The A to Z of Billboard Advertising
Learn every OOH term that matters, from approach angles to Wallscapes and everything in between.
9 min
Billboard advertising is full of industry terms that can slow down even the best-planned campaigns. Whether you're a seasoned marketer or just entering the world of out-of-home (OOH), this glossary will keep your strategy clear and your conversations precise.
Here’s our guide to the key terms that drive the billboard advertising world from A to Z.
- Approach: The distance along the line of travel where an advertising face is fully visible before it becomes unreadable.
- Aided (Brand) Awareness: Recognition of the brand name when it is shown to someone. Reflects familiarity with the brand.
- Ad Awareness: Ability to recall having seen the ad after exposure. Indicates how visible and memorable the ad was.
- Billboard or Board: Large-format displays viewed from 50+ feet away. Includes Bulletins, Posters, Junior Posters, Premiere Panels®, Premiere Squares®, and Wallscapes.
- Brand Favorability: A positive opinion or feeling towards the brand. Captures an emotional connection.
- Bulletin: A standard billboard format, usually 14' x 48'
- Copy: The advertisement’s creative messaging displayed on an OOH unit.
- Cost per Point (CPP): The cost of reaching 1% of the target audience in a specific geographic area.
- Cost per Thousand (CPM): Measures media efficiency by dividing campaign cost by impressions (in thousands). OOH often offers strong CPM value compared to digital, TV, or radio, thanks to broad visibility and unavoidable placement.
- Coverage: The geographic boundaries of a market, or the percentage of an area exposed to OOH.
- Cross-Read: A billboard seen from across the traffic lanes.
- Dayparting: Strategically scheduling ads to run at specific times of day to align with audience habits. Dayparting can be used with digital billboards to boost relevance and impact.
- Demand Side Platform (DSP): Software used during programmatic buys to automate purchasing ad space from multiple sources in real-time.
- Designated Market Area (DMA): Defined by Nielsen, DMAs group counties by TV viewing patterns and are commonly used in media planning, including out-of-home advertising. There are 210 DMAs in the United States, with most major metropolitan cities featuring in the top 10.
- Digital Billboard: An LED display featuring static or animated content that can be changed remotely and frequently. Digital displays allow messaging to rotate on a schedule, providing advertisers with flexible, dynamic visibility.
- Distribution: The way OOH units are placed across a market to reach a specific audience.
- Dwell Time: The time a consumer is within view of an OOH ad. In the context of visits studies, dwell times refer to the time spent by audiences in a location or point of interest.
- Embellishment: 3D elements, lighting, or props added to a board for visual impact.
- Extension: Graphic elements that extend beyond the frame of a board.
- Face: The display surface of an OOH unit.
- Facing: The direction a billboard faces, like north or south.
- Flight: The length or segments of an ad campaign. A typical flight is 4 weeks or more, depending on the campaign’s scale and budget.
- Frequency: The average number of times a person sees an ad during a set period, usually four weeks. Higher frequency OOH campaigns have shown to drive increased consumer action.
- Geopath: The audit body that measures OOH circulation.
- Gross Rating Points (GRPs): The total number of in-market impressions delivered by an OOH schedule expressed as a percentage of a market population. One rating point represents impressions equal to one percent of the market population.
- Illuminated Face: An outdoor unit equipped with lighting that provides nighttime illumination of an advertising message. The OOH ratings for an illuminated unit are calculated using an 18-hour or 24-hour viewing period. A billboard without lighting for nighttime display has a Non-Illuminated Face and rated using a 12-hour day.
- Impressions: The total number of times people are likely to notice an ad on an OOH display. Gross impressions are those delivered against a demographic audience for an advertising schedule.
- Incrementality: A measure of how much advertising changes consumer behavior and drives new foot traffic, sales, or visits, rather than just reinforcing existing ones.
- Inflight Insights: CCO’s exclusive, first-of-its-kind solution that gives you a clearer view into how your OOH campaign is performing, while it’s still running. These early insights open the door for meaningful mid-campaign conversations with your CCO team, helping you uncover what's working and consider future adjustments that could contribute to improved outcomes.
- Junior Poster: A standardized OOH poster format measuring 6' x 12', framed distinctly. These products are typically positioned close to a consumer's line of sight on heavily traveled streets in commercial and urban areas.
- Line of Sight: The area where an OOH face is viewed. Also refers to placement rules near landmarks like schools and churches.
- Market Ride: Market rides are in-person tours that show OOH clients where and how their ads would appear in the real world. They help customers assess visibility, audience reach, and location context, leading to more confident, informed decisions. They also build trust through direct, collaborative engagement.
- Message Association: Consumer connection between the brand and the core/intended message of the ad. Shows how well the message landed with the audience.
- OAAA (Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America): The national trade association representing OOH companies, suppliers, and affiliates.
- OBIE Award: An annual award recognizing creative excellence in OOH, run by the OAAA.
- Open Exchange: When buying OOH programmatically, open exchanges are used as digital marketplaces, which allow multiple buyers to bid for ad inventory in real time.
- Out-of-Home (OOH): All advertising seen outside the home, including billboards, digital displays, transit, and street furniture.
- Override: When an OOH campaign remains posted beyond its contract period at no extra cost.
- Percent Composition: The percent of a display or schedule’s audience that matches the brand’s target demographic.
