Millions of people travel to New York City every year to shop, to see Broadway shows, to eat NY pizza and to explore the famous sites like Times Square. With 39 million touring Times Square annually, it is the world’s most visited tourist attraction, according to Travel + Leisure magazine’s October 2011 issue.

Times Square is known worldwide for its hundreds of bright, beautiful LED digital displays above the walkways and on every corner that dazzle tourists. But digital displays weren’t always lighting up Times Square.

History of Times Square’s LED Signs

Times Square was named after The New York Times newspaper. Times Square advertising was at first on wooden signs. It wasn’t easy to change ads back then. It took a few months to paint an ad onto a sign.

But quickly Times Square became a pioneer area to use billboards with electronic lights. The scrolling ticker for the stock market was installed in 1928 and was one of the first types of signs that produced dynamic changing content every moment, like LED digital displays do today.

Times Square’s massive amounts of animated LED signs are now a symbolic image of New York. Times Square is the only neighborhood with zoning ordinances requiring building owners to display illuminated signs. The LED digital display density in NYC is now greater than that of Las Vegas.

But of course advertising a LED sign in Times Square comes with a price. The owner of the One Times Square building leaves his building empty and instead sells ad space on the structure for $300,000 a month.

The LED signs in Times Square are called spectaculars, which is a great name for any LED digital display. Some popular Times Square spectaculars are the Toshiba digital billboard directly under the New Year’s Eve ball, the curved seven-story NASDAQ sign and the curvy Coca-Cola LED sign. The first environmentally friendly digital billboard was powered by wind and solar energy and first lit in 2008.

You don’t have to advertise your business in Times Square to have effective marketing, but you can take some tips from successful businesses that advertise there by purchasing a Focus Digital Displays LED sign. You should contact Focus Digital Displays today to learn more about our spectacular digital displays.