The United States can still dominate many conversations within the advertising industry, and Asia's often skyrocketing figures can outshine other markets, but Europe remains one of outdoor media's best friends. In 2023, Europe ranked among the
, second only to Asia-Pacific (APAC), and with an ad expenditure higher than those of the U.S., Canada, and Africa combined. Perhaps more importantly, Europe leads the segment's strongest trend: It emerged as the
. Out of every 10 U.S. dollars invested in outdoor advertising in Europe, four were allocated to digital out-of-home (DOOH) displays. The continent also harbors some of the
, such as Cologne-based Ströer, and the world's biggest outdoor media firm, JCDecaux, headquartered just west of Paris.
A French ad titan in the heart of the UK's OOH market
The
United Kingdom's outdoor media industry roughly caught up with its pre-pandemic results. In 2023, revenues reached approximately 1.3 billion British pounds, exactly the figure recorded in 2019. Although
British OOH ad spending's increase rate was forecast to decelerate in 2024, another year of growth will imply finally exceeding pre-COVID-19 heights. Roadside displays have historically prevailed among
outdoor ad media environments in the UK, but transport remains a close second, accounting for almost one-third of the OOH expenditure in 2023. In the following year, Transport for London (TfL) selected French giant JCDecaux to manage its iconic advertising sites starting in April 2025. That includes the tube, London Overground, trams, the Elizabeth Line, and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR).
The German outdoor media industry moves on thanks to retailers
Unlike some of its European peers,
Germany's OOH ad revenues surpassed 2019 levels already in 2022; for 2024, sources projected that the result would exceed 1.3 billion euros. Europe's largest economy is home to
Ströer, which controls Statista and whose outdoor ad operations are quickly becoming more digitized. In 2020, around 21 percent of Ströer's OOH media segment revenue came from DOOH ads; three years later, that share reached about 35 percent. Also in 2023,
Germany's top three outdoor advertisers included benchmarks of the German supermarket industry: Rewe and Lidl. Those two collectively invested nearly 100 million euros in OOH ads, while Amazon.de spent less than 32 million.
OOH ads in France have a name and a surname
Similarly to the UK,
France's outdoor media industry almost fully recovered from the pandemic in 2023, when it fell 25 million euros short of its 1.31-billion-euro 2019 result. The region of Île-de-France harbors
JCDecaux, an OOH ad firm founded over 60 years ago and the indisputable global outdoor media business leader today. Despite its ubiquity, operating in cities as distant from each other as São Paulo and Shanghai, the company still finds in its home country a strategic market. In 2023, France alone accounted for roughly 18 percent of
JCDecaux's revenue worldwide. That share nearly surpassed the UK, U.S., and Canada altogether.
The future of Europe's outdoor ad media is (even more) digital
Europe seems focused on investing further in DOOH. While all
leading outdoor media companies saw digital revenues grow faster than the average in 2023, that phenomenon was significantly stronger for Ströer and JCDcaux. Both recorded DOOH double-digit increase rates over twice as high as their U.S.-based counterparts. A 2024 survey revealed that the
top priority for static OOH ad inventory owners across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) is to digitize their media. Over half of respondents selected that option as their most urgent plan for the next one to two years, along with marketing and selling their existing inventory. In the previous year, a study showed that about nine out of 10
European ad agencies included DOOH in their programmatic efforts and that advertisers adopted a similar strategy. Continuing on the digital track will pave the way for healing completely from lockdowns' impact on the market and launching a new era.
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