US out-of-home (OOH) advertising continues to bounce back in a big way. Ad spend grew by 40.5% year-over-year in Q1 to $1.8 billion, reports the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), representing the largest increase of any quarter in the medium’s history.
That also continues a strong stretch for OOH ads, with year-over-year growth rates exceeding 37% in each of the past 4 quarters. In fact, the OAAA indicates that OOH advertising is on track to either reach or exceed pre-pandemic spend this year.
Traditional outdoor advertising is expected to be one of the strongest performers among offline media in terms of growth rates this year. However in Q1 it was digital OOH that was the key driver of growth, with a 57% increase over the year-earlier period.
Nonetheless, traditional formats also fared well, with the Billboard category demonstrating double-digit growth, and triple-digit growth recorded for the Transit, Street Furniture and Place-Based categories.
Top Advertisers
Eight of the top 10-spending categories hiked their expenditures by double-digits, with Financial advertisers (4th-largest spenders) upping their outlays by 90.8% and Media & Advertising brands (#3) increasing theirs by 88.2%. The only two industry categories among the top 10 to cut spend were Restaurants (#6; -0.5%) and Insurance & Real Estate (#8; -4.9%).
Meanwhile, 87 of the top 100 advertising brands increased their spend year-over-year, with almost half (47) more than doubling their spend.
Almost one-third (31) of the top 100 advertisers were technology or direct-to-consumer brands. The top-spending brand overall on OOH ads for the quarter was Apple, with other notable top-10 advertisers including Netflix (#4), HBO (#5), and Amazon (#7).
See the full results here.
