Published Times Square billboard rates run from $10,000 for two weeks on a shared digital slot to $500,000 for four weeks of heavy share of voice, and a single 15-second spot on a standard screen is quoted at $50,000 per four weeks (AdQuick and PJX Media, read 14 September 2026). The screen owners publish no prices at all.
That last sentence is why this page exists. Search for a Times Square billboard and you get a tourism board, a gift shop and two brochure pages. None tells a media planner who sells the screens, why the two published price guides disagree by a factor of three, or why a vendor deck's pedestrian count runs 60% above the Times Square Alliance's. Every figure below carries a named source and the date we read it, in line with the standard this site applies to every number.
The Economist on a digital taxi top in Times Square, 2024, with the NBA Finals spectacular behind it. Photograph from the Firefly New York campaign archive, fireflyon.com.
What Counts as a Times Square Billboard?
A Times Square billboard is any sign facing the Bowtie, where Broadway crosses Seventh Avenue, inside the district the Times Square Alliance manages from 40th to 53rd Street between Sixth and Eighth Avenues (Alliance, About the Alliance, retrieved 14 September 2026). Most of what a buyer means by the phrase is a digital spectacular on a building around that crossing.
The signs are there by law, not only by commerce. Section 81-732 of the New York City Zoning Resolution applies to developments between 43rd and 50th Streets with frontage on Seventh Avenue or Broadway. It requires illuminated signs with a minimum aggregate surface of 12 square feet for every linear foot of street frontage, sets a brightness standard measured with an instrument the code names a Light Unit Times Square, or LUTS, meter, and tells the Department of Buildings to withhold permits and certificates of occupancy until the required signs are installed and lit (NYC Zoning Resolution 81-732, last amended 2 February 2011, read 14 September 2026). Elsewhere in New York a landlord fights for a sign permit. Here the landlord cannot open the building without the sign.
Who Owns the Billboards in Times Square?
No single company. The sign structures belong to the buildings they sit on, and the time on them is sold by fifteen media companies listed on the Times Square Alliance's own screens page (retrieved 14 September 2026). OUTFRONT Media, Clear Channel Outdoor, Silvercast, Branded Cities and New Tradition hold the best-known units, and not one of them publishes a rate.
The structure is lease, not ownership. New Tradition describes its position at One Times Square as a master lease for the digital signage on the tower (newtradition.com, retrieved 14 September 2026). The building has an owner; the media company has the right to sell the face.
| Seller | Named Times Square units | Publishes rates? |
|---|---|---|
| OUTFRONT Media | 2 Times Square (The Summit, Giant Twins, The Wedge, The Cube), Times Square Tower at 7 Times Square (nine static faces), Duffy's Duo at 1557 Broadway, Digital Beast at 1530 Broadway | No (outfront.com/times-square) |
| Clear Channel Outdoor | 40-plus displays, 17 of them digital, by its own count as of 30 June 2022; SYNC runs one advertiser across six screens | No (clearchanneloutdoor.com) |
| Silvercast | 1540 Broadway, 1535 Broadway, The North Star at 20 Times Square, The Digital Stack at 1565 Broadway | No (silvercast.com) |
| Branded Cities | Nasdaq Tower, Midtown Financial (MiFi), a digital unit at 7 Times Square, Broadway Plaza Digital, Midtown Mosaic | No (brandedcities.com) |
| New Tradition | One Times Square, Five Times Square, Broadway Triple Spectacular at 52nd and Broadway | No (newtradition.com) |
| Dream Outdoor, BIG Outdoor, Heritage Outdoor, KEVANI, Lightyear Media, Neutron Media, Pearl Media, JCDecaux, City Outdoor USA, ABC | TSX Broadway (18,000 square feet, 8K) and Broadway Beacon; Everest Digital at 46th and Broadway; 1530 Broadway and the Pentacular; Squareview at 711 Seventh; 1552 Broadway; 1500 Broadway; the 40-screen Midtown Network; digital newsstands; large-format billboards; the ABC SuperSign | Not checked |
Unit lists are as published on the Alliance screens page and each seller's own site, retrieved 14 September 2026. OUTFRONT claims "the most inventory of any Times Square billboard provider"; Clear Channel claims "the most digital signs in Times Square". Neither prints a price on the page that makes the claim. Lamar, the other national operator a planner might expect here, lists its New York inventory as the five boroughs and New Jersey, with no Times Square units (lamar.com/nyc, retrieved 14 September 2026).
