The Middleman Tax.
Why less than half of every ad dollar even becomes a qualified impression.
Also known as "ad platform fees" or the online-ad supply-chain skim. The Middleman Tax is the 27.2% of every programmatic ad dollar taken in transaction and intermediary fees by ad exchanges, DSPs (the middlemen advertisers buy through), SSPs (the middlemen publishers sell through), and resellers, before the ad is ever served. It is not a line item on any invoice. Count the unmeasurable and non-viewable inventory too and, in the industry's newest benchmark quarter (Q2 2026, all environments), only 45.1 cents of the dollar became what the industry calls a qualified impression. For the lower-performing half of benchmarked advertisers it was 31.1 cents. [1]
One thing to be exact about, because most pages on this subject are not. "Qualified impression" is the industry's own bar: measurable, viewable by the MRC definition, not invalid traffic, not a made-for-advertising site. It does not mean a person looked. The benchmark does not measure attention, and this page never pretends it does. [6]
Published · Last updated · Author Timm Ross
What the number is right now, and what it is not
The advertising industry audits itself every quarter. Participating national advertisers hand over impression-level logs from their buying platforms, those logs are matched against sell-side logs, and the ANA publishes medians. Here is the current state of that benchmark, with the basis attached to every figure, because the basis changed in Q1 2026 and most articles you will read have not noticed.
Q2 2026 · all environments (CTV, web and mobile in-app)
45.1 cents
of the dollar became a benchmark-qualified impression. Transaction costs 27.2%, non-viewable 10.1%, invalid traffic 0.1%. Reported by Fiducia, the benchmark's delivery partner; no ANA release for the quarter yet. [1]
Q1 2026 · all environments (CTV, web and mobile in-app) · full ANA report
43.3 cents
Transaction costs 25.9%, media-productivity loss 30.8%. The last quarter with a published ANA report behind it. [2]
The ANA states its own comparable series on that all-environments basis, and it does not go in one direction:
| Period | Became a qualified impression |
|---|---|
| 2023 study | 36.0% |
| 2024 | 43.9% |
| Q4 2025 | 36.3% |
| Q1 2026 | 43.3% |
| Q2 2026 | 45.1% |
Two things that table is not. It is not a story of steady improvement: the figure fell to 36.3% in Q4 2025 before recovering. And it is not the same series as the 47.1 cents figure you will find quoted elsewhere on this site and in the trade press. That one is Q3 2025, web and mobile excluding connected TV, the last quarter the ANA itemized that cut. [3] The two bases are different populations of inventory and we never put them on one line. We use the ex-CTV cut where the line items matter, because a local business does not buy connected TV, and we say so every time.
The Q2 2026 figures are single-source. Fiducia is the ANA benchmark's own delivery partner rather than a third party, but it is not the ANA, and until an ANA document appears we label it that way rather than writing "the ANA says".
Where the money actually goes
For the itemized breakdown there is only one honest source: the Q3 2025 benchmark, web and mobile excluding connected TV. It is the last quarter the ANA separated every line. On $1,000 of that spend, about $269 went to transaction costs before the ad ever served, and about $471 ended up as a qualified impression. [3]
- 13.2% SSP fees. Taken on the sell side, by the platform representing the publisher. Down 1.6 points in Q3 2025 on supply-path optimization.
- 3.6% DSP data fees. Charged for the audience segments the buy is targeted against. Rising — up from 2.2% as buyers pay more for targeting precision.
- 5.7% DSP transaction fees. Taken on the buy side, on every bid placed.
- 4.4% Other DSP costs. Platform charges beyond the per-transaction fee.
- 15.2% Non-measurable impressions. Served somewhere no measurement vendor could verify what happened.
- 10.1% Non-viewable impressions. Served, but never actually on screen for a person to see.
- 0.5% Made-for-advertising sites. Pages built to farm ad revenue rather than to be read. Down sharply from 10% in 2023 — the single biggest industry clean-up since.
