Outdoor Billboard Investment Articles

Here’s a note we received recently, from someone who had taken our outdoor billboard course: “I would never be where I am today without your mentorship. Building the billboard business has given me the flexibility to have a better life. Thank you again for everything!” -Steve B. So how can an investing course on outdoor billboards actually change your life?

So you have a billboard with one side facing traffic going into town. There’s a ton of potential advertisers, and it never seems to go empty. However, the other side is heading out of town and there are no immediate advertisers for miles and miles. How do you rent that type of sign?

Many businesses use tactics to make the cost seem like less than it is. For example, flying in a private jet from Los Angeles to Las Vegas only costs $10 per minute (instead of $1,800). And your cell phone only costs $3 per day (instead of $1,000 per year). But in the billboard business, sometimes it’s all about making things sound bigger than they actually are – and sometimes not. Here’s a list of times in which you want to make things sound big and others when you shoot for small.

The whole point of renting a billboard is to have a successful ad message. Yet many advertisers fail in this mission. When an ad is not good, it sells nothing, and the advertiser doesn’t renew. It’s basically a wasted opportunity on the part of everyone involved. So what do advertisers do that is wrong and how can you improve on that?

There I was, minding my own business trying to keep a bunch of billboards rented when Texas was hit by the 1988 Savings and Loan Crisis and the resulting depression. Billboard rents fell 50% in just one year, while the Texas economy was wiped out with a collapse of oil and real estate values. But I had to keep the signs occupied to pay my bank loans, and failure was not an option. In desperation I configured some new ways to make my billboards affordable for advertisers. In many ways, it’s similar to the Covid-19 crisis, only there were no programs to ease the burden like the Cares Act back then.

I have long been a believer in this quote by Andrew Carnegie, the founder of U.S. Steel “problems are only opportunities in work clothes”. What that means is that you can look at U.S. recessions as either something to cry about or something to celebrate. I choose not to cry. Indeed, recessions such as the Covid-19 pandemic are great buying opportunities for billboard signs. You just have to know what you’re doing.

What’s the value of $3,000 of lumber? Around $3,000. But not if it’s assembled into a billboard sign. Then it becomes an income property that can pay out dividends forever. So how is all that possible? What’s the story of wooden billboards?

There’s no purpose in proposing to rent some land to build a billboard, or put together that great artwork for that potential advertiser, unless you actually close the deal and get a signed contract. But closing deals is not a class in high school or college and most people don’t know how to get the job done. So here are some helpful hints to help you be a successful deal closer.

The Covid-19 pandemic has made many unusual niches of the American economy more in-demand (such as toilet paper) and others completely undesirable (airline revenues are down 90%). One lucky recipient of positive momentum from the nation’s quarantine has been the rural billboard. Why is that?

One of the most common questions I get from investors is “should I buy or build this or that LED billboard?” They are often shocked when I say “not if you’re trying to make money”. Isn’t LED the future of the billboard industry? Although many would like you to think that, it’s far from the truth in terms of creating wealth with billboard investing.

For decades McDonald’s has ranked at the top of billboard users in the U.S. Day in and day out, they are the benchmark of a strong user of the outdoor advertising medium. But why are they so aggressive with this form of advertising? And what lessons can be learned from this?

What’s better than one billboard? Sometimes the answer is two. “Stacked” billboards – like the one shown above – are a common sight on some sections of highway in the U.S. But why aren’t all signs “stacked”? And what are the things to watch out for with these unusual units?

Monopoly has been a popular board game since 1935. Most every American knows how to play it, as well as the steps you need to take to win at the game (buy land pieces, build houses and hotels, collect rent, etc.). Really, most every endeavor in life is kind of like a board game: there are rules and you have to know how to play and what the ways to win are. And billboards are no different. Here are the basic steps to win at the billboard business.

Digital may be the future for media products – but is it a good idea for billboard signs? That’s a question that every billboard owner and builder wonders from time to time. Here are our thoughts on digital billboards at the moment.

American highways have attracted new business ideas since the 1920s. Many of these roadside attractions built billboards to let the motoring public know that they were there. And, over the years, many of these have failed and left behind some important assets that they don’t even know about.

When you drive down the highway, you see all kinds of billboard structures. You see a whole bunch of steel monopoles, and quite a few wooden telephone pole units. But you also see these steel I-beam structures – but not so many of them. Why does anyone even build these old-fashioned looking steel units?

So you’ve obtained the ground lease and permit to build a billboard, and you’ve decided to sell it to another billboard company rather than to go forward and build it yourself. It’s not an uncommon concept and one that I’ve done many times. But how do you come up with the price you’re asking?

This is a photo of the very first billboard I ever owned. On Interstate 30 E in Garland, Texas it’s a giant 120’ tall with two 20’ x 60’ advertising faces. How did I get this deal? Through bonding. And it’s a powerful force that you can’t buy.

In the mid-1990s, Lamar Outdoor started a program that has grown nationwide. Its name: “logo signs”. These little blue signs, positioned at most highway exits, allow businesses to direct traffic to their exit. And they allow for typically around six different advertisers to hold this coveted spot. So how can a billboard owner work around this competitor and actually harness this tool for even more successful advertiser satisfaction and retention?

There are so many colors in the spectrum, and only a few that never work on a billboard sign. Yet some advertisers still have not figured this out (as shown in the photo above). So what are the forbidden colors for a billboard and why?

Driving down the highway, you would think that the standard way to rent a vacant billboard is by putting your phone number on it, just like the sign shown above. The problem is that this is perhaps the worst way to rent the advertisement space. So what are better ways to rent a billboard?

Billboards have been around for over 100 years in their modern format. We all know that the industry standards are wooden telephone pole, I-beam or steel monopole structures in sizes of 12’ x 24’, 10’6” x 36’ and 14’ x 48’. But yet there are new ideas that come up periodically as billboard owners attempt to find even less expensive methods to deliver billboard messages, many of which are in ad sizes all their own. So what are these experimental billboard concepts?

When you think of a billboard, what do you think of? Most people think of an iconic sign in Times Square, while others think about the clever ad they saw on the freeway. But what most people don’t know is that a billboard is a financial work of art: a high-octane performance machine when it comes to making money. In short, billboards have the highest rates of return of any real estate sector.

The only thing better than building a billboard from scratch is buying a billboard that is already built and operating at a great price. When you buy a pre-existing billboard, you don’t have the stress of having to build it, or the risk of something going wrong. In addition, you can see exactly what you’re buying and, in some cases, actually buy the sign for less than it cost. So how do you properly buy a billboard?

A frequent question we get at OBUniversity.com is what billboard signs cost to build. That question is a little like asking “how many shingles does it take to cover a roof?” – it completely depends on the type of billboard that you are constructing. And, as in most things in life, you get what you pay for.