Outdoor advertising in San Francisco: a fixed supply, three transit contracts, and a rule on advertising vehicles
San Francisco out-of-home is a fixed stock of billboards, no new ones since Proposition G in 2002, held mainly by Clear Channel Outdoor and OUTFRONT; Muni sold by Intersection, BART by OUTFRONT, shelters by Clear Channel; and screens on taxis and wrapped cars. NPR reported billboard rental revenue up about 30% from 2023 to 2025, per OUTFRONT data.
San Francisco is the market in this series with the most rules per square mile and the most demand per face. Voters closed the supply of new billboards in 2002; the Police Code bars advertising vehicles from city streets unless they primarily carry passengers or goods; the transit authority splits its assets across three contracts, and its own policy bans alcohol, cannabis and political creative. Into that fixed supply came the 2023 to 2025 surge in technology advertising that NPR reported in March 2026. The 18 photographs below, from the 280 San Francisco frames in the campaign archive, show where the overflow went. Every claim on this page carries the publisher and the date it was read. It is written for advertisers and media buyers and is not a rate card.
What has actually run in San Francisco?
The archive holds 280 frames from San Francisco covering 58 brands, the largest set of the four markets in this series, photographed between 2022 and 2026. Two patterns. The conference calendar is the market: RSAC, the Data + AI Summit and TechCrunch Disrupt at Moscone put Elastic, IBM, Databricks, Absolute Security, Outtake and MongoDB on the roofs and trucks around Howard Street, and Blue Line Media's own taxi page says exhibitors buy the format for exactly that. And the Yellow Cab, not the rideshare car, is the carrier in most of the taxi-top frames, which matters under a Police Code section discussed below.
Digital screens on Yellow Cab and car roofs
Wrapped cars and swarms
LED trucks
Two frames were rejected after being opened. A swarm at Moscone that the manifest files under "Adquick" carries SentinelOne creative, so the brand field is the buyer rather than the advertiser and was not used. A car-top screen tagged as an LED truck is a car. The manifest slug "ABI" is written above as Bud Light and "Mabi" as White Claw, the brands on the creative.
Who sells outdoor advertising in San Francisco?
Three transit contracts and three roadside plants, one of which sells only transit here. Every row was read on the seller's own page or the authority's page on September 14, 2026.
| Inventory | Who sells it | What the seller's or authority's page says |
|---|---|---|
| Roadside bulletins, posters, digital; transit shelters | Clear Channel Outdoor | "More than 5K displays across five counties"; "over 300 digital billboards across roadways and transit shelters"; "the exclusive provider of digital transit shelters". Unit count as of June 30, 2022 by its own source line. Also sells at SFO, Oakland and San Jose airports. |
| Bulletins, wallscapes, digital, transit | OUTFRONT Media | Lists "bulletins, wallscapes, street-level media, digital transit advertising, digital billboards, and static billboard bulletins" plus "traditional transit advertising in commuter bus and subways"; names BART station dominations, VTA bus and light rail, and the Oakland Coliseum towers; claims reach of "99% of the 7.6 million residents weekly". |
| Bay Area transit displays | Lamar Advertising | Lamar's "San Francisco-Bay Area Transit Advertising Office" in Concord lists one product, transit; no billboard page for the city. |
| Muni buses, light rail, cable cars, historic streetcars, Forest Hill station and the Central Subway | Intersection | Named on sfmta.com as the SFMTA's advertising partner "for rates, products, and availability". Bus specs published by the SFMTA: Queen 30 by 88 inches, Tail 21 by 70 inches, interior card 11 by 28 inches. |
| Transit shelters and SFMTA sales kiosks | Clear Channel Outdoor | Named on sfmta.com with an Oakland office address for "advertisements on or inside bus shelters or on SFMTA sales kiosks". |
| BART trains and stations, including the shared Market Street stations | OUTFRONT Media | The SFMTA page sends Muni station enquiries to "BART's advertising page". OUTFRONT announced on April 26, 2018 that BART's board awarded it "the advertising franchise for BART's rapid transit system" for 10.75 years with two one-year options, with over 600 digital displays to be deployed. |
| Moving formats on cars and trucks | Firefly (digital and static tops on taxis and rideshare vehicles, 360, 270 and 180 wraps, LED trucks, coordinated swarms; its site names San Francisco among the cities where it runs digital tops; the Yellow Cab tops, wraps, swarms and LED trucks documented above), Intersection (Muni vehicles), OUTFRONT (BART trains), Lamar (Bay Area transit), Blue Line Media (taxi tops, digital rideshare tops, Taxi TV; San Francisco page) | None publishes an operator rate card for San Francisco; Blue Line's page notes the format is used by "exhibitors to advertise their exhibits" at Moscone. |
The SFMTA page names all three of its vendors on one screen: Intersection for the vehicles, Clear Channel Outdoor for the shelters and kiosks, and BART's franchisee for the stations Muni shares under Market Street. A rider at a shelter, on a bus and changing at Powell Street passes three contracts and two content policies. Lamar's only local office is a transit office in Concord; it publishes no billboard page for the city. The general pattern of who holds each concession is on bus advertising and subway advertising.
