Your budget, translated into plays
Three steps, no email gate, no sales call. Pick one of 734 markets, set any budget from $40 up, and the planner turns it into the numbers that actually matter: how many verified plays you can buy, how much cumulative screen time that is, and what the average play costs in that market.
Estimates from the Q3 2026 pricing index, assuming a typical 10-second spot (operators set 6 to 15 seconds). Every real price is shown on the platform before you book.
Pick a market first. The math is eager but not psychic.
What $500 buys, market by market
The same budget goes very different distances depending on where you point it. These are median per-play prices from the Q3 2026 index for major markets, and the plays a $500 budget buys at that median. Click through to any market for its zones, formats and live screen counts.
| Market | Country | Median per play (2026-Q3) | What $500 buys |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | United States | $0.17 | ~2,999 plays |
| Los Angeles | United States | $0.05 | ~9,433 plays |
| Chicago | United States | $0.12 | ~4,152 plays |
| Las Vegas | United States | $0.06 | ~8,928 plays |
| Miami | United States | $0.14 | ~3,571 plays |
| Atlanta | United States | $0.07 | ~7,309 plays |
| San Francisco | United States | $0.06 | ~8,849 plays |
| Houston | United States | $0.08 | ~6,150 plays |
| Dallas | United States | $0.04 | ~13,888 plays |
| Boston | United States | $0.10 | ~5,086 plays |
| Seattle | United States | $0.07 | ~7,575 plays |
| Denver | United States | $0.45 | ~1,117 plays |
| Berlin | Germany | $0.18 | ~2,840 plays |
| Paris | France | $0.43 | ~1,160 plays |
| Madrid | Spain | $0.56 | ~890 plays |
| Milan | Italy | $0.25 | ~2,007 plays |
| Amsterdam | Netherlands | $0.37 | ~1,358 plays |
| Vienna | Austria | $0.23 | ~2,135 plays |
| Bucharest | Romania | $0.14 | ~3,536 plays |
| Sydney | Australia | $1.15 | ~436 plays |
Markets not listed here work exactly the same way in the planner above; it covers all 734. For the full published dataset, see the DOOH price index.
Starter budget tiers that actually work
| Budget | What it is for | How to run it |
|---|---|---|
| $40 – $150 | The smallest real test | One zone, peak hours only, one creative, 3 to 7 days. Proof that the channel moves your numbers. |
| $500 | A fast, visible test | 2 to 3 screens in one high-traffic zone, about two weeks, concentrated on the hours your audience passes. |
| $2,500 | A strong first campaign | One city, several zones, four weeks, enough frequency for regulars to recognize you. |
| $5,000 | Serious local scale | Cover a city's core zones and dayparts, or split across two mid-priced markets. |
| $25,000+ | Multi-market flights | Several cities or a national corridor, sequenced creative, measured weekly against outcomes. |
These tiers mirror the billboard cost guide. The difference between this page and that one: the cost guide tells you what billboards cost, this planner tells you what your specific budget buys in a specific market.
What each budget really buys
Under $150. Do not split it. Put everything on one zone in peak hours and let frequency do the work. A hundred plays in front of the same commuters beats three hundred scattered across a city. This is the honest version of a "minimum budget", and it is covered in depth in the minimum budget guide.
$500 to $2,500. This is where billboard advertising starts to compound. Use the 70/20/10 split the planner suggests: 70 percent on your proven zone and hours, 20 percent on a second daypart to catch the same people at a different moment, 10 percent testing a new zone or a second creative. Two weeks minimum; four is better.
$2,500 to $10,000. Add zones before you add cities. A budget this size can own the morning and evening commute in most markets, and owning a daypart is worth more than appearing everywhere occasionally. Track plays delivered against web sessions and store visits by hour; that is the point of buying by the play.
$10,000 and up. Now add markets, and sequence them. Launch city by city, keep the creative consistent, and reallocate weekly toward whichever market's cost per outcome is winning. If you want the plan built for you, Blinky turns a goal and a budget into a bookable screen-by-screen plan in under a minute.
Whatever the band: the platform never imposes a minimum, and the planner never rewards padding. A budget is a tool, not a ticket price.
How we calculate this, openly
Every number in the planner traces to a published source, so you can check the math:
- Prices come from Blindspot's quarterly pricing index (Q3 2026: 3,681 city-format rows across 1,787 cities in 34 countries), the same dataset behind the public price index. We use each market's median price of a bookable play across outdoor and transit billboard formats. We never use the cheapest row: floor prices are often unrepresentative outliers, and planning on them would be dishonest.
- Plays are your budget divided by that median. Where the index has no qualifying screens for a market, the planner falls back to the market's published entry price and labels the result "up to", an upper bound, not a typical estimate.