- 0.3% Invalid traffic (bots). Non-human traffic that survived filtering. Consistently the SMALLEST line — never lead with bots.
Note the order of magnitude on the last two lines. Bots are the most talked-about problem in digital advertising and among the smallest ones in the log data: 0.3% of spend in that quarter, and 0.1% in Q2 2026. [1] DoubleVerify, measuring over a trillion impressions, puts fraud and sophisticated invalid traffic at 1.0% in North America. [7] Anyone selling you a solution to a 40%-bot problem is not reading the logs. The expensive leaks are fees and inventory nobody could measure.
On viewability specifically, the honest pair of numbers is this. The MRC defines a viewable impression as at least half the pixels on screen for at least one continuous second, two seconds for video. [6] Against that definition, DoubleVerify measured an authentic viewable rate of 71% in North America, and the ANA measured 10.1% of spend going to non-viewable impressions in Q3 2025 and 10.1% in Q2 2026. [7]
The structure of the chain, as opposed to its current level, comes from the ANA's 2023 study, which remains the only fully itemized waterfall it has published. In 2023, 36.0 cents of the dollar cleared the bar, transaction costs were 29%, and made-for-advertising sites alone ate 10%. [5] That 36.0 cents figure is the 2023 baseline and nothing else. It is still quoted as today's number across the internet. It is not today's number, and we would rather tell you that than get caught using a figure that flatters us.
The number that actually applies to you
The industry really did clean up between 2023 and now. That progress is unevenly distributed, and it is worth understanding why before you assume it applies to your budget. Every mechanism that produced the gain is one you cannot buy at a local scale: private-marketplace curation, supply-path optimization, direct log-level data feeds from DSPs and SSPs, and staff whose job is to govern the supply chain.
The ANA splits its participants at the median of the qualified-impression rate and publishes both halves. That split is the most useful number on this page.
Higher-performing half · Q2 2026
52.3 cents
of the dollar became a qualified impression. Was 54.0 cents in Q1 2026.
Lower-performing half · Q2 2026
31.1 cents
Roughly where the whole market sat in 2023, and where a buyer without a supply-path team lands by default.
In Q1 2026 that gap was 21.9 percentage points, the largest the benchmark has recorded. [2] On the earlier web-and-mobile basis the same split read 56.7% against 37.5%, and only 43.8% of benchmarked advertisers cleared a 50% threshold at all. [4]
One caveat we will state against ourselves: the ANA's split is a median split on the outcome, not a split by who runs a transparency program. The explanation above, that the top half is where governance, curation and log-level access live, is our reading of the data, not the ANA's definition.
What $100 actually buys
A single $100 spent in programmatic, at the newest benchmark quarter (Q2 2026, all environments):
- 1$27.20 is taken immediately by the online-ad middlemen in transaction and intermediary fees. This is the Middleman Tax proper.
- 2$72.80 reaches the sell side and buys impressions.
- 3Of that, another $27.70 goes to impressions that were never measurable, never viewable, or never worth buying.
- 4Net: $45.10 of the original $100 became a benchmark-qualified impression, or $31.10 if you are in the lower-performing half, which a local budget without a supply-path team will be. [1]
You paid for $100 of reach. Between $31.10 and $45.10 of it cleared the industry's own quality bar. What happened after that, whether anyone looked, is not something the benchmark measures.
Tax and waste: two leaks, not one
Most audits catch one, not both:
Tax
What middlemen charge you
SSP fees, DSP transaction and data fees, other platform costs. 27.2% in Q2 2026.
Waste
What never qualified in the first place
Non-measurable, non-viewable, made-for-advertising, invalid traffic. 27.7% in Q2 2026.
