Here’s are some excerpts from what the public company out of home CEO’s said at last week’s OOH Mediacon 2026, sponsored and analyzed by SignValue.
OUTFRONT CEO Nick Brien on the need to sell outcomes and solutions
I personally get rather frustrated when… we sell billboards on locations and audiences instead of outcomes and solutions…we don’t want to be restricted to gun shows and strip clubs…
Lamar Advertising CEO Sean Reilly says lawyers are smart out of home buyers
Lawyers buy circles around the agencies. I’ll just say it right here. They know how to buy in the way that literally gets pricing and position… and there’s a couple of reasons for that: number one they stick with it. They don’t come in and out. If you have a premium unit you better keep it. You leave it won’t be there when you come back.
Clear Channel Outdoor CEO Scott Wells on inside sales teams
We implemented an inside sales approach precisely targeting…the very small customers. We’ve learned a ton from it. We’ve been doing it for a few years now. It’s one of the fastest growing parts of our business. We’re looking at your workflow and optimizing it… we kind of kept all the good parts of the sales process in terms of customer needs assessment and understanding what customers trying to do and asking questions but as soon as the seller gets yes they hand it off and start on the next deal.
Nick Brien on competing with the Google’s and Facebooks of the world
We can’t make them wrong to make us right. We’re dealing with the goliaths but we have to be provocative. We have to have a clear point of view. We are in the world of AI where the agents will engage with the agents. We are the human being. We are for those in the physical environment.
Sean Reilly says AI can get creative wrong
AI slop is actually costing productivity when it comes in over the transom. When it comes in from a client, for example, that just learned how to use AI and they come up with this great thing and they want this and it’s just horrible creative. The colors were all wrong. There’s way too many words. Way too much going on. Wrong aspect. We’re we’re having to clean it up and and… you have to kind of disappoint your own client by saying it’s really not good creative…We’re going to solve for it but right now it’s a pain.
Scott Wells on AI
There’s a big three areas we’re leading into…We are using it fully in production with that inside sales team I talked about. We’re able to train the new sellers in one sixth of the time. I’m trying to figure out how we use the training and reinforcement tools because I I just think back to when I was doing inside sales of Dell 20 years ago we listened to maybe 1% of the calls and coached people based on that. Today we’re listening to 100% of these calls and that is allowing us to use to coach the individuals. We’re doing a lot of work on workflow…we’re using it for art sizing on our outside sales teams we’re experimenting with with agents and we’re having some pretty good success on renewals with agents.
On whether the industry needs more consolidation
Reilly: For all you independents out there (beckons)
Nic Brien: We did nothing last year but we’re going to be aggressive this year.
Wells: And I’ve got new friends.
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