OOH Growth Signals Opportunity for Brands
World Cup-fueled revenue surge is highlighting how OOH has evolved beyond broad awareness. Digital inventory, localized activation and improved measurement are making the channel more flexible, relevant and accountable.
Out-of-home advertising entered the summer with strong momentum as major events, digital-first advertisers and more flexible buying options helped drive increased spending.
U.S. OOH revenue rose 10.7% year over year during the second quarter, reaching $3.16 billion, according to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA). The World Cup contributed to the growth, with FIFA spending more than $3 million on OOH surrounding the tournament. Live Nation increased its investment by 10% compared with the same period last year.
Digital out-of-home remained a major growth engine and now represents nearly 40% of total OOH revenue. Coca-Cola, Apple, T-Mobile and McDonald’s were among the quarter’s 10 largest advertisers, while 72% of the top 100 OOH advertisers increased their spending.
The numbers reflect more than a few large national campaigns. They point to a medium becoming increasingly useful for coordinating national visibility with market-level relevance.
Turning Cultural Moments into Local Opportunities
The World Cup demonstrated how major cultural events can concentrate consumer attention, but Anna Bager, president and CEO of OAAA, said advertisers do not need a global event or national budget to take advantage of the same dynamic.
“The biggest lesson is to plan around attention, not simply around the size of an event,” Bager told Street Fight. “The World Cup creates an extraordinary cultural moment, but every community has its own high-attention occasions … from festivals and sports tournaments to concerts, conventions, college events and seasonal traditions.”
Those moments create opportunities to adapt national campaigns around the activity occurring in individual markets. A franchise system might coordinate creative around a regional sports tournament, while a restaurant chain could align messaging with concerts, conventions or neighborhood festivals near specific locations.
That requires looking beyond event sponsorship and considering where people will gather, how they will travel and what they may need before, during and after an event. OOH placements along transportation routes or near relevant destinations can then connect the brand to the occasion while directing consumers toward a nearby store, restaurant or service location.
“Local relevance is the advantage,” Bager said. “A business does not need a World Cup-sized budget to become a visible and useful part of a moment its community already cares about.”
Digital Brands Move into the Physical World
OpenAI, Genspark, Canva and Meta were among the technology companies increasing their OOH investments during the quarter. Their spending illustrates an important shift in how digital-first businesses think about brand building.
Performance marketing may help an emerging platform acquire users, but it does not always provide the public visibility or credibility needed to establish a new category. OOH places an otherwise digital product into the physical environments where people commute, shop and gather.
“Digital-first brands are discovering that building a category and earning trust require more than digital acquisition alone,” Bager said. “OOH gives emerging technology companies scale, stature, and a presence in the real world. It helps make an unfamiliar product or brand feel tangible while reaching consumers away from the clutter of their personal screens.”
That same principle applies to companies entering new markets or introducing unfamiliar services. OOH can establish awareness and credibility, while paid search, social media and mobile campaigns capture the demand it creates. The channels become complementary rather than competing parts of the media plan.
Connecting Exposure to Business Outcomes
Measurement has historically been one of the central questions surrounding OOH, especially for advertisers accustomed to digital performance metrics. OAAA’s revenue report tracks spending rather than campaign results, but separate research suggests OOH can produce measurable online and offline outcomes.
A 2026 OAAA study conducted with Kochava analyzed hundreds of campaigns across seven verticals. It found a median incremental lift of 20% for in-person outcomes and 14% for digital outcomes, compared with approximately 10% for streaming and broadcast television. Campaigns in retail environments generated median lift as high as 25%.
Those capabilities allow marketers to evaluate OOH against outcomes including store visits, searches, website traffic, app downloads, leads and sales. Agencies can also compare performance by market, audience, placement or creative treatment rather than treating OOH solely as a broad awareness channel.
The performance research is being accompanied by a broader effort to modernize the medium’s measurement foundation. As Street Fight previously reported, OAAA and Geopath are developing a next-generation audience measurement system intended to improve attribution, forecasting and interoperability with the platforms agencies already use to plan and evaluate other media.
This is particularly relevant as brands seek to understand how upper-funnel media influences local action. An OOH impression may not produce an immediate click, but it can prompt a branded search, a map lookup or a later visit to a nearby location.
DOOH Makes Its Case for More Digital Ad Dollars
DOOH Lowers the Barrier to Local Activation
Spending in the Local Services and Amusements category increased 10.5% during the quarter. Within Local Services, computer software spending rose 162%, followed by legal services at 14%, architects, contractors and engineers at 10%, and colleges and universities at 6%.
Bager attributed some of that momentum to the ability of local and regional advertisers to concentrate campaigns around defined neighborhoods and service areas. Digital inventory also lets advertisers run shorter campaigns, change creative quickly and adjust messages according to location, time, audience or real-world conditions.
“A regional advertiser does not have to buy an entire market for an extended period,” Bager said. “It can concentrate its investment around its service area, priority locations or highest-value moments.”
That flexibility may be especially valuable to franchise organizations, where national brand standards must coexist with different market conditions and local priorities. A system can maintain consistent branding while allowing individual markets or franchisees to emphasize nearby events, seasonal demand, localized offers or specific locations.
The second-quarter growth suggests OOH is gaining relevance as both national brands and regional advertisers look for ways to stand out in crowded digital environments. Its value increasingly lies in the ability to combine public visibility, geographic precision and measurable local action within a coordinated media strategy.