They compound: you pay a middleman to broker inventory nobody can verify. Added together, 54.9% of the dollar did not become a qualified impression in Q2 2026, and 68.9% for the lower-performing half. [1]
What that costs a local business
Both examples apply the Q2 2026 all-environments benchmark (45.1% qualified, 27.2% fees) and, beside it, the lower-performing-half figure of 31.1%, which is the honest case for a budget this size. Deliveries are priced at the WilDi tier the monthly budget lands in, not at the headline rate. [24]
Independent restaurant
$2,000 / month
- Annual spend
- $24,000
- Fees to middlemen
- ~$6,528
- Lost to unmeasurable and unseen
- ~$6,648
- Became a qualified impression
- ~$10,824
- Same, lower-performing half
- ~$7,464
- Verified deliveries at the Pro rate ($0.32)
- ~75,000
Regional chain, 13 locations
$6,000 / month
- Annual spend
- $72,000
- Fees to middlemen
- ~$19,584
- Lost to unmeasurable and unseen
- ~$19,944
- Became a qualified impression
- ~$32,472
- Same, lower-performing half
- ~$22,392
- Verified deliveries at the Enterprise rate ($0.25)
- ~288,000
A verified delivery and a qualified impression are not the same unit, and the table is not claiming one converts into the other. It shows what each channel charges for and what you can prove happened afterwards.
What a click and a lead cost, by industry
This table used to carry per-industry "waste rates" built by adding an ANA baseline to an invented per-vertical invalid-traffic figure. It is gone. Nobody publishes supply-chain loss per vertical: the ANA benchmark is a cross-industry median, and manufacturing variation out of it produces a number that looks precise and cannot be defended. A page about other people's unsourced numbers should not carry one.
What can be sourced is what the auction charges. These are medians from 24 rows of WordStream's 2026 benchmark, covering 13,474 US Google Search campaigns from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026. [8] Read them for what they are: US paid search only. Not global advertising, not programmatic display, not out-of-home, and not a measure of the supply-chain skim described above.
| Industry | CTR | CPC | Conv. rate | Cost per lead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Animals and Pets | 7.49% | $4.06 | 16.22% | $31.50 |
| Apparel, Fashion and Jewelry | 6.64% | $4.44 | 4.50% | $97.51 |
| Arts and Entertainment | 12.75% | $1.63 | 5.91% | $26.84 |
| Attorneys and Legal Services | 5.87% | $9.87 | 5.55% | $131.63 |
| Automotive, For Sale | 8.28% | $2.27 | 6.01% | $44.26 |
| Automotive, Repair, Service and Parts | 5.56% | $4.35 | 15.51% | $29.96 |
| Beauty and Personal Care | 6.75% | $4.62 | 10.35% | $39.25 |
| Business Services | 6.10% | $5.87 | 4.85% | $93.69 |
| Career and Employment | 5.88% | $5.81 | 3.05% | $67.36 |
| Dentists and Dental Services | 5.66% | $8.00 | 10.67% | $72.97 |
| Education and Instruction | 7.56% | $4.81 | 13.14% | $77.48 |
| Finance and Insurance | 9.83% | $3.39 | 2.64% | $74.44 |
| Furniture | 6.57% | $3.97 | 2.99% | $106.70 |
| Health and Fitness | 5.81% | $6.17 | 6.94% | $67.36 |
| Home and Home Improvement | 6.47% | $8.33 | 8.05% | $90.92 |
| Industrial and Commercial | 6.57% | $5.87 | 8.20% | $75.19 |
| Personal Services | 7.16% | $7.17 | 12.34% | $54.60 |
| Physicians and Surgeons | 6.61% | $4.76 | 12.43% | $40.04 |
| Real Estate | 7.61% | $3.22 | 3.70% | $102.51 |
| Restaurants and Food | 6.83% | $2.05 | 8.05% | $30.57 |
| Shopping, Collectibles and Gifts | 8.28% | $4.14 | 4.01% | $49.40 |
| Sports and Recreation | 8.75% | $2.77 | 7.69% | $44.26 |
| Travel | 9.32% | $2.14 | 5.83% | $44.70 |
| All industries | 6.64% | $5.42 | 8.18% | $66.69 |
Methodology. WordStream reports medians and prints them as averages, from 13,474 US search campaigns with at least 52 campaigns per subcategory. Search is an auction, so your market, your quality score and who else is bidding move every figure. Every row above was confirmed against the live benchmark page before it was published here.
