Times Square Billboards: Who Sells Them and What They Cost

A Times Square billboard costs about $25,000 to $50,000 per four weeks for one 15-second spot on a standard digital screen and $150,000 to $400,000 or more for a full-board takeover, on the published guides of Plug Talk Media and PJX Media. The large screen owners print no rate; self-serve single plays start near $40.

A Times Square billboard means two different products. One is a media flight on a screen sold by a company on the Times Square Alliance's list; the other is a personal photo shown on a screen for a day, which is a gift, not a media buy. This page is about the first and explains the second near the end: who sells each face, why five published price pages from four publishers disagree, and why a vendor page's pedestrian count can run 64% above the 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.

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 covers: most of the territory from 40th to 53rd Street between Sixth and Eighth Avenues, plus Restaurant Row (Alliance, About the Alliance, read 24 October 2026). Most of what a buyer means by the phrase is a digital spectacular on a building around that crossing.

Why Is Times Square Full of Billboards?

Because the Zoning Resolution requires them. Section 81-732 applies to developments and enlargements on zoning lots 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, and a further 50 square feet, for each linear foot of frontage within the first 40 feet from Seventh Avenue or Broadway, with the 50-square-foot requirement capped at 12,000 square feet on any one zoning lot. It sets a brightness standard measured with an instrument the code names a Light Unit Times Square, or LUTS, meter. The Department of Buildings may not issue a building permit without drawings showing the required signs, and may not issue the final certificates of occupancy until the signs are installed and in operation (NYC Zoning Resolution 81-732, last amended 2 February 2011, read 24 October 2026). Elsewhere in New York a landlord fights for a sign permit. Here a new building cannot be fully occupied without its signs.

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 the media companies on the Times Square Alliance's own screens page. On 24 October 2026 that page carried 18 entries from 16 companies: fifteen sell outdoor faces in and around the district, and the sixteenth, NCM Media Networks, sells the cinema screens. The Alliance also sells its own street-pole banners and BigBelly bins. OUTFRONT Media, Clear Channel Outdoor, Silvercast, Branded Cities and New Tradition hold the best-known units, and none of the five prints a rate on its own site.

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, read 24 October 2026). The building has an owner; the media company has the right to sell the face.

Unit lists are as published on the Alliance screens page and each seller's own site, read 24 October 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, is not on the Alliance's list. What each of these companies controls elsewhere in the city is in the verified NYC OOH seller directory.

How Much Does a Times Square Billboard Cost?

About $25,000 to $50,000 per four weeks for a 15-second spot on a standard digital screen, $50,000 to $80,000 for a 30-second share and $150,000 to $400,000 or more to take over a whole board, on the guides of two agencies that publish them, Plug Talk Media and PJX Media. AdQuick, a marketplace, prints two different ranges on two of its pages. Every figure below was read on 24 October 2026.

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.

Every row was read from the publisher's live page on 24 October 2026. AdQuick calls its billboard-cost figures "reported ranges" and its New York figures a "Typical 4-Week Rate"; PJX says it will "give you an idea of what you can expect to pay"; Plug Talk calls its table "Real 2026 pricing". None states a sample, a date range or a method.

Why Do the Published Times Square Prices Disagree?

Put the figures on the same unit and the gap narrows but does not close. For one 15-second spot over four weeks, Plug Talk prints $25,000 to $40,000 on a standard screen and PJX $50,000 on a "standard non-prime screen", between 25% and 100% more. For a whole board, Plug Talk's full takeover runs $150,000 to $400,000 or more, PJX prices the Marriott Marquis at $300,000, and PJX's minutes-per-hour range tops out at $500,000.

AdQuick disagrees with itself. Its billboard-cost guide puts a premium Times Square spectacular at $30,000 to $100,000 or more per four-week cycle; its New York City guide, published 6 April 2026, puts the same format at $30,000 to $600,000 or more, an upper figure six times higher. A planner who cites "AdQuick" without naming the page has not cited a number.

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, which sits around Plug Talk's 15-second band and below PJX's $50,000. Part is the board: Plug Talk says the Nasdaq Tower and One Times Square "command 2-3× mid-tier rates". 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, bought a 15-second spot on a standard screen, a 30-second share on a mid-tier board, or the bottom of AdQuick's flagship tier. Only a written quote naming the unit, the share and the flight settles it.

How Much Is a 30-Second Ad in Times Square?

