Beyond Billboards: Misconceptions about Outdoor Advertising

Misconception 1: Out-of-Home is another way of saying billboard advertising.

Fact: OOH Advertising encompasses much more than billboards

Out-Of-Home is so much more than billboards, it covers all media formats specifically intended to reach consumers outside the home.

The expansive list of Out-Of-Home opportunities is categorized into the following segments.

Roadside (bulletins, posters, wallscapes, spectaculars)
Place–based (cinema, stadiums, gas stations, shopping malls, construction fences, in-store signage)
Street furniture (benches, bus shelters, bike racks, kiosks, urban panels aka newspaper racks)
Transit (buses, taxis, trains, trolleys, mobile billboards, airports, transit stations)

Below are examples of the unique ways EXL Media has utilized these types of advertising for our clients.

Hanging banners in Long Beach, California airport. We were able to secure this customized placement for “Fly Reno Tahoe” to reach LA residents departing from the Southwest Airlines gate area to competing destinations.

This is a trolley wrap that was secured by EXL Media for Rabble Wine in a Miami Tourist area to promote their Earth Day promotion at the Graffiti Museum.

Signage at a San Francisco Bay area concert venue as part of an integrated partnership with the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority and Live Nation.

Utilizing RSS Feeds, Palisades Tahoe linked their live mountain webcam to a digital billboard on I-80 in California for visitors to enjoy on their drive to Lake Tahoe. The image updated on each ad rotation.

Misconception 2: Outdoor lacks the ability to target specific audiences.

Fact: Out-of-Home offers a variety of ways to reach niche and broad target audiences.

EXL Media is a member of Geopath, a nonprofit organization that has developed an online planning and buying platform that provides the OOH industry standard for audience targeting, engagement and audited impression measurement. The majority of all OOH location inventory is stored and measured in this platform.

This enables us to buy OOH based on a cost-per-thousand reach against your target audience and provide reach/frequency reporting delivering more cost-efficient buys.

An emerging way to buy outdoor is based on target audience impression buys rather than contracting each location. This enables us to purchase a pool of digital billboard locations that index high against select target audience and expand market impact.

Take a look at a reach frequency report we were able to provide for one of our clients!

Misconception 3: Outdoor Advertising Effectiveness is Difficult to Measure.

Fact: Outdoor advertising has become increasingly more measurable over the years.

In addition to the traditional ways of tracking OOH campaign effectiveness such as awareness studies, QR code usage, unique offer codes, phone numbers, and URLs, there are new, more effective ways of tracking results.

We can track people exposed to a unit and whether they visited a website or physical location through attribution modeling platforms.

We can select billboard locations based on the originating zip codes for people who are exposed to the boards rather than just where the board is located. We utilized this capability to track the room night lift from visitor origination zip codes that were exposed to these billboards for a destination tourism client.

We utilized a mobile geofencing buy in conjunction with outdoor placements. Select audiences are served retargeting mobile banners within one hour of passing a roadside billboard and being exposed to your campaign ad. There are opportunities to track delivered impressions, website visits and conversions along with foot traffic to ski resorts, event venues or brick and mortar stores.

Here is a sample venue visitation attribution report.

Misconception 4: Outdoor advertising is expensive.

Fact: OOH also tends to have the lowest CPMs of any other media channel, and impact isn’t limited to the impression—people engage with out-of-home by taking photos, sharing it online and scanning QR codes.

At EXL Media, we consistently negotiate OOH contracts well below market rates, and secure additional exposure through bonus rates on digital boards and override bonus days on static locations. Our bonus/added value can range from 30% to 100% more than the contract amount.

Sample of where people engage with Outdoor via social media.

Is Out-of-Home Advertising the Right Fit for You?

It’s a great channel for hyper-localized campaigns—think events, ski resorts, retail stores and banks. We see greater impact when pairing OOH with mobile geofencing retargeting banners or paid social for added exposure and engagement.

Businesses with multiple locations, events or service areas see great results.

In addition, a recent April 2025 Harris Poll/OAAA study reported product categories where OOH advertising is a highly effective medium in capturing target audience attention and driving engagement.

Recruitment: 57% of adults recall seeing related OOH ads. Men, Gen Z and those residing in large urban areas are more likely to notice them.
Real Estate: 62% recall seeing real estate OOH ads skewing male at 70%. 59% engage in one or more of the following actions: Search (38%), word-of-mouth conversations (38%) and realtor website visitation (31%).
Sit-Down or Fine Dining Restaurants: 86% of consumers have acted after seeing a restaurant OOH ad. The graph below shows what messaging interests them.