Verified August 17, 2026 against the primary reports, including a line-by-line check of the ANA waterfall. Supply-chain figures are refreshed each quarter when the benchmark publishes.
Why the Middleman Tax exists in the first place
Programmatic advertising was designed to be an open auction: hundreds of buyers bidding on billions of impressions in milliseconds. The machinery to coordinate that, meaning ad exchanges, demand and supply platforms, verification vendors and brand-safety tools, was never free. Each layer charges a fee. Over more than fifteen years those fees compounded into a structural take that has run between 26 and 29 percent in every ANA benchmark: 29% in the 2023 study, 26.9% in Q3 2025, 25.9% in Q1 2026 and 27.2% in Q2 2026. It has come down. It has not come down much.
The business owner never sees the breakdown. The dashboard shows:
- How much you spent
- How many "impressions" were "delivered"
- An inferred "cost per thousand"
It does not show:
- What share of your spend each intermediary kept
- How many of those impressions cleared the industry's own quality bar
- Whether any person acknowledged the ad
The tax is invisible by design.
How every channel decides you were reached
The usual next move on a page like this is to say that billboard impressions are made up. They are not, and saying so would be the same sin this page is about. Out-of-home has an audience currency, a research base and, since December 4, 2025, a final set of MRC measurement standards. [17] What is true, and more interesting, is that every advertising currency sits somewhere on a spectrum from a modeled crowd to a named action, and almost all of them stop short of the recipient doing anything.
- 1
A traffic count
The rawest input: how many vehicles passed. It is a measure of road volume, counts a commuter twice a day, and says nothing about the ad. Nobody sells on this alone any more, and it has not been the US out-of-home currency since 2009.
- 2
Geopath: circulation adjusted for likelihood to notice
The US currency. Geopath combines circulation, census data, travel surveys and modeling with a Visibility Adjustment Index, which it defines as the share of a unit's passing audience likely to notice an ad, derived from eye-tracking research. Eyes On replaced Daily Effective Circulation in 2009. [9] Read its own glossary for the limits: impressions include passengers, include duplicated views, and are, in Geopath's words, the gross count of all the exposures rather than the number of people who saw the ad. [10]
- 3
Route: GPS travel data plus eye-tracking, in the UK
The most sophisticated out-of-home audience model in the world. Route fuses passive GPS travel tracking, volumetric counts and eye-tracking research into a Likelihood to See figure across roughly 400,000 frames in Britain. [11] It is a very good model. It is still a model of a population, not an observation of a person.
- 4
Deterministic device exposure
Mobile geolocation raises the floor. Place Exchange's PerView builds reach, frequency and impressions from real-time deterministic mobile-device data rather than annual averages. [12] It can establish that a device was in a screen's exposure area while the ad played. It cannot establish that the person holding it looked up.
- 5
Exposure plus a later visit
GroundTruth captures device IDs within viewing range of a screen when an ad plays, then verifies whether those devices later visit a specified business location. [13] This is the strongest attribution proposition in out-of-home, and it is genuinely useful. The exposure is still a device near a screen, and the visit is inferred from device movement.
- 6
Cameras that watch for a face
Quividi detects a person in front of a screen and estimates where the face is turned, tracking 68 facial points. It is careful about what that means, and so are we: in Quividi's own words, this is not meant to guarantee where the eyes are aiming, and its technology is not an eye-tracking solution. A July 2026 SoFi Stadium deployment reported 17,111 impressions, 2,540 verified viewers and 1,148 engaged viewers over two seconds. [14] AdMobilize sells a comparable camera product measuring counts, dwell and attention on equipped screens; those are vendor descriptions, not an independent audit. [15]
- 7
A WilDi verified delivery
An opted-in participant receives the advertiser's offer at the required location and explicitly acknowledges it. The event is recorded in the app with its timestamp and location. [24]
Most advertising currencies charge for modeled exposure, qualified impressions, or inferred attention. WilDi's billable unit is an explicit, location-verified human acknowledgment.