How Much Does a Billboard Cost at Times Square?
Between $10,000 and $22,000 for two weeks on a shared digital slot, $30,000 to $100,000 or more per four-week cycle for a premium spectacular (AdQuick, 2026), $50,000 per four weeks for a 15-second spot on a standard screen and $300,000 per four weeks on the Marriott Marquis (PJX Media, read 14 September 2026). No screen owner publishes a figure.
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. Always get a written quote before budgeting.
| Publisher | What is priced | Figure | Unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| AdQuick (marketplace) | Shared digital slot | $10,000 to $22,000 | per two weeks; "reported ranges", no source named |
| AdQuick | Premium spectacular | $30,000 to $100,000+ | per four-week cycle; CPM $15 to $25+ |
| AdQuick | Flagship or full takeover | $50,000 to $100,000+ | per month |
| PJX Media (agency, Talon) | Standard non-prime screen, one 15-second spot | $50,000 | per four weeks |
| PJX Media | Marriott Marquis, standard spot | $300,000 | per four weeks |
| PJX Media | Digital, priced by minutes per hour | $10,000 to $500,000 | per four weeks |
| PJX Media | Static unit, media only | $30,000 to $60,000, some units $100,000+ | per four-week cycle; production and installation extra |
| OUTFRONT Media (screen owner) | Any unit | No price published | quote only |
| Clear Channel Outdoor, Silvercast, Branded Cities, New Tradition (screen owners) | Any unit | No price published | quote only |
Every row was read from the publisher's live page on 14 September 2026. AdQuick labels its figures "planning estimates only"; PJX presents its figures as illustrative from its own buying. Neither states a sample, a date range or a method.
Why the Same $50,000 Is a Floor for One Publisher and a Ceiling for the Other
At PJX Media, $50,000 per four weeks buys a standard non-prime screen with one 15-second spot: the entry point. At AdQuick, $50,000 to $100,000 or more per month is the flagship, full-takeover tier: the top. PJX's Marriott Marquis figure of $300,000 is three times AdQuick's stated ceiling; PJX's top minutes-per-hour figure of $500,000 is five times it. The same dollar amount is the cheapest thing on one page and among the dearest on the other, and the people who set the rate say nothing in public.
Part of the gap is units. AdQuick's shared-slot figure is per two weeks; on a four-week basis it becomes $20,000 to $44,000, just under PJX's $50,000 "standard" spot. Part of it is what "standard" means to an agency buying prime screens for drinks brands and film studios versus a marketplace listing shared rotation. The rest is unknowable from the outside.
So treat the published range as an order of magnitude, nothing more. A planner who budgets $50,000 for a Times Square billboard has, depending on which page they read, either bought one modest spot for a month or nearly bought a takeover. Only a written quote naming the unit settles it.
How Much Is a 30-Second Ad in Times Square?
There is no published 30-second rate for a Times Square screen. Digital units sell a share of a loop for a flight: PJX Media prices a 15-second spot on a standard screen at $50,000 per four weeks, and AdQuick's shared-slot range states no spot length. The only 30-second product with a public price is the novelty tier below.
The mechanics matter more than the headline. AdQuick describes a digital billboard buy as an 8-to-10-second spot inside a 60-to-90-second loop. PJX describes Times Square digital as priced by minutes per hour, with a roadblock, meaning 100% share of voice on a screen or group of screens, sold in blocks of at least one hour. Anyone who quotes a flat "30-second" price is quoting a share of a loop and calling it a spot. Get the loop length, plays per hour and hours per day in writing, or the number means nothing.
Production and Installation Are a Separate Line
On a static Times Square unit the media rate is not the bill. PJX Media puts production at $20,000 to $30,000 and installation at $80,000 to $100,000, both one-time, against static media of $30,000 to $60,000 per four-week cycle. The installation alone can cost more than the first month of media.