- Permanent Bulletins (Perms): Bulletins purchased on extended contracts to secure consistent brand exposure. “Perms” are typically purchased for one year or more.
- Point of Interest (POI): A specific location that attracts foot or vehicle traffic, such as a store, stadium, or transit hub. Advertisers use POI data to target high-traffic areas and align placements with consumer behaviors.
- Poster: A standard 12' x 25' billboard format. Posters are typically found along major highways, surface streets and intersections around desirable neighborhoods, and major commercial or retail centers. These products are highly effective for short-term campaigns.
- Posting Date: The scheduled start date of an OOH campaign. A posting day typically starts on Monday every week of the calendar year, except when conflicting with observed national holidays
- Premiere Panel® & Premiere Squares®: Clear Channel Outdoor’s premium printed billboard displays, typically vinyl-wrapped, that provide 100% share of voice in high-visibility locations for a minimum of eight weeks. They maximize brand impact through sustained presence and allow for creative enhancements like extensions or embellishments.
- Private Marketplace (PMP): A PMP is a type of programmatic deal where Clear Channel Outdoor offers access to its premium digital out-of-home inventory via a more controlled/private auction (rather than the open exchange). It allows selected buyers through DSPs to bid in a more exclusive marketplace, often with higher priority access and better terms.
- Programmatic Advertising: Programmatic DOOH with Clear Channel Outdoor lets advertisers buy their digital out-of-home inventory through automated, real-time bidding using demand-side platforms (DSPs), giving them flexibility, speed, and scale. It uses data and tech to optimize when and where ads run, and includes measurement tools (such as RADARProof) to track performance.
- Proof of Performance: Proof of Performance is documentation and visual verification that your OOH advertisement has been installed and is active in the marketplace as agreed. With CCO Clear Access, advertisers can see the actual displays their creative is running on, view the number of locations, types of formats, and the impressions delivered, ensuring their investment is working as planned.
- Purchase Intent: Likelihood that someone would consider buying the product or service. Reflects readiness to take action.
- RADAR Data Platform: CCO’s suite of data-solutions that uses aggregated, anonymous mobile location data to help advertisers plan, amplify, and measure the impact of OOH campaigns by showing where people go, what they do, and who sees the ads. It includes solutions like RADARView, RADARProof, RADARConnect, RADARSync, and Inflight Insights that allow audience planning, exposure verification, attribution, and optimization while maintaining user privacy.
- Reach: The total number of unique individuals who are exposed to your ad at least once during a campaign. It indicates the breadth of your campaign’s audience, showing how widely your message is distributed across a market. A higher reach means your ad is connecting with more people, which is especially valuable when building brand awareness or launching new products.
- Rotary Bulletin: A 14' x 48' bulletin that rotates locations every 60 or 90 days for broader market exposure.
- Showcase Shelter™: An exclusive CCO product, Showcase Shelters are redesigned transit shelters that offers immersive, branded advertising experiences.
- Spectacular: A display larger than 14' x 48', often placed in premium locations with special enhancements.
- Street Furniture: Ad displays that also offer public amenities, often at eye level or curbside. Includes transit shelters and newsracks.
- Supply Side Platform (SSP): The technology platform CCO uses to make its digital out-of-home inventory available to buyers. The SSP connects CCO’s screens to demand-side platforms (DSPs), enabling advertisers to access premium inventory through automated, biddable marketplaces such as open exchange or private marketplace (PMP) deals. This allows CCO to maximize the value of its inventory while giving advertisers flexible, data-driven access to targeted audiences at scale.
- Target Rating Points (TRPs): TRPs represent the percentage of a defined target audience exposed to an ad at least once during a campaign. In OOH, they show how effectively impressions are delivered to the audience an advertiser cares about, such as commuters or a demographic segment. Unlike GRPs, which measure exposure against the total population, TRPs focus only on the target audience, making them a more precise gauge of campaign efficiency and relevance.
- Transit Advertising: Advertising displayed on vehicles or in transit stations, such as buses, trains.
- Transit Shelter: An ad display, either Printed or Digital, in a bus shelter, usually around 69" x 48".
- Trivision: A slatted billboard face that mechanically rotates to display three different ad messages in sequence. Once a common format, trivisions are less prevalent today due to the rise of digital billboards, which offer more flexibility and dynamic content without mechanical parts.
- Vinyl: A single-sheet material used on printed bulletins and Premiere displays.
- Wallscape™: A mural or billboard directly applied or attached to a building’s exterior.
Make your billboard strategy smarter
Now that you're fluent in the language of OOH, you can approach billboard campaigns with more confidence. Whether you're building awareness nationwide, across a city, or targeting specific neighborhoods, the right terminology helps you work faster and make better choices.
To start planning your next campaign, reach out to our team. We’ll walk you through it, no jargon required.
Jake Bross
Manager, Product Marketing & Marketing Solutions
Jake is manager of product marketing and marketing solutions at Clear Channel Outdoor (CCO), where he drives strategic marketing initiatives that elevate the brand story and deliver measurable growth. He partners with the national sales team to develop revenue-generating opportunities and manages website administration to ensure CCO’s digital presence reflects its business goals and brand positioning. Jake began his career on the agency side, specializing in brand messaging, design and digital ad strategy, before joining the marketing team at Bloomsbury Publishing. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Michigan State University and a master’s degree from New York University.
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