel Outdoor nabbed the contract for sales agent for the ginormous screen, built with display tech from Mitsubishi Electric.

“This innovative and thoroughly distinctive display establishes a new iconic landmark in Times Square while creating a powerful, value proposition for our advertisers. We experienced tremendous pre-sale interest, and the display is sold out to one advertiser through January 2015,” the firm’s GM Harry Coghlan enthused in a statement.

“We have great confidence that this spectacular billboard will be the most sought after display in the world for years to come," he continued.

The NYT reports that that one advertiser is Google, who according to ad execs, got an exclusive, long-term contract for the space, so it may have been able to negotiate that $2.5m price-tag down a bit.

Clear Channel said the display, which is visible from almost everywhere in Times Square, will get millions of impressions as up to 460,000 tourists wander through, half a million cars drive by, and nearly 400,000 folks pass on their daily commute.

Not to mention the million people that will be standing on the Square for the traditional New Year’s Eve celebrations, while over a billion people watch the ball drop on the telly. ®

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