Those numbers are two orders of magnitude above the national guidance a planner might carry in a spreadsheet. AdQuick's general billboard page puts vinyl printing at $1.50 to $3.00 per square foot, about $500 for a 14-by-48-foot bulletin, and posting at $200 to $1,000. Those are highway-bulletin figures. They do not transfer to a wallscape rigged over a Broadway sidewalk.
Digital removes the print but not the production. PJX flags 3D anamorphic creative as its own budget line; Silvercast and Dream Outdoor describe 4K and 8K canvases that need content built to spec; OUTFRONT lists production as an in-house service with no price. Ask for media, production, installation and creative as four separate lines.
The Pedestrian Count: 220,000 or 360,000?
The Times Square Alliance, which counts pedestrians with cameras, publishes 200,000 to 250,000 a day, with 2024 averaging roughly 220,000 and peaks up to 330,000 (Alliance, Market Research & Data, retrieved 14 September 2026). OUTFRONT's Times Square page cites around 360,000 a day and attributes it to the same Alliance. That is 1.6 times the Alliance's published average.
Lower down the same page, OUTFRONT gives "daily pedestrian counts averaging 286,000 and peak periods exceeding 400,000", a second figure that matches neither the Alliance nor its own headline. Clear Channel's Times Square page cites "an average daily pedestrian count of 225K", sourced to the Alliance's 2023 Economic Development and Operations Report, which lines up with the Alliance. A vendor blurb for the ABC SuperSign, hosted on the Alliance's own screens page, puts it at 1.5 million a day. Four vendors, four numbers, one counting body.
This matters more than any rate disagreement, because impressions are the denominator of every CPM. Divide the same price by 360,000 instead of 220,000 and the CPM falls by 39% without one extra person walking past the sign. AdQuick's Times Square CPM of $15 to $25 is only as good as the count underneath it, and the page does not say which count that is.
The engagement figures are old, too. OUTFRONT's "81 minutes median time spent" and "8 minutes looking at billboards" come from the Alliance's 2017 Advertising and Demographics Study, a survey of over 2,000 people, still presented in 2026. Directional, not current.
Ask the vendor which count sits under its CPM, which year it comes from, and whether "pedestrians" means people entering the Alliance's camera zones or a modelled figure for a wider area. Then check it against the Alliance's weekly Economic Development and Operations Report, which is public.
How Do You Get on the Times Square Billboard?
Three routes. Buy direct from one of the fifteen sellers on the Times Square Alliance's screens page, each with a sales contact. Buy through an agency or marketplace such as PJX Media or AdQuick, which buys the same screens for you. Or book the novelty tier, from $150 for 15 seconds an hour, which is not a media buy.
For the first two routes the process is the same five steps, and the order matters.
- Name the unit, not the neighbourhood. OUTFRONT lists its Times Square inventory by code (The Cube is TS7160, The Summit TS7180). Ask for the unit ID, the face and the direction it reads. "A screen in Times Square" is not a specification; it is why the two price guides disagree.
- Get the unit of sale in writing. Spot length, loop length, share of voice or minutes per hour, hours per day and flight dates. AdQuick's own advice: "always confirm exactly what unit, share of voice, and duration a Times Square quote covers".
- Separate media from production. Static: production and installation as their own lines, with PJX's figures above as a reality check. Digital: creative built to the screen's resolution, plus a line for anamorphic or multi-screen work.
- Book the calendar early. PJX notes that New Year's Eve pricing gets competitive and recommends reaching out as early as possible.
- Agree the proof. Play logs for digital, posting photographs for static, and the audience source, with its year, the vendor will report against.
The Novelty Tier Is Not a Media Buy
Giftory sells "See Yourself or Loved One on a Times Square Billboard for 24 Hours" for $150: a personal photo or video shown for 15 seconds once an hour for one day, on a screen above the Pele store facing the TKTS red steps, subject to approval, with a livestream (giftory.com, retrieved 14 September 2026). The operator's own site, timessquarebillboard.com, sells it from $150 with upgrades: a second billboard for another $150, two plays an hour from an extra $50, four from an extra $100.
