Traffic jams fuel Admobile's work

Nothing makes Bob Hannah happier than getting stuck in slow-moving traffic.

His day is brightened even more if he can barely miss some traffic lights, idling for long minutes in a left-turn lane at a heavily traveled intersection.

His bosses, the owners of Admobile of Reno, want their moving billboards to be seen by as many motorists as possible, and a left turn across a crowded intersection is Admobile's land of milk and honey.

The Admobile, a 22-foot-long truck featuring changing billboards on each side, travels busy streets 12 hours a day.

Every eight seconds, the ads change.

Each of the four sides of the truck rotates three ad messages a total inventory of 12 traveling billboards.

But there's more to it than simply driving a truck around town.

Chris Boratenski, chief executive officer of Admobile of Reno, says routes are selected using traffic counts from the Nevada Department of Transportation.

The company figures its billboards will be seen by about 30 percent of the motorists the truck passes.

But high traffic count alone isn't enough.

The Admobile works best in places where motorists are stalled and have time to read the truck's messages.

"Being on a major highway doesn't do us any good," Boratenski says.

"We're going too fast."

For the exposure, advertisers pay $2,500 a month for a billboard on the truck's sides, $3,200 a month for the position on the rear and $1,400 for the front.

Boratenski says those rates have been discounted as Admobile introduces its concept to the market the truck has been on the street only since early April but the company expects to sell out its inventory of available ads this month.

That's without the benefit of national advertising that is expected to be a key piece of Admobile's business.

The Reno operation is an affiliate of an Alabama-based network of mobile billboards.

Now that the network has reached into more than 25 cities, the national office is seeking large corporate advertisers, taking a split of the revenues with local operators.

Locally, Boratenski and Eric Thompson, the president of Admobile Reno, say they've gotten mixed response from advertising agencies.

Their greatest success so far, they say, has come from independent small business owners willing to give a new medium a try.

And Thompson says customers sometimes have trouble understanding the concept.

"The big thing is getting people to see the truck," he says.

Once the advertising inventory on the first truck sells out consistently, the owners expect to buy a second vehicle.

That, Boratenski says, would allow Admobile of Reno to carefully target geographic areas.

A truck traveling in northwest Reno, for instance, could specialize in messages from retailers in that part of town.

Another developing source of revenue is use of the trucks for courier service while they troll their route of high-traffic streets.

The company's owners hooked up as students at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, getting back together early this year to launch Admobile of Reno after Internet research of alternative mobile advertising systems.

A private investor helped provide the capital that Thompson and Boratenski needed to buy the $100,000 truck and launch the business just in time to see gasoline prices head up.

Thompson, who shares some of the driving duties, says he's aware of every penny change in fuel prices as the truck covers about 100 miles a day in the slowest-moving traffic it can find.