Lamar Advertising Company – One of the largest outdoor advertising companies in North America – has been in the advertising business since 1902. They have billboards on over 100,000 sites across North America, from zoos to airports. So who owns Lamar Advertising Company? This article will tell you that.
What is Lamar Advertising Company?
Lamar Advertising Company is an American outdoor advertising corporation. It is currently based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Lamar has over 150 company-owned or operated billboards across the U.S., mostly in metropolitan areas like Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York City, Orlando, and Philadelphia. The company also owns advertising media in 18 other countries, including Canada, England, France, and Switzerland.
What are Lamar Advertising Company’s services?
Lamar has a wide range of billboards and signage options, from traditional billboards to state-of-the-art digital LED signs. In the past few years, Lamar invested over 11 million dollars in high-tech LED signs in non-traditional locations such as stadiums, rest stops, and retail outlets. These include the advertisements found on milk cartons at the grocery store, those seen at gas stations, and those on benches in shopping malls.
Today Lamar offers advertisers a wide range of billboards and signage options and smaller, more focused companies like Clear Channel offer similar services.
Lamar Advertising Company has constantly evolved with the times to bring new products and technologies to their customers. According to Lamar’s website, they have been a “leader in digital technology since its inception” and have helped create the fast-changing industry. Lamar offers both LED and LCD displays, as well as innovative features such as video capability, variable copy changing messages quickly, changing images every few seconds, and drawing electricity from solar panels. These signs are available for purchase or rent to advertisers.
Who owns Lamar Advertising Company?
Lamar Advertising company is run by J.P. Millner who became the company president in 1988 after his father Eddy Lamar died.
J.P. Millner has been leading the company’s expansion into digital billboards and electronic media since 1997.
Who was the founder of Lamar Advertising Company?
Lamar Advertising Company was founded by its namesake, Claud “Tex” Lamar, in 1902 in Beaumont, Texas, as a billboard company. Tex began the company with only $50 in capital and six signs.
Lamar Advertising Company has advertised on billboards since Tex started the company in 1902. The first board he ever put up was an advertisement for the local hardware store which paid him ten dollars a month rent. When his rent was doubled on the new sign he put up, Tex decided that renting an advertisement was more profitable than making signs or metal advertisements. He began to rent out space on the board with local businesses. The contracts were not long-term and had no set guidelines which led Lamar Advertising to expand their range of services.
Lamar Advertising net worth
Lamar’s fourth-quarter 2019 net revenues decreased by 7.4% to $462 million while operating income for the same period increased to 141 million dollars from last year’s figure of 138 million ($6 more). Net Income per diluted share in 2020 was 1.08 whereas this amount grew higher at 102 Million/Diluted Share paired with December 31st ends conducted over two days – Monday-Tuesday which recorded great success reaching us here at Lamar Automotive Systems Incorporated.
For the fourth quarter of 2020, adjusted EBITDA was $207.9 million versus 215.6M last year – a decrease of 3%.
Adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2020 was $207.9 million, a decrease from last year’s comparable period by 3%.
The company had an adjusted net income of $637 thousand dollars less than what they projected in their 2019 budget due to rising costs and lower revenue that fell short compared with expectations.
Who is Lamar Advertising’s competitors?
There are many types of outdoor advertising companies to compete with.
Here are the biggest competitors for Lamar:
- OUTFRONT Media Inc. (OUT): Outfront Media is a New York Stock Exchange-listed company that owns, operates, and leases digital billboards across 100 markets in the United States.
- Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. (CCO): Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings Inc. owns billboard advertising space in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Ecuador, and Peru and offers its services through more than 2,000 offices in over 50 countries.
- Trinity Mirror (TNI): Trinity Mirror is a British publishing and media company that owns the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror newspapers. It also offers marketing services to other companies and organizations and operates digital billboard advertising space in Britain and Europe through its subsidiary Highway Locater Ltd..