Said precisely: a WilDi verified delivery is not an estimated impression. It is an auditable app event in which an opted-in participant receives the advertiser's offer at the required location and explicitly acknowledges it.
And the limits, stated by us rather than left for someone else to find. A tap proves an intentional human interaction. It does not prove cognitive attention, that the offer was read, or that the person remembers it an hour later. Nothing on this page claims WilDi is the only company that can establish something about who saw an ad; Quividi, GroundTruth and Place Exchange all establish something real. They establish it about a device or a face. We record an action by a person who chose to be there.
One more accuracy note, because it cuts against a claim we used to make. Programmatic digital out-of-home does not count individual viewers either: a predicted impression multiplier is applied per play and validated against third parties such as Geopath and Nielsen, with analytics from Quividi and BlueZoo. [16] That is a modeled number by design and the industry says so openly. The problem was never dishonesty about the method. It is that a modeled exposure is a different thing to buy than an acknowledged one.
What out-of-home actually costs, in real dollars
No Jacksonville billboard operator publishes a rate card. Clear Channel's own market page states reach and scale, 124 million impressions a week across 600 or more displays, and no prices; everything is quote-only. [22] So the public dollar figures come from marketplaces, and they are asking prices, which is how we label them.
- Static, Jacksonville. A blended traditional billboard CPM of $5 to $12. Static bulletins (14 by 48) run $1,800 to $6,500 per four-week flight and posters $800 to $2,200, with production adding $400 to $1,400 per unit. Premium interstate and airport placements can exceed $15,000 a month. [18]
- Digital, Jacksonville. Freeway digital bulletins $5 to $12 CPM, downtown and Southbank premium LEDs $12 to $22, JAX airport screens $15 to $28, programmatic open exchange $4 to $11. A digital board rotates advertisers: typically 8 seconds of exposure every 64 to 80 seconds. [19]
- A second read on the same market. Across a cross-section of the 67 most popular Jacksonville boards, the average cost is $3,993.00 per four-week period, a CPM of $3.30. [20]
- Nationally, from executed contracts. The Solomon Partners comparison hosted by the OAAA puts bulletins at $3 to $10 CPM, posters $3 to $13, transit shelters $2 to $8 and digital place-based $7 to $16. Those are executed contracts rather than asking prices, which makes them the better national anchor. [21]
- The one self-serve price. Blip sells digital billboard plays from $0.01 per roughly 8-second play with no minimum spend. It is the only billboard price that is platform-published rather than quoted, and it is a price per play on a rotating board, not per person. [23]
Read the Solomon table honestly and it does not say billboards are expensive: social at $2 to $8 and digital display at $5 to $6 buy exposures at least as cheaply. Nothing on this site claims billboards are the costly channel, or that WilDi is the cheapest per impression. WilDi has no impression unit to be cheap in.
How WilDi Maps replaces it
WilDi Maps is not an ad exchange, not a middleman, and does not bid your budget against anyone.
WilDi is a local ad platform: a network of local people carrying phones through real streets, who installed the app in order to receive offers. You claim a stretch of road (a Tunnel), a neighborhood (a Zone), or the whole network (a Background). When someone travels through your geography, day or night, your offer lands in their inbox and is acknowledged with a tap.
That tap is a verified delivery, and it is the only thing you pay for. Not a modeled exposure. Not a probabilistic "likely reached". Not a cookie-based inference. An opted-in person, at a verified location, taking an action. What it does not prove, and we will keep saying this, is that the person read every word or thought about it afterwards.