What do San Francisco's rules allow?
Five sections, all read in full. The first fixes the supply; the second and third separate a taxi roof from a truck; the fourth is the transit standard; the fifth is a 1938 rule still on the books.
| What is decided | The rule as published | Source |
|---|---|---|
| New billboards | "No new general advertising signs shall be permitted at any location within the City as of March 5, 2002" (Sec. 611(a), added by Proposition G). Existing signs may be relocated only under a Board of Supervisors agreement and the conditional-use procedure of Sec. 303 (611(c), (d)). SF Planning says Proposition G passed with 78% of the vote, that existing signs may still change copy, and that the 2006 inventory programme led to "the removal of nearly 600 illegal billboards". | San Francisco Planning Code Sec. 611; SF Planning, General Advertising Sign Program |
| Advertising vehicles on city streets | "No person may operate any commercial advertising vehicle in or on any public street" (Sec. 680(b)). A commercial advertising vehicle is one "carrying, towing, or otherwise displaying any commercial advertising sign, unless the vehicle is used primarily to transport passengers or goods" (680(c)(2)). Civil penalties of $250, $350 and $500 for successive violations; not a criminal offence. Added 1992, amended 2000. | San Francisco Police Code Sec. 680 |
| Parking a vehicle to display an ad | Prohibited "on any public street or in any public or private parking lot in the City for the primary purpose of displaying a commercial advertising sign", with exemptions for passenger vehicles of up to six occupants and vehicles parked to load, unload or deliver services (Sec. 7.2.81). The former Police Code section was repealed in 2006 and replaced by this one. | San Francisco Transportation Code Sec. 7.2.81 |
| Muni vehicles and SFMTA property | Advertising space is "a limited public forum" under a policy effective November 22, 2017. Prohibited: political and public issue; alcohol, tobacco or firearms; cannabis; false or misleading; obscenity; profanity and violence; disparaging content; anything harmful to the transit system. The public service announcement programme has been "on hold" since December 1, 2022. | SFMTA Advertising Policy, on sfmta.com |
| Streetcar windows | It is unlawful for a street railway operator to post "any form of advertisement" on the windows of street cars, except operational notices and Red Cross or government announcements. Added 1938 and still in the code. | San Francisco Police Code Sec. 702 |
Sec. 680 is the one national planners have not usually read. Its definition turns on what a vehicle is "used primarily" for: a taxi or a rideshare car exists to carry passengers, so a screen on its roof does not make it a commercial advertising vehicle; a truck whose only job is the display it carries is the vehicle the section describes. The archive documents LED trucks in this market, and this page does not say how those placements were run. Before booking a truck in San Francisco, ask the operator how the placement sits under Sec. 680 and Sec. 7.2.81, in writing. The national table of which regulator governs each moving format is on transit advertising.
