Billboard Insider is running excerpts from an interview that Co-Publisher Dave Westburg conducted with Broadsign CEO and Chairman Burr Smith and Chief Strategy Officer Ari Buchalter at the IBO show. Today, Ari Buchalter talks about how Place Exchange helps independent out of home companies and programmatic pricing (remarks have been lightly edited).
How can Place Exchange help the independent operators grow their revenue with programmatic?
If you look at online, TV, and mobile advertising, over 90% of inventory now transacts programmatically. Out-of-home is at roughly 20% of digital inventory today—but there’s nothing stopping it from reaching that same majority. And the beauty of programmatic is that it doesn’t just serve OOH-specific buyers; it puts DOOH in the same buying flows as online, mobile, social, CTV, and other digital channels, giving us the ability to attract spend from those channels into ours.
For operators with at least 50-100 or more digital faces in major markets, and with the technical and commercial resources to support an integration, I’d recommend considering a direct connection with Place Exchange, and also Vistar, since together Place Exchange and Vistar represent the vast majority of programmatic OOH revenue in the US. At that scale, and with the resources to support it, you can begin to capture spend from both national Fortune 500 buyers who heavily leverage programmatic as well as regional and local advertisers who increasingly use programmatic tools.
If you’re smaller, or if you don’t have the resources needed to support programmatic, you may want to consider tapping into programmatic through an aggregator like Screenverse, Vengo, Adkom, or Billboard Planet—all partners of ours. They roll up inventory from many smaller operators so that collectively you can punch above your weight and access national and regional demand through our platform that you might not reach on your own. Either way, feel free to reach out to me or my colleagues at Broadsign, and we’re happy to talk through what makes sense for your situation.
What sort of CPM’s (cost per thousand impressions) can an out of home company expect from programmatic?
Every year we publish aggregated metrics from across our platform. For billboards specifically, the average CPM has consistently hovered in the $6 to $8 range. That could be substantially higher for premium placements and may tick down modestly by $1 to $2 in some smaller cities and towns, but not too much below that.
Programmatic OOH is demand-constrained, not supply-constrained, but demand is growing rapidly. And it’s important to understand that at an average CPM of about $6 to $8, out-of-home is extraordinarily cheap compared to other media like TV at $15 to $30 CPMs, with streaming and primetime broadcast at even higher rates. With OOH, there’s no bot fraud, no ad blocking or skipping, 100% viewability, and proven high levels of reach, attention, engagement, and impact. Buyers understand that and recognize the value they are getting for the price. While $7 is a reasonable benchmark, it can vary based on the specific location and placement.
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