Did you know that independent out of home companies have the largest share of the US out of home market. Look at this slide from OUTFRONT Media’s December 2020 Investor Presentation. Independent operators make up 34% of 2019 US out of home revenues followed by Lamar (23%), OUTFRONT (21%), Clear Channel Outdoor (17%) and JCDecaux (5%).
Insider’s take: Chris Cowlbeck’s efforts to unite the independent operators into a single selling platform make sense. Insider wonders if OUTFRONT’s estimate undercounts the independent company revenues. OUTFRONT says the figure is based on 125 independent operators. Insider has identified more than 600 independent out of home companies in the United States.
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This is surprising and I would love to know how they calculate it. According to the BillboardInsider 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.
I’m an avid reader and love what you all do! Keep up the great work. – Justin Powell
https://billboardinsider.com/us-out-of-home-companies-ranked-by-bulletin-faces/
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 OUT 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.
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.