We Didn’t Write About Billboard Advertising Costs. We Put Them on a Billboard.

New outdoor agency Loud! OOH, based in Leeds and London, puts its own money on two Leeds billboards to prove that outdoor advertising doesn't need a massive budget.

Independent out-of-home advertising agency Loud! OOH has launched with a campaign that does something the industry rarely does: tells small businesses exactly what a billboard costs. Two 48-sheet hoardings on York Street in Leeds city centre are running side by side, one carrying a £650 customer quote, the other answering back with the Loud! OOH price for the same site.

That price is £325. Half as much. No catch.

Walk past the bus stop on York Street in Leeds right now and you'll see something that doesn't happen very often in advertising. An agency being completely honest about what it charges.

Two 48-sheet billboards are up side by side. The first one reads: "I was quoted £650 for this billboard." An arrow points right. The second board answers back: Same billboard. Half the price.

That's not a teaser. That's not a hook with an asterisk. The same billboard genuinely costs £325 through Loud! OOH.

"Small businesses keep telling us they love the idea of billboards but assume they're out of reach," says Jamie Roberts, founder of Loud! OOH. "We got tired of explaining the pricing — so we decided to show it instead."

Twenty years of watching the same thing happen

Loud! OOH was founded by Jamie Roberts, who has worked in the advertising industry for two decades. Long enough to know exactly where the process breaks down. A business owner decides they want to explore billboard advertising or London Underground advertising. They start researching. They find agencies. They fill in a contact form. They wait. Then comes the call, the brief, the back and forth - and eventually, days or weeks later, a quote lands in their inbox. And then nothing. Ghosted.

"It happens constantly," says Jamie. "You build the rapport, you do the research, you go back with your recommendation and the client just disappears. Not because the price was wrong. Because by the time they got a number, they'd already lost momentum. The process killed it."

The issue isn't that billboard advertising is expensive. Most businesses are surprised by how affordable it actually is. The issue is that finding out what it costs requires running a gauntlet of contact forms, discovery calls and proposals that most SME owners simply don't have time for.

Loud! OOH was built to remove that entirely. Prices for billboards, digital out-of-home screens, bus advertising, London Underground and transport advertising are all published openly at loudooh.co.uk/pricing/. A business owner can research, compare and make a decision without speaking to anyone. No time wasted. No ghosting. No surprises.

"We want SMEs to find this information useful from the very first search," says Jamie. "If someone is looking for billboard costs or London Underground advertising rates, they should be able to find a real number immediately and make up their own mind. That's what we've built."

"£325 for a proper 48-sheet in Leeds city centre isn't a promo rate," says Jamie. "It's what the media actually costs when you remove the layers of markup. Northern businesses deserve to know that."

Why Choose Leeds?

The location wasn't random. York Street has a bus stop right in front of the site. That means real dwell time - commuters, workers and shoppers who aren't driving past at 40mph. They're standing there. They have time to read both boards, look at both prices, and join the dots.

Leeds felt like the right city for this. Strong independent business community. Ambitious SMEs that have probably looked at outdoor advertising before and talked themselves out of it.

"I wanted the campaign to do what good OOH always does," says Jamie. "Make the point before someone has time to think about it. You look left, you look right, you get it. That's the job."

The numbers back it up

UK OOH advertising revenue hit £1.44 billion in 2025 and is forecast to keep growing. Outsmart, the official trade association for the Out of Home advertising industry in the UK, puts average return on OOH investment at £1.80 for every pound spent, with ad recall at 79% within a month.

The medium works. It has always worked. The issue has been that smaller businesses were never given a clear picture of what it costs to access it. That's what Loud! OOH is here to change.

About Loud! OOH

Loud! OOH is an independent out-of-home advertising agency that plans and buys billboard, digital out-of-home, bus, London Underground and airport advertising across the UK. Pricing is published openly at loudooh.co.uk/pricing with no markups, no hidden fees and no ring-around for quotes. Loud! OOH works with businesses of every size, from a single two-week billboard to multi-format national campaigns.

Website: loudooh.co.uk
Pricing: loudooh.co.uk/pricing
Founded: 2026
Based: Leeds and London