- Screen time assumes a typical 10-second spot; operators set spot lengths between 6 and 15 seconds, as explained in what counts as a play.
- Live enhancement: for many cities the planner also asks the Blindspot platform for a live estimate against current inventory. When that answer passes sanity checks it replaces the baked numbers and is marked "live from the platform". When it does not, you silently get the index math; the page never depends on it.
- The split and flight suggestions are planning heuristics, stated as such. They are starting points that hold up across measured campaigns, not promises.
The index refreshes quarterly, and this page's baked numbers refresh with it. Estimates are for planning; the exact price of every screen and hour is shown on the platform before any money moves.
Where billboard budgets go wrong
- Buying reach instead of repetition. Ten thousand people seeing you once forget you. One thousand people seeing you ten times do not. Concentrate first, expand later.
- Paying for empty hours. A four-week contract runs at 3 AM whether anyone is there or not. Buying by the hour means your budget only runs when your audience does.
- Ignoring the creative line-item. A play of a cluttered ad costs the same as a play of a great one. Reserve a slice of any budget above $500 for a second creative to test.
- Planning on the cheapest price you saw. Floor prices exist, but medians are what a typical bookable play costs. Plan on medians and let cheap finds be upside.
- Stopping at the test. A $500 test that works is an instruction to spend $2,500, not a souvenir. Decide the follow-up budget before the test runs.
Key facts at a glance
Quotable, self-contained, sourced, Blindspot, July 2026
- Blindspot's budget planner covers 734 markets (475 cities and 259 airports), each priced from the Q3 2026 pricing index using the median cost of a bookable play, refreshed quarterly.
- Median per-play prices for standard city screens run $0.04 to $3.19; premium spectaculars like Times Square are named exceptions.
- Billboard advertising on Blindspot is self-serve from $40, with no imposed minimum: urban plays start around $0.23, so a real test campaign can begin under $100.
- A practical budget ladder: $150 to $500 proves the channel, $500 to $2,500 builds frequency in one city, $2,500 to $10,000 owns zones and dayparts, and larger budgets add markets.
- A reliable starting allocation for a billboard budget is 70/20/10: core screens and hours, secondary dayparts, and held-back tests.
- A play is one verified appearance of a creative on one screen, typically 6 to 15 seconds; unlike CPM's modeled impressions, plays are logged and auditable.
Budget planning FAQs
How much should you spend on billboard advertising?
Spend what your goal needs, not what a rate card says. A local test that proves the channel works runs $150 to $500. A first campaign that builds real frequency in one city runs $500 to $2,500. A market push with multiple zones and dayparts runs $2,500 to $10,000, and multi-market flights scale from there. Because Blindspot prices by the play, the same math works at every size: pick a market, divide your budget by the market's average cost per play, and you know exactly how many plays you are buying before you commit.
What does $500 get you in billboard advertising?
In New York, the Q3 2026 median is about $0.17 per play, so $500 buys roughly 3,000 plays, around 8 hours of cumulative screen time at a typical 10-second spot. In lower-priced markets the same $500 can buy 5,000 plays or more. Concentrated on 2 or 3 screens during peak hours over two weeks, that is enough repetition for regulars on that route to notice and remember you.
Is there a minimum budget for billboard advertising on Blindspot?
There is no imposed minimum. Self-serve checkout starts from $40, urban plays start around $0.23, and a real test campaign can begin under $100. The planner on this page starts at $40 for exactly that reason: the smallest honest budget is still a real campaign, not a donation.
How accurate are these budget estimates?
They are planning estimates, not quotes. The baked numbers come from Blindspot's quarterly pricing index (Q3 2026), using the median price of a bookable play in each market, never the cheapest outlier. Where the index has no qualifying screens for a market, the planner uses that market's published entry price and labels the result as an upper bound. Every real price is shown on the platform before you book, so the final plan is always exact.
How should you split a billboard budget across screens and hours?
A reliable starting split is 70/20/10: 70 percent on core screens in proven high-traffic hours, 20 percent on secondary dayparts to build frequency, and 10 percent held back for tests, a new zone or a second creative. Below about $150, skip the split entirely and concentrate everything on one zone during peak hours; frequency in one place beats a thin scatter everywhere.
Why does Blindspot price by the play instead of CPM?
CPM prices a thousand modeled impressions, an estimate of eyeballs you cannot verify. A play is one verified appearance of your creative on one screen: countable, loggable, auditable. Pricing by the play means your budget buys a number you can check, and the average cost per play is the one metric that stays comparable across markets, formats and budget sizes.
More on the metric itself in CPM vs per-play pricing, and on getting started in your first DOOH campaign.