About $50,000 to $80,000 per four weeks for a 30-second share of a mid-tier digital board, according to the published table of Plug Talk Media, an agency. Among the screen owners we read, only Neutron Media prints a price for 30 seconds per loop, in its media kit, and this site does not repeat an operator's rate. A digital screen sells a share of its loop for a flight, not a single play, so a "30-second ad" means 30 seconds of every loop, a one-quarter share or two 15-second spots back to back, for the whole flight. Plug Talk puts a 15-second share at $25,000 to $40,000 and a one-minute share at $100,000 to $180,000 on the same boards.

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 says production can run as high as $20,000 to $30,000 and installation as high as $80,000 to $100,000, 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 ceilings run 40 to 500 times 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 standard-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 a creative arm, OUTFRONT Studios, 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, read 24 October 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.

Elsewhere on the same page, OUTFRONT gives "daily pedestrian counts averaging 286,000 and peak periods exceeding 400,000", a figure that matches neither the Alliance nor its other number. 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. Plug Talk Media's Times Square page says "350K DAILY PEDESTRIANS In the Bowtie alone". A vendor blurb for the ABC SuperSign, hosted on the Alliance's own screens page, puts it at 1.5 million a day. Four companies, five 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 Min Median Time Spent in TSQ" and "8 Min Time Spent 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 outdoor sellers on the Times Square Alliance's screens page, all but JCDecaux listed with a sales contact. Buy through an out-of-home agency or a marketplace such as AdQuick, which buys the same screens for you; the agencies that plan New York out-of-home, and how to pick one, are in the NYC agency guide. Or book a novelty or self-serve play, from about $40 a play or $150 for 15 seconds an hour for a day, which is not a media buy.

For the first two routes the process is the same five steps, and the order matters.

1. 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 one reason the price guides disagree.
2. 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".
3. 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.
4. Book the calendar early. PJX notes that New Year's Eve pricing gets competitive and recommends reaching out as early as possible.
5. Agree the proof. Play logs for digital, posting photographs for static, and the audience source, with its year, the vendor will report against.

Your Photo on a Times Square Billboard: the $150 Tier

This is the consumer product sold under the same name, and it is a different thing from everything above. The operator's own site, timessquarebillboard.com, sells it "Starting at $150" (read 24 October 2026). Giftory resells "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, read 24 October 2026). The operator also lists 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.

Self-serve platforms sell single plays too. Blindspot advertises a "$40 starting price for Times Square exposure" and lists TSX at 1568 Broadway "From $40 / 15-sec slot" (Blindspot, page updated 29 July 2026). A play is a photograph of a screen, not a flight: useful for social proof, and nothing a media plan can count.

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 programmatic two-sheet, whose product pages are still stamped "coming soon", 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; ask which of them face the entrances your spectacular overlooks.

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. The TLC taxi zone that covers the district, Times Sq/Theatre District, starts 3,121 yellow-cab trips a day, the seventh-busiest pickup zone in the city, according to a TLC trip-record analysis for August 2026. Digital taxi tops in New York are sold by Firefly and SOMO and listed by resellers such as Blue Line Media; the street-level section below says what they add.

What to Ask Before You Sign

Where Times Square sits against the other six formats in New York, and which city agency regulates each, is in the city-wide format table. 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.

Reaching the Times Square Audience at Street Level

Disclosure: the editor of this site is employed by Firefly, one of the sellers named below; the link to Firefly is marked sponsored, and no Firefly price appears on this page.

A spectacular holds one face over the Bowtie. The crowd the Alliance counts under it, 200,000 to 250,000 a day, arrives on foot and in traffic and leaves the same way, and the street-level way to follow it is the moving format. Firefly, whose digital-top network lists New York first among its markets, sells GPS-enabled digital tops that can be scheduled by neighbourhood, time of day and day of week, plus static tops and full, partial and door wraps for vehicles with or without a digital top (on a taxi or for-hire vehicle, a wrap needs TLC authorization: 35 RCNY 58-32(c), 59A-29(e)(1)); SOMO sells digital tops on yellow taxis, and resellers such as Blue Line Media list static and digital tops. None of it replaces the screen, and no top can hold one intersection at 100% share of voice. What a district-weighted flight adds is the same audience before it looks up and after it walks on, with GPS built into each top for measurement, which no pedestrian count of the plaza gives you. Compare it with taxi tops through the district, criterion by criterion, with the MTA panels as the third column.

