Originally published in Mark Stenberg’s weekly industry intelligence newsletter, On Background.
Executive Overview
At the most recent Advertising Week summit, amid panel discussions dissecting the shifting roles of talent agents, the creator economy, and the perpetual battle against media fragmentation, an unusual topic hijacked the agenda: out-of-home (OOH) advertising.
Long viewed as a fusty, legacy channel—a quiet cousin to the booming digital and social ecosystems—OOH is experiencing a profound renaissance. Encompassing everything from classic billboards and wheatpastes to high-tech digital displays, the medium has captured the imaginations and budgets of major marketers. U.S. out-of-home revenue surged 10.7% year over year in the second quarter, hitting a record $3.16 billion, according to data from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA). Digital out-of-home (DOOH) grew even faster, climbing 18.5% to account for nearly 40% of the category’s overall revenue.
This resurgence is not happening in a vacuum. It reflects a much larger, highly consequential structural shift in how humans consume media and how brands reach them. As the open internet becomes less trustworthy, less trafficked, and increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence, physical space is rapidly appreciating in value.
From the surging profitability of in-person publishing events to the rapid expansion of retail media networks into the physical world, the advertising industry is rediscovering a fundamental truth: You cannot scroll past a billboard, and you cannot use an AI agent to bypass a physical environment.
Detailed Chronology: The Forces Reshaping the Media and Ad Ecosystems
To understand why brands are doubling down on the physical world, one must examine the cascading pressures currently dismantling the traditional digital web.
Phase 1: The Trust Deficit on the Open Web
For years, digital advertising relied on the premise of infinite reach across millions of websites. Today, however, that ecosystem is buckling under the weight of generative artificial intelligence.
The rapid rise of AI has unleashed an unprecedented torrent of low-quality, synthetic content—colloquially known as "slop"—whose provenance is nearly impossible to trace. According to a 2024 Adobe report, a staggering 87% of U.S. consumers stated that the proliferation of generative AI has made it significantly harder to distinguish fact from fiction online.
This erosion of consumer trust is altering executive calculus. In September, Mariano Jeger, former executive creative director at Droga5, explicitly cited this degradation of digital trust as a primary driver behind his departure to join Outfront Media. As social and digital environments become easier to manufacture and harder to authenticate, marketers are reassessing the risk and reward of placing premium brand equity next to unvetted digital text.
Phase 2: The Rise of AI "Answer Engines" and Autonomous Agents
AI is not merely altering what consumers encounter online; it is changing whether they need to visit the open web at all.
Platform shifts toward "answer engines" like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini mean users increasingly receive direct answers to complex queries without ever visiting the underlying source websites. For publishers, this threatens to decimate referral traffic, shrinking the audiences—and ultimately the programmatic ad inventory—that the open web relies on for survival.
The threat is compounded by the advent of autonomous AI agents. Products designed to execute multi-step tasks on behalf of users threaten to bypass not just websites, but the advertising models that subsidize them. A glaring preview of this friction occurred when Amazon blocked the AI agent Muse from crawling its website. Regardless of the specific commercial disputes involved, the incident highlighted an existential crisis for ad-supported digital properties: An AI agent can extract the utility of a website without ever exposing its human user to a single ad.
Phase 3: The Insolvency of OpenWeb and the Contraction of Digital AdTech
The financial toll of these combined pressures is already claiming industry giants. In late 2026, the adtech firm OpenWeb—which historically helped premium publishers monetize their web properties—requested insolvency protections in an Israeli court.
The collapse was triggered by a cascade of events, including Microsoft pulling back its business ties and subsequent panic from key lenders. However, media analysts agree the root cause was the ongoing structural contraction of the open internet, driven largely by the shift toward AI-driven search. Valued at $1.5 billion just four years prior, OpenWeb’s downfall serves as a warning shot for an adtech sector heavily reliant on traditional web traffic.
Supporting Context & Metrics: The Analog Counterweights
As digital and programmatic environments face headwinds, the physical and in-person sectors are experiencing unprecedented growth.
The In-Person Publishing Boom
For publishers, live events have emerged as one of the few reliable bright spots in an otherwise volatile revenue landscape. Media companies from Condé Nast and Semafor to ADWEEK itself have aggressively scaled their experiential arms, with some publishers reporting that live events now account for more than 50% of their total annual revenue.
