US out-of-home advertising revenues increased by 3.1% last year to reach $7.6 billion, per the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA). While the growth rate for 2016 didn’t match the 2015 figure of 4.6%, out-of-home advertising has now grown for 27 consecutive quarters. This advertising channel has tended to resist the declines in some other traditional media, though its growth has been spurred mostly by digital out-of-home. This has been a global trend too: last year, global out-of-home revenues posted their strongest growth rate since 2006.
Returning to the OAAA figures, the Miscellaneous Services & Amusements category was the top spender again this year, with a 9.2% year-over-year increase in 2016. Automotive was the next-largest spending category, hiking its spend by 6.8%.
A majority of the top 100 advertisers had spending increases of at least 3.1% (the industry average), and about one-quarter of those were made up of tech companies including Apple, Sprint, Comcast and Amazon. The top 5 advertisers in terms of spending were: McDonalds; Apple; Verizon; Geico; and Anheuser-Busch.
