Taking advantage of all the abandoned retail spaces in urban areas, marketers are leasing them at cut-rate prices and filling them with their ads. Now that’s a great idea!

In this economy, many commercial landlord and developers are driving by their empty store fronts on high traffic streets like Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Hennepin Avenue in Minneapolis, and even Broadway in New York. While their phones may not be ringing off the hook with businesses wanting their empty spaces, these landlords should be thinking of how to pay the bills, at least the taxes on that empty space anyway.

What can be done with these sightly empty windows? Ads. Big, beautiful ads.

Almost every category of advertising is declining precipitously in this economy, but there is one that is thriving – store front window leases for ad campaigns. Many businesses aren’t able to pay for costly billboards in high traffic area, often running for $10,000/month, so they are looking at paying 10% of a retail space’s rent. That can be as low as $500 for prime locations on some of these busy streets in our city of St. Paul.

Taking advantage of all the abandoned retail spaces in urban areas, marketers are leasing them at cut-rate prices and filling them with their ads.

At first, advertisers saw storefront advertising as a poor man’s billboard — that is, a bad thing. Now, they see it as a poor man’s billboard — that is, brilliantly frugal.

Companies like Intel, alcohol companies, and non-profits are flooding New York and California with this idea taking over the bankrupt stores like the Disney Store, Domain Home and Comp- USA, filling their former shops with digital billboards.

Elsewhere, barren-looking store windows have been plastered over by ads for Nestea, Snickers, Delta Air Lines and Conservation International.

The retail vacancy rate rose to 11.2 percent in the first quarter, the highest it has been since the early 1990s, according to CBRE Econometric Advisors, a unit of the CB Richard Ellis Group. And some real estate owners say an ad helps, literally, cover up the problem.

Though advertisers pay only 10 to 15 percent of what a retailer would, landlords still have taxes, insurance, and electricity bills that we have to pay on the property.

Companies are becoming quite creative with their ads too, it’s not just print and stick advertising. The Snickers ad is composed of several panels that fit over the building’s panes of glass, while an ad for Nestea is plastered over both the windows and the doors of a former shop in Midtown Manhattan, making it look more like a street-level billboard than abandoned retail space.

The Intel ads house screens displaying slightly time-delayed text messages from passers-by about their hopes for the future. And for “Coraline,” a fantasy movie, Inwindow created holograms in dark retail spaces. “Children would appear out of thin air in an environment that looked to be 20 feet deep, and float up to the window,” he said.

If you have vacant store front retail spaces or are interested in advertising in one, contact NADA advertising and we would be glad to discuss the opportunities. It’s a great way to make lemonade… out of lemons.