US out-of-home advertising has more than recovered from the pandemic, according to the latest figures from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA). In fact, on the back of a 20.7% year-over-year increase, advertising revenues for this format reached $8.6 billion last year, outpacing the previous record set in 2019.
Some 88 of the top 100 out-of-home (OOH) advertisers increased their spend in 2022 compared to 2021, and 24 more than doubled their spend, including Airbnb and Pfizer.
The digital out-of-home (DOOH) segment again performed strongly, up by 24.1% year-over-year, and marking the second consecutive year of growth rates exceeding 20%. Research from the Winterberry group has also also reported healthy growth rates for traditional and digital out-of-home ad spending in the US.
Each of the four OOH categories experienced double-digit growth last year. Billboards remained the largest, at 72.7% share of revenues ($6.22 billion), followed by Transit (15.1% share; $1.29 billion), Place-Based (6.5% share; $556 million), and Street Furniture (5.7% share; $488 million).
During the fourth quarter, overall out-of-home ad spend increased by 8.4% over the year-earlier period, following 11% growth in Q3. Once again it was DOOH setting the pace, with an impressive 30.5% hike in spend over Q4 2021.
Tech and DTC Brands Continue to be Top Spenders
As in the past few years, Tech and Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) brands made up a healthy portion of the top OOH advertisers in the US. Apple was the #1 advertiser overall on OOH (#2 in 2021), while Amazon was the third-largest spender (up from 4th in 2021). Google continued to move up the ranks, as the 5th-largest spender in 2022, up from #8 in 2021 and #12 in 2020. All told, 26 of the top 100 spenders were either technology or DTC brands, according to the report.
McDonald’s returned to the #2 spot, a year after briefly taking the lead.
Retailers Account for Almost 1 in 10 OOH Ad Dollars
Nine of the top 10 industry categories in terms of spend hiked their OOH expenditures in 2022. The category that accounted for the largest share of total spend was Miscellaneous Services & Amusement (24.7%) with $2.11 billion in spending. It was followed by Retail (9.4% share), Media & Advertising (8.9%), Government, Politics & Organizations (6.8%) and Public Transport, Hotels and Resorts (6.5% share).
Among the top 10 spending categories Media & Advertising had the largest increase in spend (37.2%) for the second consecutive year, while Insurance & Real Estate was the only to cut spend, by 11.5%.