Frequently Asked Questions

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 Alliance's list of fifteen outdoor sellers to find the unit, the Alliance's 200,000 to 250,000 a day to test every CPM, and PJX's production and installation ceilings to keep a static budget honest. Nothing on this page is a quote. Get the quote, with the unit ID on it.

Sources

1. AdQuick, How Much Does a Billboard Cost? 2026 Pricing Guide (Times Square rows, CPM benchmarks, production figures) · adquick.com/billboard-cost · read 24 October 2026
2. Plug Talk Media, Times Square Billboard Cost & Rental (2026 pricing by share of time and board tier; "350K DAILY PEDESTRIANS In the Bowtie alone") · plugtalk.media · read 24 October 2026
3. AdQuick, New York City Outdoor Advertising Guide (published 6 April 2026; Times Square spectacular $30,000 to $600,000+ typical four-week rate) · adquick.com · read 24 October 2026
4. Blindspot, How to Effortlessly Get on a Times Square Billboard for Just $40 (updated 29 July 2026; pay-per-play from about $40; One Times Square 720-play minimum) · seeblindspot.com · read 24 October 2026
5. Neutron Media, 1500 Broadway Bowtie Spectacular, Q4 2026 media kit (PDF; prints a package price, not repeated here) · neutron.media · read 24 October 2026
6. TLC trip-record analysis, August 2026 (Times Sq/Theatre District 3,121 pickups a day, seventh-busiest zone), nytaxiadvertising.net, How many taxis are in NYC? Fleet and trip data · linked in the text · read 24 October 2026
7. PJX Media, Cost of Billboard Advertising in Times Square · pjxmedia.com · read 24 October 2026
8. OUTFRONT Media, Times Square Advertising (inventory list, pedestrian figures, 2017 study citations, no rates) · outfront.com/times-square · read 24 October 2026
9. Clear Channel Outdoor, Times Square Billboards (40-plus displays, 17 digital, 225K pedestrians, no rates) · clearchanneloutdoor.com · read 24 October 2026
10. Times Square Alliance, Market Research & Data (pedestrian counts, camera methodology, 2024 transit ridership, 2017 study) · timessquarenyc.org · read 24 October 2026
11. Times Square Alliance, Digital Screens & Billboards (seller list and named units) · timessquarenyc.org · read 24 October 2026
12. Times Square Alliance, About the Alliance (district boundaries) · timessquarenyc.org · read 24 October 2026
13. New York City Zoning Resolution, Section 81-732, Special Times Square signage requirements (last amended 2 February 2011) · zr.planning.nyc.gov · read 24 October 2026
14. Branded Cities, New York · brandedcities.com · read 24 October 2026
15. Silvercast, Times Square · silvercast.com · read 24 October 2026
16. New Tradition (One Times Square master lease) · newtradition.com · read 24 October 2026
17. Lamar Advertising, New York City and New Jersey (no rates) · lamar.com/nyc · read 24 October 2026
18. MTA, Subway and bus ridership for 2025 (top 10 busiest stations) · mta.info · read 24 October 2026
19. MTA, Advertising and activations (OUTFRONT for stations, trains and buses; Clear Channel for billboard locations) · mta.info · read 24 October 2026
20. OUTFRONT Media, NYC Digital Urban Panels and Video Urban Panels two-sheet (undated; specs, 448 screens, DSP availability; both products stamped "coming soon") · PDF; MTA network figures from outfront.com/mta · read 24 October 2026
21. Giftory, See Yourself or Loved One on a Times Square Billboard for 24 Hours ($150) · giftory.com · read 24 October 2026
22. Welcome to Times Square, Your Picture on a Billboard in Times Square (from $150; upgrades) · timessquarebillboard.com · read 24 October 2026
23. Blue Line Media, NYC Taxi Ads; SOMO (static and digital taxi tops; digital tops on yellow taxis) · bluelinemedia.com, somo.world · read 24 October 2026

Corrected 24 October 2026. The page now sets out five published price pages, including Plug Talk Media's 30-second and takeover ranges and Blindspot's self-serve plays from about $40, where it had said no 30-second rate was published; PJX's production and installation figures keep its "as high as"; the vendor pedestrian figure runs 64% above the Alliance's, not 60%; the Zoning Resolution 81-732 summary now includes the 50-square-foot tier and the 40-foot limit; and OUTFRONT's two-sheet is described as undated and marked coming soon.

Corrected 25 October 2026. The Alliance's screens page carries 18 entries, not 17, because New Tradition and Dream Outdoor each appear twice.