We’d like to quote from the opening remarks of Francois de Gaspé Beaubien, Chairman of Zoom Media and Chairman of the Board of the DPAA at this week’s DPAA summit.

“If you own a roadside billboard, and you want to maximize your ROI, I would sell those assets and re-deploy to environments where people congregate.  Non-urban roadside billboards will retain value, just as magazines and radio stations retain value today… But the height of  their valuation is now.   AI and driverless cars will depreciate the value of non–urban roadside billboards. If you want to maximize ROI, sell them in the next few years.”

He goes on say that he might be wrong, but he thinks that digital placed based boards or digital boards where people congregate will be the boards you want to own.

Billboard Insider’s Take: Billboard Insider disagrees.  Here’s the counterargument.  I get in a driverless car each Sunday to go to church.  My wife drives.  Do I look at my phone the entire time?  No.  I look out the window and talk with my wife and notice billboards.  Do my kids spend the entire trip glued to their phones.  No.  They also split their time between talking and looking at their phones and looking out the window.  Same goes for our long vacation trips in the car.

We note that the stock market certainly doesn’t see autonomous cars as the end for roadside billboards.  Have you looked at Lamar’s valuation lately?  Who do you want to bet with on this? Francois de Gaspé Beaubien, or Warren Buffett, who just took a $144 million position in Lamar Advertising.  We assume that Warren Buffett isn’t losing sleep over driverless cars.

How do you think driverless cars will impact roadside billboards?  Take our poll below or email davewestburg@billboardinsider.com and we’ll run a followup post.

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