Opening Billboards to Buyers Who Have Never Used an Agency: A Self-Service Platform for Outfront Media
Outfront Media is one of the country’s three largest out-of-home advertising companies — billboards, transit ads, place-based digital screens. Their growth depended on opening a market most of their potential customers didn’t know existed: small businesses who’d never bought a billboard in their lives. We helped build the platform that lets them buy.
The work
The Challenge: The Website Was Built for the Audience the Company Already Had
Out-of-home advertising reaches almost everyone and is understood by almost no one outside the agencies that buy it. Outfront’s growth did not depend on bigger campaigns from existing customers; it depended on a segment that had never bought the category at all — local businesses that have never had an account manager or reviewed a media kit. Large brand sales are agency-mediated and high-touch, and the unit economics of small business sales rule that out. So the website was not a marketing surface. It was the entire go-to-market motion for a new customer segment, and it had been built for the audience the company already served.
The Strategy: Make the Site Do What the Agency Relationship Used to Do
Design the site to do the work an agency relationship used to do, because the new segment cannot afford one and the growth requires reaching it anyway.
- Audience-led navigation, not company-led. Rebuilt around new advertisers, agency relationships and property owners leasing real estate for displays — each with a journey in the language of their own needs rather than a description of the company’s services.
- The Market Finder as the educational center, not a buried tool. Pulled into the page content, so a reader learning what out-of-home is gets prompted for their location and sees what is actually near them.
- Language rewritten to remove the insider test. Clearer geographic terms and a flow that does not require industry knowledge to navigate.
The Outcomes: An Entry Point for Buyers Who Never Used an Agency
A digital surface sized for the customer the company was trying to reach, rather than for the one it already had.
- Growth | Self-service infrastructure standing in for a relationship the unit economics cannot fund | An entry point for a segment that had never bought the category, rather than a journey that assumes the decision is already made
- Engagement | Category education that resolves into concrete, location-specific options at the moment interest is highest | Navigation that addresses the visitor instead of describing the company
The detail
Why it mattered
- The site was built for the audience the company already had. Agencies and large brands already knew out-of-home, already understood the category’s mechanics, and arrived intending to evaluate or transact rather than to learn. Every structural assumption followed from that.
- Navigation that spoke from inside the company outward. Who We Are, What We Do, Where We Are — the company’s vocabulary rather than the customer’s. Tolerable for a sophisticated agency buyer who already knew what Outfront did. Structurally unhelpful for a small-business owner trying to work out whether any of this was for them.
- A market finder that required insider knowledge. The tool for finding available media in a geographic area used industry vocabulary — “non-metro” and similar terms that mean something to a media planner and nothing to a local restaurant owner. The thing that should have been the entry point for new customers was effectively a barrier.
- A buying path designed for an agency relationship. The journey assumed someone had already decided to work with Outfront and was navigating the relationship. There was no architecture at all for a customer who did not know what out-of-home was, what was available near them, or what it cost — and who needed to learn before they could know whether to start a conversation.
- The mismatch underneath all three. The digital surface was sized for a sales motion the company was trying to grow beyond. As long as the website served the existing audience comfortably, the new audience would never arrive.
Why the website was the go-to-market motion
- The growth is in a segment that has never bought the category. Large brands and their agencies already have out-of-home in the mix. The opportunity is local businesses, regional chains and mom-and-pops — an audience that has never had an account manager, never reviewed a media kit, and does not know that a digital billboard near their store could cost what they are already spending on search ads.
- And the unit economics rule out the way the company already sells. Large brand sales are agency-mediated, relationship-led and high-touch. Small business sales cannot be. A new market segment requires a new way of being reachable.
- So the site has to do what the agency relationship used to do. Educate the customer about the category, help them understand what is available in their market, give them the confidence to start a conversation, and lower the threshold for a first purchase. That is self-service infrastructure, not a marketing front.
- The category is worth explaining because most people cannot. Three quarters of travelers see a digital billboard every month, 71% say digital billboards stand out better than online ads, and there are 25 million place-based screens across the United States — screens that react to time of day and weather, with hyper-targeted audience segments and a format that is fundamentally ad-block-resistant.
How it was built
- The language did the third piece of the work. Vague button text like “Get Started” was replaced with stronger, more descriptive actions — “Start Building Your Campaign” — and the journeys were seeded with Insights teasers: campaign results from brands a visitor already knows, put in their path rather than left for them to seek out. The work ran alongside Outfront’s brand agency, Straightline Media.
- Audience-led navigation, not company-led. The main navigation was rebuilt around the audiences Outfront wanted to reach — new advertisers, new and existing agency relationships, and property owners leasing real estate for displays — each with a journey designed for them, in language about their needs rather than about the company’s services. The shift from “What We Do” to navigation that addresses the audience directly is small in word count and large in meaning: a modern customer does not have time to work out what a company does from the company’s framing.
- The Market Finder repositioned as the educational center. It had been a buried tool with insider language. It was pulled forward into the page content as part of the education flow, so that as a small business owner reads about out-of-home and learns how it works, they are prompted to enter their location and see what is actually available near them.
- Which turns category education into something concrete. The finder stops being a tool the customer has to seek out and becomes the moment of personalization. Its language was rewritten alongside — clearer geographic terms, more accessible labels, and a flow that does not require industry knowledge to navigate.
- The industry noticed. The site took a dotComm Platinum for Business-to-Business Website and a Davey Silver for Professional Services Website, both in 2019.
News & Recognition
- December 2019
Outfront Media takes a dotCOMM Platinum
Platinum for Business to Business Website, announced alongside the platform’s Davey Silver — for a site selling billboards to buyers who have never bought one.
- October 2019
Outfront Media takes a Davey Silver
Silver in Professional Services, for a platform selling billboards to buyers who have never bought one and do not know how the medium is priced.
Self-service advertising platform questions
Why would an advertising company rebuild its website around new buyers?
Because the growth was in a segment that had never bought the category. Large brands and agencies already have out-of-home in the mix; the opportunity was local businesses that have never had an account manager or reviewed a media kit — and the unit economics of small-business sales rule out the high-touch way the company already sold. The website had to do what the agency relationship used to do.
What is audience-led navigation?
Navigation built around who is arriving rather than what the company does. Outfront’s old menus read Who We Are, What We Do, Where We Are — the company’s vocabulary. The rebuild organized the site around new advertisers, agency relationships and property owners, each with a journey in the language of their own needs.
How does a market finder become an education tool?
By moving it into the story. Outfront’s finder had been a buried tool with insider language — “non-metro” means something to a media planner and nothing to a restaurant owner. Repositioned into the page content, it prompts a reader who is learning what out-of-home is to enter their location and see what is actually available near them, at the moment interest is highest.
What makes a self-service advertising platform work?
For the Outfront Media engagement by Pare & Co: a site that stands in for a sales relationship the new segment cannot fund — audience-led journeys, a Market Finder that turns education into location-specific options, language stripped of the insider test — recognized with a 2019 dotComm Platinum and a Davey Silver.
Client leadership
Doug Sisko
Doug Sisko’s specialty is growth and conversion strategy. He has led self-service platforms that open a product to buyers who have never bought it before.