By Nick Coston
For that last 3 weeks, the OOH industry has been involved in five major advertising shows. First came the Independent Billboard Operators (IBO) fall 2026 conference, morphing into Advertising Week NYC 2026, quickly followed up the next week with OOHNYC Week which included the DPAA Global Summit, Digital Signage Federation (DSF Takeover in NYC and NJ, with the grand finale being the 2026 Obie Awards managed by OAAA.
Whew, I’m tired just typing this.
But you know what is the most awesome takeaway from all these shows? How many of you went to all five major events. Not just a few of you, a lot of you. I made it to OOHNYC week with DPAA, DSF and OAAA but missed IBO and AdWeek due to, well, changing jobs.
They ran out of nametags for me this month.
Anywho, that’s a lot of cocktail hours.
You had a mixture of the large traditional billboard companies, digital place-based networks, smaller OOH media owners, programmatic buying platforms, OOH buying platforms, buying agencies, experiential agencies, mobile trucks, wrapped cabs and ride shares, printers, creative houses and let’s never forget the retail media peeps. All playing, eating, drinking and gabbing in the same places. Different outfits each day of course, if you keep track of things like that. Well, I do.
The only ones who didn’t post up at multiple OOH related events these past two weeks were the puppies from the DPAA Puppy Pen, or whatever it’s called. They were one-timers. Hey, they’re young.
Let’s not forget that also during OOHNYC Week were multiple OOH related soirees, like Solomon Partners Cocktail Party (always the best eats), XUSC Octoberfest, Vistar Media Retail Media and trends, David Ogilvy Awards Dinner and Reception, SNA Displays Open House, Planar NYC Showroom and the Lamar After Party post Obie Awards.
In the middle of all this was The World’s Largest Flying Digital Screen floating high above Chelsea Pier and later in the week doing zoomies around the Statue of Liberty.
I got to say, it’s impressive how all these organizations pulled these two weeks off with so many duplicate attendees.
I’m guessing if you attended the five big events it may have run you about $1750 if you had to purchase tickets. That’s a lot of canape’s.
Amazingly, there was one brave OOH soul who posted up to not only the five larger association shows but to the six additional cocktail parties/open houses listed above. I kid you not. No, it wasn’t everybody’s pal, Joel Martin, although he came in a close the third place and it most certainly was not me, I can only pound so many baby quiches.
No ma’am, it wasn’t even a high-profile ad salesperson or an agency owner. Think measurement, think data, think someone in every photo acting all innocent, then you got your winner.
Think someone who probably is in rehab now.
For the sake of this person’s job, we won’t name them, not until next week and only if they sign a 10 page-waiver. But if it seems like the same peep is showing up in most of the posted photos, well then…
My simple point is that what a wonderful time for our industry with all these shows, gatherings, open-houses, musical acts, speakers, flying digital billboards, puppy’s and of course plenty of baby quiches. It’s weeks like these that make the OOH industry so rich, so iconic, why would you want to work anywhere else? Each day for two weeks you could talk shop, interview for a new job, say hi to people you don’t like, even pick a few pockets.
Metaphorically speaking.
Insiders Note: Nick Coston was recently welcomed as SVP Business Development and Partnerships at National Experiential. Nick has more than 25 years of OOH experience, both selling and buying media and he’s been writing about the industry since 2015. For the last year plus he has been contributing opinion pieces to Billboard Insider. Nick also writes regularly on Substack. If you are interested, here is Nick’s Substack LINK
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