The model is deterministic, not probabilistic. Because WilDi runs the whole thing end to end, meaning the member app, the delivery network and the operator dashboard, there is no open exchange for fraud to exploit, no middleman to broker the delivery, and no unreconciled gap between what you paid and what the seller received.
The price is published rather than auctioned: from $0.25 per verified delivery on the background product, set by account tier, with tunnels and zones priced higher. Deposits start at $50. [24] See the full rate card.
Frequently asked
Is the Middleman Tax a real thing or marketing language?
Does a qualified impression mean someone saw my ad?
Why would I pay WilDi $0.25 a delivery when a billboard CPM is $5?
Aren't some of these fees necessary, like fraud detection and brand safety?
What about direct-sold deals and out-of-home? Don't those avoid the tax?
Does the tax apply to search and social too?
Sources
Every number on this page resolves to an entry below, and every entry lives in the site's source registry with its method, its sample and its limits. If a figure is not traceable to one of these, it should not be on the page.
- 1
ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark, Q2 2026 (as reported by Fiducia)
Fiducia (the ANA benchmark's delivery partner) · August 6, 2026 · secondary source
The newest benchmark quarter, all environments (connected TV, web and mobile in-app): 45.1% of spend became a benchmark-qualified impression, transaction costs 27.2%, non-viewable 10.1%, invalid traffic 0.1%. Higher-performing half 52.3%, lower-performing half 31.1%. Single-source: reported by Fiducia, the benchmark's delivery partner. No ANA release or report PDF for the quarter existed at our last check, so we attribute it to Fiducia rather than to the ANA.
- 2
ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark, Q1 2026 Findings
Association of National Advertisers, with TAG TrustNet and Fiducia · May 2026
The first quarter the ANA reported on the all-environments basis, and the newest full ANA report: TrueAdSpend 43.3%, transaction costs 25.9%, media-productivity loss 30.8%, made-for-advertising back up to 1.1%. Cohorts 54.0% and 32.1%, a 21.9-point gap. 86 participating marketers, 66 actively contributing, 20.9 billion impressions, $160 million of spend. The all-environments series on this page is stated in this report.
- 3
ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark, Q3 2025 Findings
Association of National Advertisers, with TAG TrustNet and Fiducia · November 2025
The last quarter the ANA itemized the web-and-mobile-excluding-CTV cut, which is the only recent breakdown with every line separated. Transaction costs 26.9%, media-productivity loss 26.1%, TrueAdSpend 47.1%. Used on this page for the line items only. It is a different basis from the Q2 2026 headline and the two are never put on one trend line.
- 4
ANA Programmatic Transparency Benchmark, Q4 2025 Findings
Association of National Advertisers, with TAG TrustNet and Fiducia · February 25, 2026
The quarter that introduced the cohort split. The ANA divides participants at the median of TrueAdSpend: the higher-performing half converted 56.7%, the lower-performing half 37.5%, on the web-and-mobile basis. The share of advertisers clearing a 50% threshold fell to 43.8%. It is a median split on the outcome, not a split by who runs a transparency program; the explanation of why is ours.
- 5
ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study: Complete Report
Association of National Advertisers, with PwC US, TAG TrustNet / Fiducia and Kroll · December 5, 2023
The original study and still the only fully itemized waterfall the ANA has published, which is why this page uses it for the structure of the supply chain. On $1,000: $130 SSP platform, $80 DSP platform, $60 DSP data, $20 DSP additional; then $150 non-measurable, $100 made-for-advertising, $95 non-viewable, $5 invalid traffic; $360 of TrueAdSpend. Log-level data from 21 advertisers, $123 million of spend and 35.5 billion impressions, September 2022 to January 2023. It is the 2023 baseline. It is never this page's present tense.
