Auburn, AL Sign Regulations: Digital Billboards (2026)

Section 604 of the Zoning Ordinance lists prohibited sign types, and two of its provisions together foreclose digital billboards in Auburn. Subsection E bans 'off-premise signs' categorically, the very definition of a billboard: an off-premise sign carries a message unrelated to the business, profession or activity conducted on the property where it stands, so a third-party advertising billboard, digital or static, cannot be erected anywhere in the city regardless of size or zoning district. Subsection M then closes the loophole a business might otherwise use on its own site, prohibiting 'any moving, rotating, flashing, or otherwise animated light or component' on a sign, which would sweep in a full-motion digital display.

The subsection carves out three narrow exceptions: time-and-temperature displays, traditional barber poles, and electronic reader boards, but even that reader-board exception is tightly bounded, the message can change no more often than once every thirty seconds, must be completely static during each thirty-second display, cannot scroll, flash or move, and cannot carry a commercial message other than one relating to the business on which the reader board sits. M mean the closest thing to a legal digital sign in Auburn is an on-premise reader board with slow, static message changes, not a scrolling or full-motion billboard, and no off-premise digital billboard is permitted at all, whether along the interstate or anywhere else in the city.