The SFMTA policy calls its advertising space "a limited public forum", where Chicago's CTA says "non-public forum" and Atlanta's MARTA says its space is "not intended to provide a general public forum"; the prohibited lists are similar, with cannabis added by name here and alcohol banned outright rather than capped as the CTA caps it. The SFMTA also suspended its public service announcement programme on December 1, 2022, so nonprofit creative that once ran on donated space competes for paid space now.
What do third parties publish on San Francisco rates?
The ranges below are market-level figures compiled from publicly published vendor and industry sources. They are not quotes, and they are not the rates of any single network, including the operator whose campaigns the archive on this site documents, which prices per campaign and does not publish a rate card. Always get a written quote before budgeting.
| Publisher | Retrieved | Published figures |
|---|---|---|
| AdQuick, San Francisco billboard advertising page | Published April 6, 2026; read September 14, 2026 | Three columns, low end, mid-market and premium: static bulletin $4,000, $7,500 to $15,000, $20,000 to $60,000 or more; digital share of voice $3,500, $6,000 to $10,000, $12,000 to $25,000; Muni bus shelter $1,200, $2,200 to $3,500, $4,500 to $7,000; BART station domination $8,000, $15,000 to $30,000, $40,000 to $80,000 or more; SFO placement $8,000, $20,000 to $35,000, $50,000 to $120,000 or more; SoMa wallscape $20,000, $40,000 to $75,000, $100,000 to $250,000 or more. Programmatic CPM $6 to $18. San Francisco is not in AdQuick's national city table. |
| Blue Line Media, San Francisco billboard page | Read September 14, 2026 | Static poster $2,000 to $3,450; static bulletin $5,500 to $21,000; digital bulletin $7,500 to $19,000; wallscape $12,000 to $50,000, all per four weeks. $5,000 minimum spend per market. Says billboard density is highest on the Bayshore Freeway, US 101 (47 faces), International Boulevard (37) and the Bay Bridge corridor, I-80 (30). |
| business.com, "What does a billboard cost" | Published October 15, 2025; read September 14, 2026 | San Francisco named in the "major metro" tier with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami: static $5,000 to $25,000, premium and spectaculars $50,000 or more; digital $5,000 to $20,000 per month on a shared rotation. |
| NPR, "Do you understand this billboard?" | March 18, 2026; read September 14, 2026 | Not a rate. "Billboard rental revenue in the city grew by around 30% between 2023 and 2025, according to data provided by the outdoor advertising company Outfront Media", and advertisers "are waiting many months for spots in the most desirable locations to open up". |
AdQuick leaves San Francisco out of its national city table and gives it the widest ranges on a dedicated page: a static bulletin from $4,000 to $60,000 or more, a fifteen-fold spread, and a SoMa wallscape to $250,000 or more. Blue Line's bulletin range, $5,500 to $21,000, sits inside AdQuick's mid-market and premium columns; business.com tops out at $25,000 before spectaculars. None states a sample. The one figure with a named data owner is NPR's, and it is a growth rate rather than a price: about 30% more billboard rental revenue in 2025 than in 2023, by OUTFRONT's data. On a supply fixed since 2002, that is a price signal by another name.
How is delivery counted in San Francisco?
Fixed inventory is rated by Geopath, whose impression is "the total number of times people passing an OOH display are likely to notice the ad". Clear Channel Outdoor cites "Geopath OOH Ratings, 2022" under its San Francisco figures. A screen on a Yellow Cab roof or a wrapped car at Crissy Field is not a rated unit; its delivery is a function of route, dwell and hour, and a proposal should say which method produced its number. Both methods, and what each can and cannot show, are on how out-of-home impressions are measured.
This is San Francisco's row of the format and market matrix, derived from the archive:
| Ad surface | Digital screen | Vehicle wrap | Static print | Hologram | Spectacular |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 218 | 169 | · | · | · |
| Carrier | LED truck | Food truck | In-car screen | Pedicab | Hologram truck | Glass truck | Golf cart screen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 22 | · | 4 | · | · | · | · |
Reflects campaigns documented in this archive; absence is not evidence of unavailability. Counts are photographs, not campaigns or units, and a frame tagged with two surfaces is counted under each. Of the 280 frames, fifteen carry a source date that does not parse and are published without a year.