- Titan Outdoor (TWO): Titan Outdoor is a publicly owned company that operates billboards throughout the U.S., Europe, and Australia and offers advertising space to other companies and organizations through its subsidiaries Titan Media LLC, Titan Media International Ltd., and Millenium Outdoors Ltd..
- Regency Outdoor Advertising Inc. (RAIL): Regency Outdoor Advertising Inc. is a publicly owned company that owns and leases digital billboards throughout the U.S., Canada, and South America and offers advertising space to other companies through its subsidiaries Regency Media LLC, Regency Real Estate Holdings LLC, Real Digital Interactive LLC.
- Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA): The OAAA is a non-profit trade association that advocates for the commercial advertising industry in the United States. The group works with advertisers, media companies, and outdoor advertising companies to promote the benefits of outdoor advertising at national, state, and local levels.
- Outfront Media Inc. (OUT): Outfront Media is a New York Stock Exchange-listed company that owns, operates, and leases digital billboards across 100 markets in the United States
History of Lamar Advertising Company
Early Development: 1902 – 1958
In 1902, James O. Lamar and Joseph R. Lamar began publishing “The Sabine Pass Beacon,” a weekly which still exists today as the West Beaumont Journal. They expanded their interests in newspapers by entering into the newspaper delivery business and opening new routes. To better serve their growing advertising customer base, they bought an existing production shop and used it to start an outdoor advertising business. Soon thereafter, they purchased their first billboard and created Lamar Advertising Company.
Lamar’s continued success allowed the company to expand its operations to other cities along the Gulf Coast. By 1930, Lamar had grown into one of the leading outdoor advertising companies in Louisiana with more than 50 employees and annual net earnings of $250,000.
In the 1930s, Lamar Advertising Company began to grow exponentially after Joe Lamar developed “skyscraper” billboards by building some of America’s first six sheets along highways in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The company closed out the decade with over 100 employees and sales nearing $1 million annually.
At the beginning of the 1940s, as World War II was taking shape across Europe, Lamar’s outdoor advertising business boomed as a result of defense-related contracts to erect billboards and posters that would raise awareness for the war. By the end of the decade, Lamar Advertising had become one of America’s leading outdoor advertising firms and greatly expanded its operations into new markets.
In the 1950s, Lamar Advertising experienced a period of rapid growth, with sales reaching $10 million annually. In addition to their new markets in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, Joe Lamar expanded operations into smaller cities such as Waco and Lake Charles. In the 1960s, Joe’s son James “Jimmy” H. Lamar began to take hold of the family business. By 1965, Lamar Advertising Company was operating over 500 outdoor advertising faces in five states.
New Expansion and New Directions: 1958-89
By 1980, Lamar had expanded to more than 1,300 employees and operations throughout the southern United States. Shortly after Jimmy’s election as CEO in 1981, he initiated a major expansion into many new markets including New York City and Chicago. In addition, he also grew Lamar’s transit division by arranging to expand into mass transit and later into “wayfinding” for airports and campuses with large facilities.
Additional Expansion and New Looks: 1989-2021
In the 1990s, Lamar Advertising Company expanded into new markets such as Las Vegas and Seattle and began building more interstate billboards in order to reach additional customers. The company also opened up a new shop to manage operations in the rapidly growing “digital sign” industry.
In 2001, Joe Lamar passed away at 95 years old. He was known as an innovator and one of the company’s most progressive leaders during his 49-year tenure. At that time, Lamar had grown into the largest outdoor advertising company in the United States with annual sales of $800 million.
Now: No. 3 on Billboard’s Top 50 Outdoor Companies
Lamar Advertising Company is currently ranked No. 3 on Billboard’s Top 50 Outdoor Companies, and they are one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in Canada, Australia, Europe and New Zealand. Lamar continues to diversify its market base by moving into new businesses outside of traditional outdoor categories, such as transit and digital.
