‘We are trying to make OOH relevant for the performance age’: Billups CEO

David Krupp, global CEO of independent outdoor agency Billups, has an unvarnished view of the OOH business. He claims that in the US, OOH only makes up 5% of clients’ media budgets, a figure that’s been maintained for over two decades now. He freely admits that OOH is “the first thing off a campaign if budgets are cut and the last to come back on."

For Billups, this means having to stand out in the industry through an aggressive expansion strategy. Having clocked a 25% growth rate in its home market—the United States—last year, Billups hopes to replicate that success in the APAC region. The agency acquired TAC Media in Malaysia and Billie in New Zealand which services the ANZ market. Simultaneously pursuing an organic growth-driven approach, Billups has set up operations in key geographies in the region including Indonesia, India, Thailand, and South Korea.

Billups recently hired media industry veteran Ranga Somanathan as global chief growth officer. While revenues from APAC currently stand at between 7% to 8%, Krupp would like to see them grow to 30% in the next three years, and about 40% by the end of this decade. While claiming to be done with acquisitions for the moment, Krupp does mention that his attitude towards them is “never say never."

The OOH specialist works with a mix of holding companies, independent agencies, as well as cross-border engagements with key global clients such as Molson Coors, Expedia, On Cloud, Calvin Klein, and Prada.

The goal for Billups is to make OOH relevant for the performance marketing age, expanding the ‘5% media’ into something far more lucrative, on the back of patented approaches that give marketers a better idea of ROI and more reasons to invest. Plus, the agency would like to prove that OOH is more eco-friendly than programmatic advertising.  

Here are edited excerpts from the interview:

Why do you think OOH has been stuck at 5% for so long?

In part because of under-investment and the perception of it being a nice-to-have. OOH is the first to be taken off a campaign if budgets are cut, and the last to return. It's a fragmented media. We trade across 1,200 different suppliers in the US. A brand trying to manage that level of complexity will default to a few suppliers or not engage because it is too confusing. DTC has exploded in terms of using OOH to drive brands from launch through to maturity. FMCG on the other hand, has always dabbled—it’s been comfortable setting aside 5% or 3% of its budget to OOH. OOH is still a low-interest category. Trying to get clients excited takes time, but when you find one, it can be transformative for them and for us.

How far are you on that journey? How do you grow faster than the category?

We have spent a lot of time, effort, and money to build data science and research. Our contention at Billups has always been that OOH suffers a lack of understanding and an inability to speak of its effectiveness in driving client KPIs. Buying and planning is unfortunately a commodity. The question is: Are you buying the right spot, at the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons? We have spent an inordinate amount of time and effort and built out a patent portfolio to answer those questions definitively.

The specialist business in OOH has been relinquished and Posterscope, Kinetic—a lot of brands that that I grew up with and worked for—have been folded back into agencies who are not making the investments. They service OOH from a commodity perspective but are not resourcing it from an empirical or evidential standpoint.

In building our platform, we tried to simplify the complexity, make the media discoverable, and talk about efficacy backed by research. The area that we have focused on for 15 years is how to integrate OOH and mobile to create an experience that is better than either media by itself.

I would like the OOH industry to trade well above where it is today. Singapore does a great job and sits at 10%—this is better relative to the rest of the world.

How is your approach different from what already exists?

We are unique in how we plan. Our data, patents, and research inform the pre-planning process. We custom index locations, rank and order units based on the best way to reach a target audience. For instance, what happens if that option is unavailable, and where to go next. We do an outstanding job of weaving narratives and stories together, of why a particular space is both interesting and important.

At the backend, our data science team takes a causal view. We don’t make correlative predictions about what could have happened but instead tell clients ‘here’s what happened based on your spend and here’s how we will optimise.’  This is going to help us drive a greater share of spend in an increasingly fragmented, unconsolidated global marketplace.

To dive a little deeper into patents—how much do you spend on R&D? And how do the patents help Billups?

We have a R&D budget—I cannot share the figure but it’s significant and grows every year. Sometimes it gives me heartburn, but it's been well worth it.

We have nine patents granted. The first one was based on the view shed [the part of a billboard that is visible to an audience]. Rather than a geospatial view from a radius by putting a pin where the billboard is, in which case, nobody behind the billboard can see it, we try to be very deliberate about ensuring quality of exposure.

We also patented an approach to determine how creative can be visualised on an actual OOH unit—not just a generic hoarding, but the individual spot that we intend to buy. We then make recommendations to our clients about the logo or other elements.

OOH has been notoriously hard to measure. How do you gauge effectiveness?

We can measure foot traffic to a store or a point-of-interest location, right down to understanding how each billboard drove people there. We can look at offline to online data, measure app downloads or website visits. We conduct brand studies for clients to get a better understanding of awareness. Pair those attribution studies with first party data from our clients or from the industry, and we can get down to sales and actual ROI. That's how we're trying to not just stay in the game, but lead. We are trying to make OOH relevant for the performance age by building dashboards that align with how clients today visualise their digital and CTV.

While there are metrics [around OOH] in markets like the US, Canada and the UK, in Southeast Asia, there’s not a lot. Some of the work that we are doing could be considered metric-adjacent or could become a metric. But that was never our intention. In markets where there isn't an existing metric, we provide and customise that data, giving clients the benchmarks that they need. I am not interested in Billups creating a standard currency. But in markets where there isn’t a data provision available, we will make ours available to the extent that it benefits the client.

What does success look like?

There are standard measures like pricing and value advantages. With increasing digitalisation, speed-to-market has become more important. We get into discussions on sales, footfalls, what a client’s expectations are, and how they view our performance.

From our vantage point, it's a lot about the old-school approach not just to OOH, but advertising in general. We want to build strong relationships. And so, we pull out all the stops in terms of tools and resources to make that happen. The advantage of being independent is that I’m not held to the same P&L stringency that the holding companies are. And if I am, I can make adjustments.

Speaking of holding companies, how do you compete with them for prospective acquisitions as an independent agency in a niche space?

We look for businesses that we can help grow and which are accretive to what we do. Most of the founders [of agencies acquired by Billups] still work for us today. We have been very diligent in not taking a US-centric point of view when we go into another market. Because I've seen it before from holding companies: if you come in with a European or US perspective, you kill any opportunity to not be an overlord or dictator. Instead, we try to learn from the markets and adapt our approach.

Your study with Cedara stated that traditional OOH is up to 336% more carbon efficient than programmatic. Is that something that you intend to track on an annual basis? Also how are the results likely to change if you consider digital OOH?

We would like to measure the carbon output for every one of our campaigns. We did that work with Cedara which we are very proud of. But I almost think we were too early. The UK is going to be where we focus on this from a client perspective, because the laws are changing, and they have to report on Scope 3 emissions. Even digital OOH has a much lower impact than traditional programmatic.

In a previous interview, you'd spoken of wanting ‘the scale of a holding company with the insights and data advancements of a communications planning agency’. How close are you to achieving that vision?

We are not there yet but not nearly as far away, as when I first said that. From a scale perspective, we have grown while we have seen the holding companies fall back. Looking at our numbers, by the end of this year, we would be at the bottom of the holding company list but trading in some of the markets at parity or above. From the comms perspective, the work over the last few years, particularly in 2024 and so far in 2025, is starting to bear fruit. It is helping drive better plans and outcomes on behalf of our clients.