Lure of Lurid Billboards

The Washington Post ran a piece on how digitally-enhanced billboards have become an advertising powerhouse again, at least so far as billing goes. Most of the article will stand on its own, but one point I thought was interesting:

Though outdoor revenue still is a small piece of the ad revenue pie - CBS Outdoor made less than one-quarter of the revenue of CBS's television network last year - it is growing faster than every other traditional ad medium. At CBS Outdoor, 2006 operating income was up 21 percent over the previous year, the biggest gain of any CBS division.

But consider for a moment the relative dynamics. Television is a heck of a lot more expensive to produce than a client's ad, even if the billboards do have whizzbang effects. So maybe the comparative revenue isn't as telling as the amount of profit that stays in the corporate pockets.