Add it up and $150 buys six minutes of screen time across a day, inside the operator's "Welcome to Times Square" frame, with no choice of unit, no proof of play and no audience report. It exists for birthdays and proposals and is good at that. It is not what a media plan means by a Times Square billboard. Divide $150 by six minutes and you get a per-second price that means nothing.
The Screens Under the Street: Times Sq-42 St
Times Sq-42 St was the busiest subway station in the system in 2025, with 61,203,303 riders against 35,764,931 at Grand Central-42 St (MTA, Subway and bus ridership for 2025). The MTA's own advertising page sends buyers for its stations, trains and buses to OUTFRONT Media, and its billboard locations along highways and elevated lines to Clear Channel Outdoor.
The OUTFRONT product at street level is the urban panel above the subway entrance, which carries train arrival times beside the advertising. OUTFRONT's NYC two-sheet (2025) specifies two versions. Digital Urban Panel: 448 screens across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, a 1920 by 896 pixel canvas, static creative only, no audio, an 8-second spot in a 64-second loop, running 24 hours, available through omnichannel and point-solution DSPs. Video Urban Panel: 1920 by 1080 pixels, full-motion or static, no audio, a 15-second spot in a 90-second loop. Both require the MTA advertiser request form, and both carry preemption for emergency messaging.
Do the share-of-voice arithmetic before comparing them to a spectacular: an 8-second spot in a 64-second loop is one eighth of the screen; 15 in 90 is one sixth. OUTFRONT puts its MTA digital network at 14,800-plus screens, so the panels around the 42nd Street complex are specified as a group of entrances, not a single unit.
The Alliance counts five stations and sixteen train lines inside its district, with 79,621,861 annual transit riders in 2024, which is the case for pairing a spectacular with the panels at the entrances it faces. The other moving format through the Bowtie is the taxi top; how those are specified, regulated and measured is on the New York taxi advertising page. Digital taxi tops in the district are sold by NY Taxi Ads, by resellers such as Blue Line Media, and by Firefly, among others.
What to Ask Before You Sign
Where Times Square sits against the other eight New York out-of-home formats, and which city agency regulates each, is in the format matrix on the home page. For a Times Square screen, the quote should answer all of the following before budget is committed.
- Unit: the seller's unit ID, the address, the face and the direction it reads.
- Unit of sale: spot length, loop length, share of voice or minutes per hour, hours per day, and whether the flight is 28 days or a calendar month.
- Price basis: media only, or media plus production, installation and creative, each on its own line.
- Audience: which pedestrian count, from which body, for which year, and how it reconciles with the Alliance's 200,000 to 250,000.
- Proof: play logs or posting photographs, and who signs them off.
- Exit: what happens to a static installation, and who pays, when the flight ends.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a billboard cost at Times Square?
AdQuick: $10,000 to $22,000 for two weeks on a shared digital slot; $30,000 to $100,000+ per four-week cycle for a premium spectacular. PJX Media: $50,000 per four weeks for a 15-second spot on a standard screen; $300,000 for the Marriott Marquis; $10,000 to $500,000 by minutes per hour. Screen owners publish no rates. None of these is a quote.
How do you get on the Times Square billboard?
Buy from the fifteen sellers on the Times Square Alliance's screens page, or through an agency or marketplace such as PJX Media or AdQuick. Name the unit by ID; get spot length, loop length, share of voice and flight dates in writing; budget production separately for static units; ask for proof of play. Novelty bookings are not a media buy.
How much is a 30 second ad in Times Square?
No publisher prints a 30-second rate; Times Square screens sell as a share of a loop for a flight, not by the play. The nearest published figure is PJX Media's $50,000 per four weeks for a 15-second spot on a standard screen. The one 30-second product with a public price is a novelty upgrade: two personal-photo plays an hour, $50 extra.
Who owns the billboards in Times Square?
No one company. The buildings own the structures; the time is sold by fifteen media companies on the Times Square Alliance's screens page, led by OUTFRONT Media (2 Times Square, Times Square Tower), Clear Channel Outdoor (40-plus displays, 17 digital), Silvercast (1540 and 1535 Broadway), Branded Cities (Nasdaq Tower, MiFi) and New Tradition (One Times Square). None publishes a rate.
How many people see a Times Square billboard each day?