- 6
MRC Viewable Impression Measurement Guidelines
Media Rating Council and IAB · 2014, with ongoing updates
The definition a non-viewable impression is measured against: at least 50% of pixels on screen for at least one continuous second, two seconds for video, 30% for one second on formats over 242,000 pixels. The MRC sets the standard. It does not publish a viewability rate, so it is never cited here for a percentage.
- 7
2025 Global Insights Report, North America
DoubleVerify · July 22, 2025
The verification industry's own measurement of what actually renders in view: an authentic viewable rate of 71% in North America (73% display, 79% video), with fraud and sophisticated invalid traffic at 1.0%. Used here for a real viewability rate, alongside the ANA's non-viewable line.
- 8
Google Ads Benchmarks 2026
WordStream (LocalIQ) · 2026
US paid-search medians across 13,474 US search campaigns, April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026, at least 52 campaigns per subcategory. Click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate and cost per lead by industry. Google Search only: not a measure of the programmatic supply chain, not global advertising, and not out-of-home.
- 9
Geopath Ratings: research methodology and glossary (Eyes On, Visibility Adjustment Index)
Geopath (the US out-of-home audience measurement body) · Current; Eyes On replaced Daily Effective Circulation as the industry currency in 2009
How out-of-home audiences are actually measured in the US. Geopath combines circulation, census data, travel surveys and modeling with a Visibility Adjustment Index derived from eye-tracking research, which it defines as the share of a unit's passing audience who are likely to notice an ad. Eyes On replaced Daily Effective Circulation as the industry currency in 2009.
- 10
Geopath glossary: how out-of-home impressions are counted
Geopath (the OOH audience measurement body) · Current
Geopath's own definition of an out-of-home impression: the number of times people passing a display are likely to notice the ad. In Geopath's words, impressions include vehicle passengers, include duplicated views, and are not the number of people who see the advertisement but the gross count of all the exposures.
- 11
Route: how the UK out-of-home audience currency is built (Likelihood to See)
Route Research (UK OOH audience measurement) · Current
The UK currency, and the most sophisticated out-of-home audience model in the world: passive GPS travel tracking, volumetric counts and eye-tracking research combined into a Likelihood to See figure for roughly 400,000 frames in Britain. Cited here to give the out-of-home side its strongest form.
- 12
PerView: deterministic mobile-device OOH measurement
Place Exchange · Current
PerView reach, frequency and impressions built on real-time deterministic mobile-device data rather than coarse models or annual averages, to the OAAA impression guidelines. It can establish that a device was in a screen's exposure area. It does not establish that the person looked.
- 13
GroundTruth expands into digital out-of-home with foot-traffic attribution
GroundTruth (with Place Exchange) · October 9, 2025
Exposure plus outcome: the product captures mobile device IDs within viewing range of a screen when an ad plays, then verifies whether those devices later visit a specified business location. The strongest attribution proposition in out-of-home, and still a device near a screen rather than a person acknowledging an offer.
- 14
Quividi: computer-vision attention measurement for digital screens
Quividi (help center and blog); deployment figures via invidis trade press · Current; SoFi Stadium deployment reported July 30, 2026
The closest existing technology to verifying that a person looked, and it is worth stating precisely. Quividi tracks 68 points on a face to estimate the direction the face is turned, and says in its own words that this is not meant to guarantee where the eyes are aiming and that its technology is not an eye-tracking solution. A July 2026 deployment at SoFi Stadium reported 17,111 impressions, 2,540 verified viewers and 1,148 engaged viewers over two seconds, per the invidis trade press.
- 15
AdMobilize: DOOH analytics and audience measurement platform
AdMobilize · March 25, 2026 · secondary source
A camera-based analytics vendor describing counts, dwell and attention on equipped screens, with mobile and geolocation enrichment layered on. Vendor description, not an independent audit, and cited as such.
- 16
The impression multiplier: what it is and how it applies to DOOH
Broadsign · October 29, 2024
How a programmatic digital out-of-home impression is produced: a predicted impression multiplier applied per play, validated against third parties. Broadsign names Geopath and Nielsen for validation and Quividi and BlueZoo for analytics.
