Georgia’s leading company in the outdoor advertising market, Alma, will start modernizing and developing the advertising infrastructure in metro stations and buses in Georgia’s capital city of Tbilisi. This comes after winning an auction announced by Tbilisi City Hall and gaining the right to advertise on Tbilisi municipal transport.
Alma has been operating in Georgia’s outdoor advertising market since 1995. Today Alma owns billboards not only in Tbilisi but in other big cities of Georgia too.
Alma’s lengthy experience, professional team, and possession of its own print shop, are what allows the company to fulfil an order of any volume and complexity that, in turn, is a guarantee of the best quality and most reasonable price.
This advantage of Alma’s has not evaded the attention of the 100 experts and 2,000 customers that took part in the Golden Brand survey this year and revealed Alma to be the number one company in the outdoor advertising market.
Chief Executive Officer Giorgi Trapaidze believes this award is down to the merit of Alma’s team.
“Each employee heavily contributes into the development of Alma. This is crystal clear inside the company, also I’d think people notice this from the outside. Highly experienced and motivated team is what makes Alma distinguished from other companies,” said Trapaidze.
Alma offers a full service for advertising: indoor and outdoor advertising technical service; printing and design.
Alma can provide a complete solution for any outdoor advertising campaign, starting with researching information about all the different outdoor advertising products in the area of the customer’s interest, including detailed analysis of location, visibility, exposure levels and cost.
Alma has the exclusive right for advertising at Tbilisi, Batumi and Kutaisi international airports. Advertising in airports is available in many forms and captures the attention of passengers at every step of their airport experience.
The company is equipped with the appropriate material – a technical base, operated by qualified and experienced staff.
The printing machines of Alma’s print house allow for high-quality printing on banners; mesh banners; polyposters; tape; photo paper; any flat, hard surface; paper; canvas; wallpaper; mesh stickers; stickers; floor stickers, etc.
Through interactive collaboration with Alma’s qualified design team customers will receive a sophisticated, extraordinary design product within an optimal time frame.
Q. How has Alma been developing on the Georgian market and how has the company laid the ground for the development of the Georgian outdoor advertising industry?
A. During the past five years Alma has been actively developing on the outdoor advertising market. In this period we added to our advertising portfolio about 1,000 bus stops in eight big cities of Georgia and gained the right to place advertisements on municipal transport in the capital city.
For example, in 2016 Alma won an auction announced by Tbilisi City Hall and installed 700 new bus stop constructions throughout Tbilisi. Alma invested GEL 5 million in this project and introduced the practice of an advertising company managing the city’s infrastructure.
Furthermore, Alma has modernized the advertising infrastructure in Tbilisi, Batumi and Kutaisi international airports. Thanks to Alma, dozens of advertising constructions in Tbilisi are digitized.
All of these factors indicate that the development of Alma has also contributed to the development of the outdoor advertising field in Georgia.
Q. Could you please tell us how many billboards installed by Alma are located in Tbilisi and other cities as of today?
A. There are about 800 billboards in Tbilisi, of which 340 are under Alma’s ownership.
As for the regions, there are about 600 billboards, 160 of them owned by Alma.
Q. Also, how many advertising locations does Alma have?
A. So far we have locations for 440 billboards, about 1,000 bus stops, 20 outdoor monitors, and 500 advertising panels at the airports.
Q. Could you please name which specific advertising billboard has been the most distinguished in terms of its design?
A. Recently, extraordinary solutions have become more popular in billboard advertising, such as 3D installations, etc.
Each of them is interesting as they are related to innovation and creativity.
Q. In most cases what type of advertisement is most highly demanded by customers?
A. Different industry players choose different directions for advertising. For example, retailers choose to advertise on public transport while developers prefer advertising in airports.
When choosing outdoor advertising, companies pay attention to the volume and segment of the prospective audience.
Q. How many customers does Alma have and how are the numbers increasing?
A. In 2018 Alma served about 300 customers, while in 2017 we had 250 customers.
The industry (as well as our company) is growing and the number of customers is growing accordingly.
Q. You mentioned that the industry is growing. How does Alma compete with other companies?
A. general there is quite a competitive environment in the advertising industry. Alma competes not only with the other players of the outdoor advertising field, but also with alternative approaches to advertising – TV advertising, internet advertising, including social media platforms.
Q. What are the challenges that the outdoor advertising sector in Georgia faces as of today?
A. Our main challenge is to make outdoor advertising more competitive compared to TV and internet advertising.
Currently, we are working on several interesting projects that will be introduced onto the advertising market in the nearest future.
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