Free tool · OOH budget simulator
How Far Does Your OOH Budget Go?
Out-of-home is one of the harder media to plan: CPM varies 5x by market, format mix drives the campaign shape, and most vendor proposals bury the impression math. Set your real numbers and see what your budget buys before you brief.
OOH planning is harder — than the deck makes it look
Out-of-home advertising sounds simple — pick a panel, pay for the impressions — but the pricing hides three moving parts: where the inventory is, what format it is, and how long it runs. Change any one and the impression math moves dramatically.
CPM varies by 5x
A 14-sheet billboard in a regional market and a premium digital screen in Times Square share a category, not a price. The same $50k buys an order of magnitude more impressions in a Tier-3 market than it does in London or New York — and most planning decks bury that variance.
Format mix drives results
Classic billboards build broad reach cheaply. Digital OOH delivers premium contexts and day-parted creative at a steep CPM premium. Transit reaches commuters in dwell-time. Street furniture lands eye-level in dense urban grids. The mix is the campaign — not a footnote on it.
Duration compounds reach
OOH is bought in fortnightly or four-weekly cycles for a reason: impressions accumulate as the same audience passes the same site multiple times. A two-week burst and an eight-week sustain produce very different frequency curves on the same budget.
Vendor proposals usually present a single packaged number — a fixed impression estimate against a fixed price. That hides where the leverage is: a 10% shift from digital OOH into classic billboards in a Tier-2 market can almost double the impression count for the same spend. The simulator below makes that trade-off visible.
Use it before you write the brief, not after. The right OOH plan starts with what you can afford, not what the vendor wants to sell.
Simulate your OOH campaign
Set the total budget, duration, and market. Adjust the format mix to see how impressions and effective CPM shift in real time.
Total spend across all formats — $100,000
Most OOH buys run in two-week increments; four weeks is a common minimum
Affects CPM benchmarks — major markets command a premium
CPM benchmark: $9
CPM benchmark: $16
CPM benchmark: $12
CPM benchmark: $7
Estimated total impressions
9.8M
Effective CPM $10 · Large city
- Classic billboards$40,0004.4M impr.
- Digital OOH$25,0001.6M impr.
- Transit$20,0001.7M impr.
- Street furniture$15,0002.1M impr.
Weekly spend
$25,000/wk
over 4 weeks
Weekly impressions
2.5M/wk
at Large city
CPM benchmarks are 2024–2025 industry midpoints (OAAA, Outsmart, Nielsen OOH). Real vendor quotes vary by ±30% based on inventory quality, season, and negotiating leverage. Use the simulator to brief vendors and pressure-test proposals — not as a substitute for a formal rate sheet.
How to get the most — out of this simulator
The simulator is a planning tool, not a quote. Four rules for using it as a real briefing instrument rather than a back-of-the-envelope toy.
Start with your total budget — not a per-format figure
Resist the temptation to allocate by format upfront. The simulator works the math the other way: enter the total spend, then let the format mix split it. This is closer to how OOH vendors price a campaign, and it surfaces the trade-offs — every dollar moved into digital OOH is a dollar pulled out of classic reach.
Choose your market tier honestly
A "national" campaign is rarely uniform. If 70% of your impressions are in major markets and 30% are regional, model the major-market portion first, then layer regional. The bands map roughly to MOVE (UK) and Geopath (US) impression methodology — Major covers London, New York, Tokyo; Large covers the next ten or so global cities; Mid covers state capitals; Regional covers everything else.
Adjust the format mix to your campaign goal
Brand awareness with broad reach? Lean 60–70% classic billboards in mid markets. Premium positioning in a metro launch? Tilt to 40–50% digital OOH in major markets. Commuter-heavy retail message? Transit-led with billboard support. The simulator shows you the impression cost of each choice in real time — use it to stress-test the brief.
Use the CPM as a floor, not a price
The CPM benchmarks are conservative midpoints from OAAA, Outsmart, and Nielsen OOH industry data. Real CPMs vary by inventory quality (premium digital screens go higher), seasonality (Q4 retail compresses inventory), and your negotiating leverage. Use the floor to brief vendors — anything they quote 30% above benchmark deserves a question.
Common questions about — OOH planning
Practical answers, drawn from briefing OOH vendors and reading their proposals. Still stuck? Book a walkthrough and we’ll go through your plan together.
What is OOH CPM and how is it calculated?
OOH CPM is the cost per 1,000 impressions — the standard pricing metric for out-of-home advertising. An impression is one person passing the site with a reasonable opportunity to see it (defined by audience-measurement bodies like Geopath in the US and Outsmart’s ROUTE in the UK using traffic counts, dwell time, and viewability angles). CPM = (total spend ÷ total impressions) × 1,000. A classic billboard at $9 CPM means you’re paying $9 per 1,000 viewing opportunities — and a $90,000 buy delivers roughly 10 million impressions at that rate.
Why do CPM rates vary so much between markets?
Three reasons. First, inventory scarcity — there are only so many premium sites in central London or Manhattan, and demand consistently outstrips supply. Second, audience quality — major-market panels reach higher-income, harder-to-target audiences that command a premium across all media. Third, contractual minimums — major-market owners (JCDecaux, Clear Channel, Outfront) price for long-cycle institutional buyers, so spot rates carry a lift. The 4x–5x spread between regional and major markets in the simulator reflects published rate cards from the top three global owners, before negotiated discounts.
How many impressions does a typical OOH campaign generate?
A four-week campaign at $100,000 in a large city with a balanced mix generates roughly 8–12 million impressions. The same budget in a regional market can deliver 25 million or more; in a major city, closer to 4–6 million. These are gross impressions — total opportunities to see — not unique reach. A site seen by the same commuter on 20 working days counts as 20 impressions. Reach (unique people) is typically 15–30% of gross impressions depending on the route mix.
Should I focus on reach or frequency for my OOH campaign?
Depends on the brief. New brand launch or major repositioning: reach first — spread across more sites in more locations, even at the cost of frequency per site. Campaign for a known brand or call-to-action: frequency — fewer, better sites seen more often by the same commuters. Most OOH planners aim for a minimum 3x frequency on key sites over a two-week cycle; below that, recall drops sharply. The simulator gives you the gross impressions; divide by your target frequency to get rough unique reach.
How accurate are these CPM benchmarks?
They’re directional, not contractual. The figures are 2024–2025 midpoints synthesised from OAAA US Out of Home Advertising Forecast data, Outsmart UK quarterly reports, Nielsen OOH global benchmarks, and rate cards from the three largest global OOH owners. Real quotes from vendors will vary by ±30% depending on the inventory quality, season, length of buy, and your agency’s leverage with the owner. Use the simulator to brief vendors, sanity-check proposals, and pressure-test the math — not as a substitute for a formal rate sheet.
Can I use this simulator for DOOH-only campaigns?
Yes — set the Digital OOH slider to 100% and the others to 0. Just be aware that DOOH-only campaigns trade off two things versus a blended mix: cost per impression (DOOH is the most expensive format on a CPM basis) and ubiquitous reach (DOOH inventory is concentrated in transport hubs and premium urban locations, so coverage outside city centres drops fast). For a metro-only product launch, DOOH-led makes sense. For a national brand campaign, a 30/70 DOOH/classic split typically delivers better reach economics.
An OOH campaign is one signal — Multiply connects it to everything else
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