Steel City Billboards is expanding in Pittsburgh.  Billboard Insider talked with Steel City Billboards CEO Mitchell Fowkes about the project.

You’re adding some digitals?

Steel City Billboards is expanding its presence in the Pittsburgh market with the addition of 22 digital faces. This move significantly increases the company’s digital footprint across key corridors in and around the city, creating new opportunities for advertisers seeking flexible, high-impact outdoor campaigns. The expanded network will offer greater reach, improved campaign consistency, and more strategic coverage throughout the region.  With this growth, Steel City Billboards continues to strengthen its position as a leading independent operator focused on delivering accessible and effective digital out-of-home solutions. By enhancing its network, the company aims to provide advertisers and agency partners with increased flexibility, whether through programmatic buying or more direct, market-specific campaign planning.  This expansion is about making our inventory work smarter for our clients and we’re focused on building a network that offers both scale and strategic value, giving advertisers more ways to show up in the Pittsburgh market.

Whose digital billboards will you be using and why?

We’re continuing to use Formetco for our digital billboards. They’ve consistently delivered a reliable, high-quality product, and their service and support have been excellent. From both an operational and performance standpoint, we’ve had a great experience. Just as importantly, we value longt term partnerships with our vendors. Formetco has been a strong, dependable partner for us, and we believe that maintaining that consistency benefits both our operations and our clients. Their responsiveness, build quality, and ongoing support give us confidence as we continue to expand our digital footprint.

Are you attaching the new digitals to any of the automated sales platforms or will you be focused on selling direct?

Great question. Our primary focus right now is selling these units direct to ensure we’re maintaining control over pricing, inventory, and campaign quality, especially as we’re bringing new faces online. That said, we will be slowly integrating programmatic platforms as it makes sense. Our goal is really to strike the right balance, leveraging programmatic for incremental revenue and accessibility, while continuing to drive direct relationships where we can deliver more strategic value.

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