The Times Square Alliance, counting with 27 cameras across 33 locations, publishes 200,000 to 250,000 a day, roughly 220,000 on average in 2024 and up to 330,000 on peak days. OUTFRONT's page cites around 360,000 and attributes it to the Alliance, 1.6 times the Alliance's average; Clear Channel cites 225,000. Ask which count and which year sit under any CPM.
Is production included in a Times Square billboard quote?
Not by default; on a static unit it can exceed the media. PJX puts production at $20,000 to $30,000 and installation at $80,000 to $100,000, both one-time, against static media of $30,000 to $60,000 per four-week cycle. Digital has no print cost; anamorphic and multi-screen creative is its own line. Ask for media, production, installation and creative as separate lines.
Can you buy Times Square screens programmatically?
Street-level screens can be. OUTFRONT's MTA Digital Urban Panels (448 screens, 1920 by 896, an 8-second spot in a 64-second loop) and Video Urban Panels (1920 by 1080, 15 in 90) are available through omnichannel and point-solution DSPs, subject to the MTA advertiser request form. The spectaculars are sold direct; ask each seller whether a unit is on an exchange.
The Bottom Line
A Times Square billboard is the one out-of-home buy in New York where the seller list is public, the audience is counted by camera, and the price is still a private conversation. Use the fifteen-company list to find the unit, the Alliance's 200,000 to 250,000 a day to test every CPM, and PJX's production and installation figures to keep a static budget honest. Nothing on this page is a quote. Get the quote, with the unit ID on it.
What to send us
- The market, or the boroughs
- The dates, or the flight length
- The budget band
- The metric you will judge it by
A person replies with the sellers and formats that fit and the published ranges for them. No rate card exists on this site; every figure here is a third-party published number.
Send the brief
Sources
- AdQuick, How Much Does a Billboard Cost? 2026 Pricing Guide (Times Square rows, CPM benchmarks, production figures) · adquick.com/billboard-cost · retrieved 14 September 2026
- PJX Media, Cost of Billboard Advertising in Times Square · pjxmedia.com · retrieved 14 September 2026
- OUTFRONT Media, Times Square Advertising (inventory list, pedestrian figures, 2017 study citations, no rates) · outfront.com/times-square · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Clear Channel Outdoor, Times Square Billboards (40-plus displays, 17 digital, 225K pedestrians, no rates) · clearchanneloutdoor.com · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Times Square Alliance, Market Research & Data (pedestrian counts, camera methodology, 2024 transit ridership, 2017 study) · timessquarenyc.org · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Times Square Alliance, Digital Screens & Billboards (seller list and named units) · timessquarenyc.org · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Times Square Alliance, About the Alliance (district boundaries) · timessquarenyc.org · retrieved 14 September 2026
- New York City Zoning Resolution, Section 81-732, Special Times Square signage requirements (last amended 2 February 2011) · zr.planning.nyc.gov · read 14 September 2026
- Branded Cities, New York · brandedcities.com · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Silvercast, Times Square · silvercast.com · retrieved 14 September 2026
- New Tradition (One Times Square master lease) · newtradition.com · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Lamar Advertising, New York City and New Jersey (no rates; no Times Square units listed) · lamar.com/nyc · retrieved 14 September 2026
- MTA, Subway and bus ridership for 2025 (top 10 busiest stations) · mta.info · retrieved 14 September 2026
- MTA, Advertising and activations (OUTFRONT for stations, trains and buses; Clear Channel for billboard locations) · mta.info · retrieved 14 September 2026
- OUTFRONT Media, NYC Digital Urban Panels and Video Urban Panels two-sheet (2025; specs, 448 screens, DSP availability) · PDF; MTA network figures from outfront.com/mta · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Giftory, See Yourself or Loved One on a Times Square Billboard for 24 Hours ($150) · giftory.com · retrieved 14 September 2026
- Welcome to Times Square, Your Picture on a Billboard in Times Square (from $150; upgrades) · timessquarebillboard.com · retrieved 14 September 2026
- NY Taxi Ads and Blue Line Media, New York City taxi advertising (taxi-top sellers named above) · nytaxiads.com, bluelinemedia.com · retrieved 14 September 2026