Billups’ Jaime Byrdak says out-of-home is now one of the most accountable channels

Jaime Byrdak, chief executive officer for North America at Billups, argues that out-of-home advertising suffers from a perception problem rather than a performance one.

Byrdak runs the company’s North American business, overseeing more than 150 out-of-home media specialists, and is judging the advertising category at an industry awards festival this year. Her test for advertising is simple: “The stuff people remember makes them feel something, the stuff they simply see just fills space.”

“The most misunderstood thing is that people still treat OOH as a ‘brand awareness’ channel that can’t be measured, when the truth is it’s now one of the most accountable channels we have,” she said. Billboards can now be linked to a store visit or a conversion, she said, but the way the industry talks about the medium has not caught up.

That is where she would invest in 2026. “For years OOH was sold on reach and gut feel, and always got it cut first when budgets tightened,” she said. “The moment you can prove it drives performance, it stops being a ‘brand awareness’ line item and becomes accountable to the same standard as every digital channel.”

In her view, measurement earns the channel a seat at the table and frees budget for “the creativity, the scale, the storytelling” once the numbers stand up.

She takes the same approach to balancing brand building with short-term pressure. She begins with the problem a client wants to solve, protects long-term brand work and uses measurement to show that short-term spend is also delivering. “Short-term activation without brand building is just renting demand you keep paying for,” she said. Out-of-home, she believes, can do both jobs together, building a brand’s fame while driving people to stores.

Her advice for teams in the sector is practical: “Speak to your audience, placements that make sense and creative that stands out.”

Byrdak said AI already handles much of the planning, optimisation and measurement that once took up her team’s time. Shawn Spooner, Billups’ chief technology officer, built audrai, an AI tool designed specifically for out-of-home, and she credits him and the tool with cutting the time workflows take by up to 50%.

The time saved goes into reading the room, sensing when a brand is prepared to take a risk and telling stories that connect with audiences. “AI handles the ‘what’ and the ‘how fast,’” she said. “We still own the ‘why.’”

Because the tools change so often, she expects the next generation of leaders in out-of-home to need curiosity more than deep specialist knowledge. Relationships will still decide who succeeds, she said, and “building trust, developing people, and telling a story that makes a client believe” is the part she does not expect AI to take over.