JC Decaux has posted its first quarterly revenue decline in years, signalling that even the world’s largest outdoor-media owner isn’t immune to shifting advertiser sentiment. The company reported €926.1 million (US$1.08 billion) in Q3 2025 revenue, a 2.3 percent year-over-year decline (–0.9 percent organic), driven by weakness in Street Furniture and Billboard. Transport was the lone bright spot.
It’s a noticeable reversal from H1 2025, when JC Decaux grew organically by over three percent and delivered double-digit gains in digital. The company had warned that Q3 would land slightly negative due to elevated 2024 comparables around the Olympics and UEFA Euro. However, the downturn still highlights a broader cooling across global ad markets – even if it was just a temporary downward trend caused, among others, by the so-called liberation day in April.
Germany is telling a similar — and perhaps more dramatic — story. Market leader Ströer is contending with what invidis describes as the worst slump in the German out-of-home sector in more than 30 years, with Q3 marking a rare moment where traditional posters outperformed digital. Ströer’s DooH segment, which has reliably grown at double-digit rates, was essentially flat. Year-to-date results remain positive, with around 10 percent growth in digital and roughly five percent in combined OoH/DooH revenue. However, the sudden Q3 slowdown highlights how quickly short-lead digital campaigns can vanish when advertisers tighten their budgets.
The “silent crisis,” as invidis describes it, didn’t arrive with a crash. Instead, advertiser caution crept in quietly, driven by tariff fears, softer economic signals, and a general reluctance to commit to short-notice digital campaigns. DooH’s biggest strength — flexibility — becomes a vulnerability in moments like this. When budgets freeze, digital campaigns with week-long or even day-long lead times are often the first to be cut. Longer-planned static campaigns, by contrast, tend to hold steady, which explains the unusual Q3 reversal in Germany, where print outperformed digital.
In contrast, JC Decaux’s DooH business is bucking the trend with global revenue growth of 6.1 percent in Q3. Digital-out-of-home now accounts for 41.8 percent of total revenue, with programmatic rising significantly by 12.3 percent and now accounting for 10.8 percent of DooH revenue.
Still, growth was much lower than in previous quarters which also illustrates how large-scale events distort year-over-year comparisons. Last year’s Olympic and Euro lift created a uniquely high baseline for European markets. Without that boost, and with continued weakness in China, Q3 reflects more typical trading patterns — but in a softer environment. The company expects Q4 organic growth to be roughly flat, indicating stabilization but not an immediate bounce back.
The fundamentals of OoH remain strong, and both companies expect improvement into 2026; however, Q3 serves as a reminder of how sensitive ad markets, especially digital media, are to economic uncertainty. After years of momentum, global OoH has hit a rare slowdown and the industry will spend the coming quarters finding out whether it’s a temporary dip or the start of a new, more measured growth cycle.
(Images: JCDecaux/Ströer)