The whole matrix is on the campaign archive, and the category argument, why a screen that follows an audience behaves differently from one that waits for it, is on the guide to out-of-home advertising. A market is published on this site only when it clears four checks: at least twelve documented frames photographed in it, the transit authority's own advertising standards read live, at least two named third-party rate sources read live, and a real row in the matrix above. San Francisco clears all four.
Frequently asked questions
- How much does it cost to put up a billboard in San Francisco?
- You cannot put one up; you can only rent an existing face. Planning Code Sec. 611 has barred new general advertising signs since March 5, 2002. For an existing static bulletin the published third-party ranges are $7,500 to $15,000 mid-market and $20,000 to $60,000 or more premium on AdQuick's San Francisco page, $5,500 to $21,000 on Blue Line Media's page, and $5,000 to $25,000 in business.com's major-metro tier, all read September 14, 2026 and none with a stated method. NPR reported in March 2026 that advertisers wait months for the best positions.
- Did San Francisco ban billboards?
- It banned new ones. Proposition G, passed on March 5, 2002 with 78% of the vote by SF Planning's count, added Sec. 611 to the Planning Code: no new general advertising signs anywhere in the city. Existing legal signs stayed, can carry new copy, and can be relocated only under a Board of Supervisors agreement with conditional-use review. SF Planning's enforcement programme from 2006 removed nearly 600 illegal billboards. Transit, shelters, airports and screens on vehicles are governed by other rules and were not part of Proposition G.
- Why are there so many AI billboards in San Francisco?
- Because a fixed supply met a surge in demand from venture-funded startups. NPR reported on March 18, 2026 that billboard rental revenue in the city grew about 30% between 2023 and 2025, citing data from OUTFRONT Media, and that advertisers wait months for the most desirable spots. AdQuick's San Francisco page calls the 101 corridor from SFO into the city "the most-watched stretch of OOH in the country for tech advertising". The archive frames above show the same audience being reached at Moscone and the Marriott Marquis during RSAC, from car roofs rather than freeway faces.
- How do I advertise on Muni or BART?
- Two contracts. Muni buses, light rail, cable cars, historic streetcars, Forest Hill station and the Central Subway are sold by Intersection, named on sfmta.com, under the SFMTA Advertising Policy effective November 22, 2017, which prohibits political and issue advertising, alcohol, tobacco, firearms and cannabis. Muni station advertising is referred by the SFMTA to BART's page; BART's franchise was awarded to OUTFRONT Media in April 2018 for 10.75 years plus two one-year options. Transit shelters and SFMTA kiosks are a third contract, held by Clear Channel Outdoor.
- Are mobile billboard trucks legal in San Francisco?
- Police Code Sec. 680 prohibits operating a "commercial advertising vehicle" on any public street, defined as a vehicle displaying a commercial advertising sign "unless the vehicle is used primarily to transport passengers or goods", with civil penalties of $250, $350 and $500 for successive violations. Transportation Code Sec. 7.2.81 separately prohibits parking a vehicle for the primary purpose of displaying an ad and exempts passenger vehicles of up to six occupants. A taxi or rideshare car carrying a roof screen is a passenger vehicle; a truck whose only job is its display is the case the section was written for. Ask any truck operator how a San Francisco placement is run under Sec. 680 before booking it.
- Who sells bus shelter advertising in San Francisco?
- Clear Channel Outdoor, under an agreement with the SFMTA, not with Muni's vehicle vendor. The SFMTA's own page gives Clear Channel's Oakland office for "advertisements on or inside bus shelters or on SFMTA sales kiosks", and Clear Channel's San Francisco page calls itself "the exclusive provider of digital transit shelters" in the market. AdQuick lists a Muni shelter at $1,200 low end, $2,200 to $3,500 mid-market and $4,500 to $7,000 premium, read September 14, 2026, with no method stated.
- Can I advertise at SFO?
