Frequently Asked Questions

Edifice specialises in maximising income for property owners through advertising sites, parcel lockers and peak power.

Our FAQ page provides answers to questions that our property owning partners regularly ask Edifice about billboards

Edifice provides a supersized property owner platform, bringing together many of the UK’s most recognisable and largest property owners as we manage over 9,000 sites. This allows Edifice to providing the very best terms for our property owner partners through our scale across the very valuable advertising, e-commerce and power generation markets.

Many landowners and occupiers may be unaware of the potential of their properties for developing outdoor advertising, parcel locker and peak power sites. This is where Edifice can help by bringing our best in market expert knowledge, to help realise valuable yet, untapped, revenues.

Edifice is proud that it provides a completely neutral ‘whole of market’ approach to income generation for all of our property partnerships extracting the very best terms for our property clients. Additionally, Edifice also offers the opportunity to capitalise existing income streams if property owners would consider selling their existing advertising incomes.

A Brief History of Outdoor Advertising

There are many names for what originally was referred to as billboards or advertising hoarding poster sites. Today the UK industry refers to the marketplace as ‘Out Of Home’ (OOH) media. This covers all outdoor media opportunities potential audiences can view and be targeted for when out of home. This can also include digital screens and building development banners and wraps. OOH is now common place in shopping centres, railway stations, airports and on the Underground as well as roadside.

How Do I value an Advertising Site?

The OOH industry may lead you to believe sites individually are not as valuable as you might think, but this can be because every advertising contractor/media owner has different requirements and needs on different streets in different towns and cities. The value can be greatly affected by its neighbouring advertising competition, the exclusivity of its location, height and the position on the street, the advertising site’s planning history and documentation, the potential to upgrade the site to the latest media technology and the existing advertising agreement that is in place.

Making The Outdoor Advertising Industry work for property owners

The OOH advertising industry is a very valuable niche but growth industry. The UK OOH industry is leading the global trends and changes with exciting new technology and valuable new potential and the attributed income potential growth. The industry is now worth £1bn annually with all OOH sites requiring a physical location. This is likely to grow with the roll out for Smart Cities and 5G with advertising sites becoming critical infrastructure as the urban landscape changes to adapt to the need to link citizens and cities with new high quality free Wi-Fi and 5G. Where there is property ownership (or not in some cases) OOH advertising billboard sites can usually be found and a legally binding property agreement in place, a lease or advertising license will need to be negotiated. This can be on government or council owned property, or privately owned land.

Advertising Agreements

A major point of friction in the property owner – Media owner relationship is the need for media owners to have long term agreements with their own specific commercial termination rights and the need for property owners to have a strong asset and agreement with the media owner providing a strong covenant and also be able to terminate when they require. This can leads to obvious conflicts and Edifice provides the legal expertise to provide a risk free agreement with Edifice protecting property owner’s rights as well as providing valuable agreements for our media owner customers. Within OOH provided agreements there can also be clauses allowing the media owner to reduce rent, or walk away from their assets for a multitude of reasons, often at their own discretion. This is where an agreement that at first appears to be secure can often cause most frustration for property owners. Edifice can negate these issues by the scale of the Edifice business acting across 9000+ UK properties

Industry Standard Advertising Contractor Provided Agreements

Usually, if the OOH advertising contractor provides an agreement it will be heavily weighted in their favour. Professional advice should always be sought on any legally binding agreement. Quite often, and usually deep within the advertising hoarding license agreement there will be terms

giving the contractor automatic rights for renewal, or
passing business rate liability on the advertising billboard poster site to the property owner if it is higher than the contractors capped rate and/or
potentially allowing the contractor being able to reduce rents or
unilaterally declare a rent holiday at their own discretion.

One major cause of concern for property owners can be whether their agreement is a license or lease. The contractor, for example, may call the document they wish you to enter an advertising agreement, however within this may contain many lease terms. To save confusion and to protect property owner’s rights most property owners wish to have their agreement contracted out of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 Part II.

I want to sell my Advertising Site for a capital Sum

Yes, you can and Edifice is the leader in this market. Edifice allows property owners to dispose of freehold and long-leasehold advertising sites where there is a secure income stream in place. In some instances, Edifice can look at purchasing land with the potential for an advertising site, subject to planning.

Business rate Caps

All business rates for the advertising poster site should be the responsibility of the advertising contractor and Edifice is well placed to push these back to the media owners within the Edifice agreement. These are not the liability of Edifice or our property owner partners

But all Media Owners are the same.

No they are not! Every OOH media owner has different property and media product requirements, offer differing quality of covenants, agreements and terms. The OOH media owner portfolio of property is unique to their own requirements. It is important that any agreement should state exactly what format of advertising and technology is being granted and the relevant up to date and best price clearly stated preventing media owners changing, altering and upgrading the products on your property, revaluing their asset and income at their own discretion. Edifice’s agreements prevent this and many other media owner strategies to extract value without payment to the property owner.

Are all advertising poster sites standard sized (the same?)

No. What one media owner thinks your site is best suited to can be visually and commercially very different to another media owner with their own specific needs. Edifice can help identify which format will be of interest to which media owner, have the best chance of securing planning permission if necessary and what the maximum value of each format in each region can be achieved.

I have a development/construction site

Development sites provide an ideal platform for both property owners and developers and media owners to maximise strong income opportunities by the means of short term development screening hoarding. By the provisions of Regulation 6 of the 2007 Regulations, Class 8 Deemed Consent permits the erection of any number of advertising hoardings around a development site where “building operations” are to commence within three months of the erection of the panels if the development is primarily commercial. There are a number of terms and conditions that apply to Class 8 but this is a valuable opportunity for developers to generate a positive income stream when all the others are negative. The construction period will need to significant as the investment by the media owner in erecting the hoardings will need to be recouped during the display period.

What about Banner Wraps and Shrouds?

Class 8 Deemed Consent does not apply to building wraps due to their size and so express consent will be required which will be considered on the basis of public safety and visual amenity. Local planning authorities are generally more amenable to express consent applications for a temporary banner display where scaffolding will otherwise be encased in plain white scaffold safety sheeting. Some local authorities such as Birmingham City Council have been forward thinking and have actually adopted a planning policy to allow temporary commercial banners and building wraps on scaffolding subject to certain terms and conditions

But I do not want to let my site to a large corporate media owner

There is an alternative to letting to the national and international corporate media owners who there are only a small but strong handful of national media owners. However, when you consider local and regional needs, including local sales Edifice can boast 50 different media owners with very different bidding patterns for what may appear the same opportunity. This may be the best way to maximise the income by breaking the opportunity down and providing to a local business

Additionally, you may want to sell your billboard or rent it for more so, of course, Edifice can also buy your site.

Still haven’t found what you were looking for?

Want help maximising your billboard revenue or want a quote for the sale of your billboard?
Then email us at info@edifice.uk.com