Banners, billboards, bus shelters, and now Fake Out Of Home—outdoor advertising never ceases to surprise us with its multiple formats. It is a high-impact medium that decorates the cities we travel through every day with all kinds of activations, turning even subway rides into authentic brand experiences where good ideas reign supreme.
There is no medium with greater contact with reality than the outdoors, a direct form of advertising that always manages to reinvent itself, all thanks to its versatility of expression.
The growth of outdoor advertising has no ceiling
According to the 30th edition of InfoAdex's "Study of Advertising Investment in Spain 2024," a report that analyzes advertising throughout 2023, outdoor advertising is crowned as the fastest growing medium thanks to an increase of 16.1%, which is equal to 406.7 million euros invested in the format in 2024.
Thus, outdoor advertising accounts for 6.9% of total advertising investment recorded in 2023.
Beyond the boom in billboards and Fake Out Of Home (those unreal campaigns that come to life on city streets thanks to artificial intelligence and 3D rendering), outdoor media maintains its position as one of the most promising advertising channels, as the number of screens providing coverage and increasing the format's visibility within the industry continues to grow.
For this reason, outdoor media has become a fundamental communication channel in which advertising plays a leading role.
The largest advertisers in outdoor media
According to data from InfoAdex, Coca-Cola, Samsung, and L'Oréal are the brands that invested most heavily in outdoor advertising in 2023. Coca-Cola leads the ranking with an investment in outdoor advertising of €10.9 million, followed by Samsung with €8.9 million and L'Oréal closing the top three with €8.7 million. It is worth noting that the beauty brand was also the largest advertiser in Spain in 2023.
The impact of outdoor advertising is not only evident in the volume of investment by major advertisers, as highlighted by the Association for Media Research in the first wave of the General Media Study (EGM) in 2024, Outdoor advertising surpasses television as the second medium in terms of penetration, with an audience of 82% of the Spanish population, while television ranks third on the list with 80.2%.
The rise of outdoor advertising
For Beatriz de Paz, Project Management & Trends Director at GroupM, it is undeniable that over the last three years, all market players have increasingly taken this medium into consideration. "In my opinion, this is closely related to the new capabilities that OOH has acquired. Outdoor advertising has evolved at all levels, from measurement to activation, which has allowed it to become a full member of the digital ecosystem through programmatic advertising. It has innovated in formats, environments, and performance in all activation disciplines, in addition to acquiring the capacity for multimedia activation in an organic way alongside other digital media," explains Beatriz.
Piedad Siegfried, Commercial & Marketing Director at Exterior Plus, explains that thanks to outdoor advertising, advertisers can choose from multiple creative formats, digital or otherwise, and impact their audience at times when they are receptive and in environments with high communication value. "All this makes outdoor advertising the most comprehensive medium available today," she adds.
Outdoor advertising