- Yes, through Clear Channel Outdoor, whose San Francisco page lists SFO, Oakland and San Jose airports and cites more than 86 million annual passengers across the three (Airports Council International, 2019). The only published range is AdQuick's: $8,000 low end, $20,000 to $35,000 mid-market and $50,000 to $120,000 or more premium per four-week flight, with the International Terminal at the top. The airport is a separate contract from every other row on this page.
Sources
- Advertise on Muni: SFMTA Advertising Policy (effective November 22, 2017), Intersection for vehicles, Clear Channel Outdoor for shelters and kiosks, BART for stations, bus unit specs · San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, Accessed September 14, 2026
- OUTFRONT Media awarded long-term contract by the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District: 10.75 years plus two one-year options, over 600 digital displays · OUTFRONT Media, via PR Newswire, April 26, 2018; accessed September 14, 2026
- Planning Code Sec. 611, General Advertising Signs Prohibited (added by Proposition G, March 5, 2002) · City and County of San Francisco, via American Legal Publishing, Accessed September 14, 2026
- General Advertising Sign Program: Proposition G passed with 78%; nearly 600 illegal billboards removed · San Francisco Planning Department, Accessed September 14, 2026
- Police Code Sec. 680, Advertising Vehicles Prohibited on City Streets; Sec. 702, Advertising on Street Car Windows Prohibited · City and County of San Francisco, via American Legal Publishing, Accessed September 14, 2026
- Transportation Code Sec. 7.2.81, Parking of Vehicles for Commercial Advertising Purposes · City and County of San Francisco, via American Legal Publishing, Accessed September 14, 2026
- San Francisco market page: 5K+ displays, 300+ digital including transit shelters, SFO, OAK and SJC (unit count as of June 30, 2022) · Clear Channel Outdoor, Accessed September 14, 2026
- San Francisco billboards and OOH advertising: formats, BART station dominations, VTA, Coliseum towers, 99% weekly reach claim · OUTFRONT Media, Accessed September 14, 2026
- Transit advertising in the Bay Area: Concord transit advertising office · Lamar Advertising, Accessed September 14, 2026
- Do you understand this billboard? If not, that's the whole point (billboard rental revenue up about 30%, 2023 to 2025, per OUTFRONT data) · NPR, Chloe Veltman, March 18, 2026; accessed September 14, 2026
- Billboard advertising in San Francisco, CA: low-end, mid-market and premium ranges by format · AdQuick, Published April 6, 2026; accessed September 14, 2026
- Billboard advertising costs: national city table (San Francisco not listed) · AdQuick, Accessed September 14, 2026
- Billboard advertising in San Francisco, CA: rate table, minimum spend, corridor density · Blue Line Media, Accessed September 14, 2026
- Taxi advertising in San Francisco, CA: taxi tops, digital rideshare tops, Taxi TV, Moscone exhibitors · Blue Line Media, Accessed September 14, 2026
- What does a billboard cost? Market-tier table (San Francisco in the major-metro tier) · business.com, Published October 15, 2025; accessed September 14, 2026
- Ordinance 026-42, Exhibit A: CTA advertising guidelines (non-public forum; alcohol capped) · Chicago Transit Board, Passed April 8, 2026; accessed September 14, 2026
- Advertising Policy and Regulations (forum language; all alcohol prohibited) · Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, Undated PDF; accessed September 14, 2026
- Glossary: impressions, circulation, visibility adjustment index · Geopath, Accessed September 14, 2026
- On-Car Products: digital tops, static tops, car wraps (360°, 270°, 180°) · Firefly, Accessed September 14, 2026
About the author
Ercan Bozkurt writes the methodology pages on this site: how out-of-home inventory is counted, measured and bought, with a particular interest in screens that move. He works from the primary document in each case, the transit authority's own rulebook, the measurement body's own definitions, the company's own filing, and writes the page so that a media planner can check every figure against it.
Ercan Bozkurt on LinkedIn · Reviewed by Melih Koray, who publishes this site · How this site is edited and what it refuses to publish: about this site.