Programmatic settles at a tenth of digital
Lamar's Q2 puts programmatic at roughly 10% of digital billboard revenue — within a couple of points of what JCDecaux disclosed two weeks earlier. Two operators, two continents, two very different estates, one number. The more useful figure is buried further down: national and programmatic grew 16% while local grew 3.4%.
Lamar reported Q2 2026 on 13 August: revenue $616.7m, up 6.5%, the best acquisition-adjusted growth since 2022, guidance raised. Inside it are two numbers that matter more to a beauty network than the headline.
The first is programmatic at roughly 10% of digital billboard revenue, growing more than 50%. Two weeks earlier JCDecaux disclosed 12.3%. Two of the largest out-of-home companies on earth, with almost nothing in common operationally, land within two points of each other. That is no longer one company’s mix — it is the industry’s actual position on the adoption curve.
The second is the split nobody quoted: national and programmatic revenue up nearly 16%, local and regional up 3.4%.
What the numbers say
Where the 15.4% came from. Existing boards grew 6.5%. Total digital grew 15.4%. The gap is new and converted units plus mix — Lamar added 177 digital faces and kept converting statics. So digital growth is roughly split between yield on boards it already owned and boards it didn’t have last year. Neither half is free: the first needs demand, the second needs capital.
Programmatic is compounding off a small base, and the base is consistent. Up 50%+ in a quarter is a real trajectory. At ~10% of digital billboard revenue it is also, still, a tenth. Read alongside JCDecaux’s 12.3% and Ströer’s programmatic growing at twice the rate of its digital screens, the picture is stable across three operators: fast growth, small share, no sign of a step change. Anyone budgeting on “programmatic has taken over DOOH” is budgeting against a number nobody reports.
The local/national divergence is the finding. Local and regional revenue grew 3.4% — respectable, 21 straight quarters, and a fifth of the pace of national and programmatic at 16%. The salesforce that walks into local businesses is producing steady, slow growth. The pipe that connects to national buyers is producing four-to-five times as much.
What it means for beauty
- Plan on a tenth, not a takeover. If the two largest operators in the world both sit near 10–12%, a beauty network forecasting most of its revenue through programmatic in year one is forecasting something the market has not done for anyone. Direct selling carries the early years — landing your first advertisers and how to sell salon inventory to brands — while the programmatic pipe is built in parallel via integrating with SSPs.
- But build the national pipe early, because that’s the growing half. Local demand grows at 3.4%; national and programmatic at 16%. For a beauty network the equivalent of “local” is the salon-adjacent advertiser you can visit, and the equivalent of “national” is a brand planner in another city who will never meet you and buys through a DSP. The second group is where the growth is, which is the practical case in programmatic DOOH via DSPs and packaging curated PMP deals.
- Yield and units are two different businesses. Lamar’s digital growth is roughly half same-board yield, half new faces. A beauty network faces the same fork: raise revenue per existing screen, or add screens. They have different cost curves and different risks, and confusing them is how a plan overstates growth — the distinction modelled in the revenue-per-screen model and network payback.
- A 33% digital share is what a mature estate looks like. Lamar has been converting statics for over a decade and digital is a third of billboard revenue. That’s the honest pace of format transition in out-of-home, and useful context when someone asks why beauty venue screen penetration is where it is.
The caveat that keeps us honest
Lamar is a billboard company — roadside statics and digital bulletins, sold largely to local advertisers in mid-sized American markets. Its programmatic share reflects that estate, not a place-based venue network, and comparing it to JCDecaux (street furniture and transit) or a salon network is comparing three different businesses that happen to share a transaction layer. These are call figures, not audited segment accounts, and “approximately 10%” is management’s rounding. Nothing here is beauty-specific: there is still no reliable public beauty CPM, and no beauty network should read a billboard REIT’s yield as its own.
Related: Programmatic DOOH: the adoption curve · Programmatic share of DOOH tracker · The revenue-per-screen model · Programmatic DOOH via DSPs · Integrating with SSPs · Programmatic is 12.3% of JCDecaux’s digital