In last week’s Who Has What Market Share  Billboard Insider referred to a slide from an OUTFRONT Media investor presentation suggesting that independent out of home companies account for 34% of US out of home market revenues.

Justin Powell of Huntington Outdoor wonders if the independent’s share of the market is overstated:

This is surprising and I would love to know how they calculate it. According to the Billboard Insider out of home company list Lamar has 161k displays and according to this chart they have 23% of the US market. If you add up all of the billboard displays of all of the independents on your list does it equal 161k displays? It doesn’t look like it would. I know this chart is for “revenue” but even then the big public companies own some of the best inventory in the country so it’s hard to imagine the average independents inventory is better than the average public companies inventory. Outfronts used a similar chart to this in the past and I’ve always wondered how they calculated it and if they didn’t pad the independents percentage to make it look like there’s more expansion opportunity for them then there really is.

Stott Outdoor’s Jim Moravec is skeptical as well.

It would be interesting to see how this data is compiled as on the surface it to me does not seem credible. I believe it to be unrealistic to think that the independent companies control 34% of revenue. I love the independents, having been an Independent for 30 plus years, but I believe the percent of revenue is closer to 10 then 34.

Chris Cowlbeck of the IBOUSA thinks the independent share may be undercounted:

Dave, the count is certainly light, but in reality difficult to know unless you’re down in the weeds daily as you are. IBO has grown significantly this last year with over 230 independent companies in our 90,000 display footprint. We also recently added a high end hotel network with about 540,000 screens to our IBO Speedway which we don’t include in any counts. The OUTFRONT revenues may be correct based on the source of the revenues, say from Borrell Associates who gets really good data from government sources. We look for 2021 to be a terrific year as media owners, advertisers and agencies understand what we are doing to make the process easier.

OUTFRONT cited the OAAA as the source of US out of home revenue figures.  Billboard Insider will research what the figures are and how they are calculated.

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