Buying Billboards

[Luke Johnson]

Hey guys and girls. A friend of mine and I really would like to start a business together. We thought about looking into buying and renting out billboards. I was wanting to know if someone could push me in the right direction. I am not even sure if people on here even know much about billboards, but I figure its worth a shot. I know we would have to lease the land the billboard is on and actually buy the billboard. We would start an LLC for all this and get legal support to start out, to make sure we are doing everything right on that side, and possibly a CPA if we think one will be needed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks guys.

[Blake Copeland]

Go to www.outdoorbillboard.com for a whole bunch of information on this topic. I know a bit about this business.

First off, there are a handful of companies that completely DOMINATE the markets all over the country which are Lamar, Clear Channell, Viacom, CBS, and a couple more companies probably control close to 90% of the supply of boards.

The biggest thing you need to know is that digital billboards make a RIDICULOUS amount of money. Example friend of a friend constructed a full size digital board down in Atlanta ((just picture a really gigantic plasma TV over 40 feet accross)) they cost a few hundred thousand dollars as well, but what's mind boggling is the revenue they can produce.

Each ad displayed on a digital board is called a "Loop" you can fit anywhere from 6 to 8 loops on one screen.... here's the crazy part though.... depending on traffic counts you can charge big advertisers like Coca Cola, Hilton etc as much as $5,000 to $6,000 per ad per month. Multiply this by fitting 7 companies per month X the ad price and you're talking some big money.

The hardest part is getting permits approved iin high traffic areas, as most of them are already taken by large outdoor advertising companies. Obviously the further out you get into rural areas your ad revenue per board drops but youd be banking on the development of the city to boost the traffic counts over time and having your ad revenue increase as well... similar to land supply constraints in real estate markets when rents rise higher.

Bottom line, the most profitable arena in this game for the next 20 years is to get into digital boards and tri-vision boards. Less than 1% of the existing supply of billboards are digital... its estimated over 20 boards a day are converted to digital, one of them could be yours..??