- 17
MRC Out-of-Home Measurement Standards (Combined Phase 1 and 2, final) and 2026 guidance on AI in media measurement
Media Rating Council · December 4, 2025 (OOH standards); July 8, 2026 (AI guidance)
The Media Rating Council published final Out-of-Home Measurement Standards on December 4, 2025, so out-of-home now has an accreditation-grade standard alongside digital. On July 8, 2026 the MRC published interim guidance on the use of AI in media measurement. Cited so this page never claims out-of-home measurement is unaudited or standard-less.
- 18
Jacksonville outdoor advertising guide 2026 (billboard pricing)
AdQuick (out-of-home marketplace) · 2026 guide, updated continuously · secondary source
Marketplace asking prices for Jacksonville static out-of-home, read live August 17, 2026: blended traditional CPM $5 to $12; static bulletins (14 by 48) $1,800 to $6,500 per four-week flight; posters $800 to $2,200; junior posters and bus shelters from about $450; premium I-95, I-295 and airport placements can exceed $15,000 a month; production adds $400 to $1,400 per unit. Asking prices from a marketplace, not an audited rate card.
- 19
Jacksonville DOOH guide 2026 (digital pricing, Q2 2026 marketplace rates)
AdQuick (out-of-home marketplace) · 2026 guide, updated continuously · secondary source
Marketplace rates for Jacksonville digital out-of-home, labelled Q2 2026: freeway digital bulletins $5 to $12 CPM, downtown and Southbank premium LEDs $12 to $22, JAX airport screens $15 to $28, programmatic open exchange $4 to $11. A digital board rotates advertisers, typically 8 seconds of exposure every 64 to 80 seconds.
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Billboard advertising in Jacksonville, FL (average cost across the 67 most popular boards)
Alluvit Media (OOH marketplace) · Regenerated continuously; read 2026-08-17 · secondary source
A second marketplace read on the same market, used as a cross-check: across a cross-section of the 67 most popular boards, an average Jacksonville billboard costs $3,993.00 per four-week period, a CPM of $3.30. Asking prices again, and the page regenerates, so the figure carries its read date.
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Major Media CPM Comparison, 2025
Solomon Partners, hosted by the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) · June 2025
The primary cross-channel CPM comparison, with the out-of-home lines drawn from executed contracts rather than asking prices: bulletins $3 to $10, posters $3 to $13, transit shelters $2 to $8, digital place-based $7 to $16, digital display $5 to $6, social $2 to $8. Note what it does not support: social and digital display buy exposures as cheaply as billboards do, so nothing on this site claims billboards are the cheapest channel per impression.
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Clear Channel Outdoor: Jacksonville market page
Clear Channel Outdoor · Current
The operator's own Jacksonville market claim: 124 million impressions a week, 87% of adults 18 and over reached weekly, 600 or more displays. Impressions on the Geopath basis, so gross exposures. No rate card is published; Jacksonville billboard pricing is quote-only, which is why the dollar figures on this page come from marketplaces.
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Blip Billboards pricing
Blip (digital billboard self-serve platform) · Current
The one billboard price that is platform-published rather than quoted: digital billboard plays from $0.01 per roughly 8-second play, no minimum spend. It is a price per play on a rotating board, not a price per person.
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WilDi Maps pricing and delivery rates
WilDi Maps · Current
Our own published rate card, and the single source of truth in code is lib/delivery-rates.ts. Cost per verified delivery from $0.25 on the background product, set by account tier: Starter $0.50, Local $0.40, Pro $0.32, Enterprise $0.25. Tunnels and zones cost more than the background rate. Deposits from $50. Members earn 50% of what the advertiser pays.
See every source the site cites, and the bar we hold them to
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About Timm Ross
Founder of WilDi Maps. Veteran-owned. Author of the technical analysis on this site, accountable for the numbers cited inline.
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