Understanding Billboard Pricing: Location, Format, and Value

Billboard pricing is shaped by a handful of key considerations — ranging from location and campaign timing to the creative features that bring your campaign to life. Here’s what you should know:

1. Location, location, location

One of the great things about the OOH medium is that you can choose exactly where to run your billboard campaign to reach your customers. Location drives the price in a few ways. Larger cities, like major metropolitan areas (think NYC, LA, Chicago) tend to have higher demand and higher media costs. And then, within each market, billboards along high-traffic roads, popular neighborhoods, or near points of interest will usually cost more.

2. Format and size

There are many different sizes of billboards, and the different types have different pricing. The larger and more visible types of billboards tend to be priced higher due to scale and impact:

3. Ad campaign duration and volume

Finally, the price of the billboards you buy will be influenced not only by the length of your campaign and the number of billboards, posters, or wallscapes running your ad, but also by the timing of when your campaign runs:

Getting more from your OOH spend – additional pricing considerations

Today’s OOH is about so much more than where your ad runs. OOH can now do many impactful things to help you optimize your ad campaign and help turn views into sales. Here are three additional considerations that can improve the effectiveness of your campaign and related pricing considerations:

4. Printed billboards vs. digital billboards

OOH ad buyers today now have two options when buying OOH – printed and digital boards – and the decision about which to use will affect overall pricing. Which one is right for you?

Printed billboards, what most people think of as traditional billboards, offer consistent brand exposure, which may be more cost-effective depending on campaign goals. Digital billboards offer flexibility – you can rotate different ads on the same board, put up different messages at different times of day or even change the ad in near real-time, and these features may come at a premium. The Clear Channel Outdoor (CCO) in-house design team can work with you to determine which types of billboards are best for your campaign.

5. Ad complexity and production needs

The complexity of your advertisement and the production costs also affect price. Traditional printed billboards require vinyl printing and installation, which can impact price. Digital OOH displays have no physical production but may incur creative services depending on the campaign.

6. Using data to maximize efficiency in OOH

Today’s OOH is all about delivering more value for advertisers. Over the past several years, CCO and others have introduced advanced data solutions that improve return on ad spend by making campaigns more targeted, measurable, and effective. With tools like CCO’s RADAR Data Solutions, you can plan campaigns to reach specific audience segments - whether that’s parents on their evening commute, consumers likely to shop online, or business travelers in an airport terminal. These same solutions also provide measurement, helping you understand what impact the billboard campaign has on your business goals. Our Account Executives and Data & Research teams can guide you through the latest innovations and show how they increase the value of your OOH investment.

As you can see, there are a number of factors that affect the cost of an OOH campaign, so pricing is ultimately customized. The good news is that we can help you design the OOH that is right for your budget and sales objectives. Speak with a CCO expert today to create an ad campaign, one that customers won’t miss!