We Analyzed 82,668 Billboard Ads To Identify The Top OOH Advertisers in the US. Here's What We Learned.
Like many of our friends in other verticals, the out-of-home advertising industry experienced an unforeseen impediment at the exact moment when it was catching its stride and seeing record growth.
We have a lot of work to do to catch up to the momentum we were seeing before the Coronavirus (and much to everyone's dismay – with fewer resources).
Irrespective of industry or whether good times or bad, one thing holds true:
When you break down information silos and have access to data that provides contextual relevance across the many dimensions relevant to your business – the quality of your strategic decisions improve and execution of day-to-day tactics become more efficient.
And as one of my favourite fictional, high-functioning sociopaths, Sherlock Holmes would say:
"Data! Data! Data! ... I can't make bricks without clay."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
At AdQuick, we have no doubts that all of us in the industry have our work cut out for us going forward.
So here's a v1 of more clay to help you keep making bricks during and after the chaos that has been our reality over the last few months.
Cool story, Chris – show me the data already :)
The Status Quo of OOH Advertiser Intelligence
It is difficult to overstate the importance of knowing the Top Advertisers in the out-of-home advertising industry.
Having intelligence on the market participants that are actively investing in the OOH medium can be transformative for teams -- informing and prioritizing your teams' strategy and next move(s).
Those that live and breathe all-things OOH, know that forums such as Cohoot or SellerCrowd exist and are familiar with the insights they deliver.
They're also likely familiar with the great competitive intelligence offerings software products such as WinMo and MediaRadar.
The aforementioned forums are fantastic offerings for getting competitive intelligence on an individual advertiser's investments in out-of-home using valuable crowdsourced insights from the users on the platform.
The software offerings mentioned previously are great for getting a sense of a given advertisers' spend across multiple media formats, which agencies they work with, and who sellers should reach out to.
However, data and intel on OOH media investments are limited.
Both forums and competitive intelligence software offerings in our space often leave the end-user (usually sellers) unfulfilled, seeking comparative data to give them more context, more granular insights, and asking questions such as:
- Is a brand advertising in other markets outside of the one that I cover and see everyday in the real world?
- How do you know what brands are the top OOH advertisers in a given market?
- How do you get a more accurate depiction of the industries most heavily represented in a given market?
Answering these types of questions on behalf of marketers, agencies, and media owners everywhere gives us great joy.
To help answer these questions, we called on our talented engineering team.
We analyzed 82,668 billboards and wallscapes using publicly available data sources to identify the top OOH advertisers in major markets and better understand the out-of-home advertising landscape in the United States right now.
Specifically, we examined which OOH advertisers have the broadest nationwide coverage by market count and by unique OOH media placements in those markets.
Much of the data we uncovered aligned closely with the spend-related research of top OOH advertisers from reputable industry resources such as the OAAA.
Some of our research resulted in some surprising findings (especially at the DMA level).
If you're still reading at this point – I'm sure you won't mind me taking off my marketer hat and share the pitch for our latest data offering that we built during the quarantine.
Introducing AdQuick's Top OOH Advertisers Database
The most comprehensive picture of out-of-home advertising is now available to AdQuick customers and preferred media owner partners (for those that aren't – you can get far more than a sneak peak below).
Backed by the largest publicly-available database spanning the most OOH operators on the market – brands, agencies, and media owners can now leverage data points on over 20,000 unique advertisers on over 60,000 unique billboards & wallscapes in 140+ designated metro areas (DMAs) in the United States.
Powered by AI technologies and machine learning algorithms using publicly available data on the web, AdQuick's Top OOH Advertisers Competitive Intelligence database goes much further than the competitive OOH media tactics of years past.
Say goodbye to city-level media planning using individual placements relative to a point of interest, a given neighborhood, or a physical landmark in a single market.
Say hello to having visibility into which markets advertisers are investing their OOH spend in, and on which formats.
With the competitive intelligence captured by our Top OOH Advertiser database, you and your team will be able to find new ways to generate more prospects and better convert them into profitable deals, or quickly evaluate new markets’ feasibility when developing go-to-market plans.
If you're an advertiser (or an agency that represents one):
Our new Top OOH Advertisers database gives you the ability to look at your rivals’ out-of-home advertising strategies and tactics from ALL angles: be it the markets they advertise in or the inventory types they select.
Get unparalleled visibility into an advertisers' media strategy with the ability to slice and dice across summarized, unit-level details like media type, screen type, orientation, face direction, and (if you'd like) distance calculations to millions of locations in the real world.
