How we got your number

There is no black box here. Your estimate is built step by step from public traffic data and the same economics billboard operators use. This page shows the full chain, with a real worked example — so when you see a range, you know exactly where both ends come from.

The chain, step by step

Worked example: 37,000 vehicles/day on a primary highway.

1. 1

   Traffic — about 37,000 vehicles/day

   State DOT traffic data tells us how many cars pass your frontage. It is the one number advertisers actually pay for, and it drives everything below. (FDOT in Florida and TxDOT in Texas measure it directly; in Georgia we use FHWA HPMS data for the road serving the nearest billboard — high confidence.)

2. 2

   Monthly views — ~841,000 impressions/month

   A single billboard face is seen by the traffic heading toward it — about half of the road's count — at roughly 1.5 people per vehicle, so it's seen about 841,000 times a month. (Vehicles × 0.5 for the one direction that sees the face × 1.5 occupants × ~30 days — the standard out-of-home circulation method.)

3. 3

   Operator gross — $1,682–$2,355/month

   Operators sell those views to advertisers at roughly $2.50–$3.50 per thousand impressions (CPM) at about 80% occupancy. We use a deliberately conservative CPM — independent surveys put static-bulletin CPM higher (~$3–$10) — so the estimate reads as a floor, not a hype number. CPM and occupancy are market estimates, not figures operators publish.

4. 4

   Your cut — 15% to 20% = $305–$405/month

   On a primary highway, landowners receive about 15–20% of the operator's gross as ground rent — the long-standing industry rule of thumb, and close to the ~17% of billboard revenue Lamar Advertising reports as land-lease cost in its FY2025 SEC 10-K. We apply that split to the midpoint of the gross range above (about $2,019) to get your monthly range. The finer per-road-class gradation we model (interstate 14–19%, primary 15–20%, state/rural 11–15%) is our own refinement, not an industry-published breakdown.

5. 5

   Over 20 years — $73,200–$97,200

   Billboard ground leases commonly run 10 to 20 years, often longer with renewal options. Your monthly range × 240 months gives a nominal 20-year value — before any rent escalators (which a fair lease should include) and not discounted to present value.

Why fair market is higher than a middle offer

If you've been offered something in the middle, the high end is your evidence that you're being underpaid. It isn't optimism — it's simply the ceiling of the ground-rent split instead of the floor, and about 15–20% on a primary highway is the band operators themselves work within. A middle offer is the operator paying you the bottom of the split and pocketing the rest. Two independent cross-checks agree: a one-time buyout at the standard 8–12 years of rent lands in the same range from a different direction, and operators value conforming sites like yours because the permits they hold can't always be replaced.

What we're sure of, and what's an estimate

• Traffic: measured from state DOT counts (or FHWA HPMS in Georgia). High confidence.
• 15–20% ground-rent split on a primary highway: long-standing industry rule of thumb (Outdoor Billboard University), consistent with the ~17% of billboard revenue Lamar reports as land-lease cost in its FY2025 SEC 10-K. High confidence on the headline share; the finer per-road-class gradation is our own modeling.
• Advertising rate (CPM) and occupancy: market estimates, because operators don't publish them. This is the reason your number is a range and never a single dollar figure.

Sources & references

Every number we lean on traces to one of three things: primary law or an SEC filing, a named industry source, or our own model. We label which is which — so you can tell a cited fact from our estimate, and check any of them yourself.

This is a market estimate based on publicly available data. It is not an appraisal, legal advice, or a guarantee. Consult a licensed real estate attorney in your state before signing any lease.