By Tracey Hess, COO & Co-Founder of Elevate OOH

“Elevate” (transitive verb) “to lift up or make higher.” Merriam-Webster.com, 2026. Knowing that I wanted to build something to improve independent billboard operators’ workflow was the easy part. How to build it, and what to call it – well, that part took time. After batting around a dozen or so names and not falling in love with any of them, my go-to marketing team – my twin 17-year-old boys – suggested one night at the dinner table,“Mom, maybe the name should say what it does.” Bingo.

So, our name really says it all. Elevate OOH is a new from the ground-up billboard software platform that aims to reimagine software for independent operators – truly for the purpose of lifting them up. Manual processes can get you so far. Outdated systems, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools can get the job done. But, they’re not a lot of fun, and they wear you out! A ten-year-old car with no A/C and 217,138 miles can get you to the grocery store down the street. But, do you trust it for a cross-country road trip with the kids in tow? Who wants that kind of stress? Your billboard plant should operate more like the cross-country road trip. The right planning and tools are needed to reach your destination, and to have fun along the way.

Elevate OOH provides the essentials that every operator needs for inventory management, proposals, contracts with e-signatures, and easy renewals. But, the thing that sets us apart is that Elevate OOH is centered around our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) structure and philosophy. The overall idea is that, with Elevate OOH, you know where every potential lead, qualified lead, and current advertiser is sitting in your pipeline and what your next best action is for each one. A nurtured pipeline is a successful pipeline, which in turn creates a healthy billboard plant.

We’ve also taken a step beyond that and integrated our subscriber’s Elevate OOH accounts with their website inventory and location maps, meaning that leads feed directly from the billboard company’s website into its Elevate OOH account as true leads. No more having to hear, “Did you not get my email?” or trying to remember who asked about Location 4A-Dig-LR. The system-generated lead has already captured that critical data.

Those are the kinds of things I think about at night. Elevate OOH was created with intimate knowledge of the in’s and out’s of our industry by people with experience in the trenches. We’ve not had to educate our development and coding team on how OOH is sold. Our Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder, Eric Hazelwood, has years of experience in the industry and speaks “OOH.” We’ve focused on the “must haves” but have also thought through the things that not just help operators get through the daily grind but take them to the next level – to elevate them, if you will.

In the early days of building out a new concept, you hope (and pray!) that you are building something of value to the industry. We soft-launched our Founders Circle just a few weeks ago, and I am thrilled with the results! The industry has responded. Five billboard companies have already joined Elevate OOH! They were able to grab some ‘“Early Peeks, Early Perks” with our Founders Circle benefits. We have space for a few more Founders Circle subscribers, but then we will close that out and begin to offer our Launch Club subscription through the remainder of 2026.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my dozen years in OOH, it’s that OOH is a wildly dynamic industry, and change is constant. Elevate OOH is here, and we’re ready to literally help elevate operators to the next level.

Learn more at ElevateOOH.com.

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