With the exception of what the competition is spending for their OOH campaigns and which individual units they booked, you'll have nearly all the information to slice-and-dice across a variety of dimensions and roll them up into a comprehensive view that drives better decisions for you entire team.
And if you want to do something really wild:
You can retarget the folks that have been exposed to a competitor's OOH placements or your own using our intelligence on almost every other marketing channel.
If you're a large OOH media company:
A localized sales and marketing approach towards out-of-home is great for building long-lasting relationships.
However, it leaves the sellers at our trusted media owner partners with many blindspots:
Is this market a good fit for a given advertiser?
Which industries or product categories are represented in a given market?
With our latest offering, we break down the data silos so you can easily answer those questions.
Identify the markets you operate in and where your existing clients are or are not investing in.
If you're a smaller, regional OOH media company:
We understand how important the out-of-home advertising medium is for driving revenue to local businesses and we want to help you capture both national and local opportunities alike.
Aside from being able to participate in multi-state or national RFPs by becoming an AdQuick preferred media partner, our Top OOH Advertisers database can help your business on the local front as well:
- Get a better understanding of the competitive landscape in the markets you operate in and who you are competing with.
- Understand what types of businesses and which advertisers have historically been the biggest OOH spenders in your market.
- Take those learnings, hand them off to your sales team, and use them to help your future customers grow their business while generating revenue for your own.
- Lean on us to help you identify your best prospects:
We're happy to help provide you with a current and exhaustive list of local businesses in your area to make prospecting a breeze (including addresses, phone numbers, and websites), help you find your next best customers, and streamline the booking process for them as if they were buying anything else online.
We're committed to everyone in our space winning.
So, whether you want to find all the cannabis companies, all the tax preparation services, or any other industry vertical at the national or regional level – we can help.
Not an AdQuick customer or preferred media owner partner?
No worries, there's plenty of valuable data to be gleaned from by reading on.
Keep scrolling for extensive insights into what we've uncovered in our research.
The way we see it – the more useful data you have at your fingertips, the more value it will deliver to your business and to your customers.
Top 200 Billboard Advertisers by Market Coverage
Dataset Summary
- 20,069 Unique OOH Advertisers represented
- 62,623 Unique Billboards & Wallscapes represented
- 82,668 Unique Advertiser and Billboard Pairs identified
- 275 Unique US OOH Media Owners represented
- 145 Unique DMAs examined
Top 200 US Billboard Advertisers by Media Count
Top 10 OOH Advertisers by DMA
Atlanta
554 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,659 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in Atlanta, Georgia
Austin, Texas
554 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,659 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in Austin, Texas.
Charlotte
546 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,741 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Charlotte, North Carolina metro area.
Chicago
2,002 Unique Advertisers Identified
5,466 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Chicago, Illinois metro area.
Columbus, Ohio
435 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,296 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in Columbus, Ohio.
Dallas-Fort Worth
1,566 Unique Advertisers Identified
4,710 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Dallas Fort Worth metro area.
Houston
1,619 Unique Advertisers Identified
4,291 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in Houston, Texas.
Indianapolis
661 Unique Advertisers Identified
2,738 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Kansas City
542 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,744 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Kansas City metro area.
Las Vegas
461 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,5o5 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Los Angeles
2,651 Unique Advertisers Identified
11,782 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Los Angeles metro area.
Louisville, Kentucky
287 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,247 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Louisville, Kentucky metro area.
Memphis
315 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,272 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Memphis, Tennessee metro area.
Nashville
607 Unique Advertisers Identified
2,197 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Nashville metro area.
New York City
1,304 Unique Advertisers Identified
4,035 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the New York City metro area.
Oklahoma City
621 Unique Advertisers Identified
2,731 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Oklahoma City metro area.
Philadelphia
2,048 Unique Advertisers Identified
6,964 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Philadelphia metro area.
Phoenix
635 Unique Advertisers Identified
2,705 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Phoenix metro area.
San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose
738 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,676 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Seattle-Tacoma
444 Unique Advertisers Identified
1,884 pieces of OOH media
Learn more about median billboard costs in the Seattle-Tacoma metro area.
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If you'd like to learn how out of home can work with your unique marketing campaign and business, send a quick email to [email protected] or call (213) 986-6179. We'll reach out with case studies and recommendations tailored to you.
Disclosure
The opinions expressed are those of the author. This material has been prepared for educational purposes only. Please be sure to consult with your internal team of stakeholders to assess your specific needs before adapting any practices from this blog, as your own.