This growth is fueled by two distinct cultural shifts:
- The Remote Work Diaspora: The normalization of distributed workforces has created a deficit in organic networking and professional convening, a gap that live events fill.
- Scarcity of Tangible Experiences: In a world flooded with ephemeral digital banners and skippable video ads, live events offer memorable, tangible engagement.
The Evolution of Out-of-Home and Retail Media
Out-of-home advertising has evolved far beyond static paper billboards. Today’s DOOH networks utilize programmatic buying platforms, giving brands the precise targeting, dynamic creative rotation, and flexibility they expect from digital channels—paired with the unskippable nature of physical space.
Moreover, the logic of "retail media" is breaking out of traditional brick-and-mortar storefronts. Rideshare companies, airlines, grocery stores, and fitness chains are turning their captive physical audiences into lucrative advertising inventory. Any business that controls a physical space where humans spend time is rapidly transforming into a media owner.
Official Statements and Industry Insights
The shifting boundaries of modern media were a prominent fixture across several key industry developments covered by On Background:
- On Sinclair’s Substack Gambit: Sinclair, the local broadcast giant whose stations reach roughly 38% of U.S. households, launched a national news brand called The National Press on Substack. Featuring reporting from its network of 1,200 journalists across 60 local newsrooms, the experimental venture offers free and paid tiers to gauge reader appetite within the Substack ecosystem. Sinclair President and CEO Chris Ripley noted the strategic pivot as a bold step into direct-to-consumer newsletter monetization.
- Morning Brew Acquires Express Checkout: In an all-cash transaction, Morning Brew acquired creator-led editorial brand Express Checkout, a CPG-focused operation cofounded by Nate Rosen and Jenna Movsowitz. Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell noted that the company’s "creator-focused monetization" is up more than 50% year over year, demonstrating how traditional publishers are actively absorbing independent creators to capture new audiences.
- Piers Morgan’s Uncensored Subscriptions: Under the leadership of CEO Rashida Jones, Piers Morgan Uncensored announced plans to launch individual $4.99 monthly subscriptions across its growing portfolio of franchises covering sports, royalty, and history. Jones, who joined the company from MSNBC in March, has successfully diversified the digital empire into licensing, live events, and paid tiers.
- The Gaming Advertising Frontier: Wes Morton, co-founder and CEO of Creativ Company, pointed to video games as the next massive advertising frontier. Following EA’s launch of its first native ad platform and heavy investments from Netflix and Amazon, Morton predicts programmatic in-game advertising will become one of the largest media mediums globally within five years, driven by new IAB measurement standards and streamlined programmatic pipes.
Future Outlook: The Tension of the Physical World
While the out-of-home boom offers salvation to marketers seeking high-visibility, brand-safe environments, it introduces a complex civic and cultural tension.
As physical spaces increasingly transform into ad spaces, consumers are finding fewer ways to opt out. A digital user can close a browser tab, clear cookies, or install an ad blocker; a commuter walking through a heavily digitized subway station or urban kiosk cannot simply shut off the physical environment.
In New York City, this dynamic has sparked intense public debate. During a recent episode of his podcast, New York Times journalist Ezra Klein voiced deep frustration over the relentless commercialization of public transit spaces:
"As a newcomer to New York City… I find the presence of the advertising on the New York City subway and on the buses really sad."
While defenders of transit advertising argue that brand revenues subsidize public infrastructure, transit data reveals that ads often account for a negligible fraction—roughly 1%—of operating budgets. This raises a provocative question for urban planners and media executives alike: Would consumers gladly accept modest price adjustments in exchange for ad-free public spaces?
Conclusion
For two decades, the advertising industry followed consumers from the physical world into the digital frontier. Today, artificial intelligence, decaying web trust, and autonomous agent bypass mechanisms are aggressively pushing marketing value back out into the physical world.
The overarching question for the next decade of media is not whether physical spaces can be monetized—retail media and DOOH have conclusively proven that they can. Rather, the defining challenge will be determining how much of the physical human experience consumers are ultimately willing to trade away for commercial exposure.