The price of being seen here
What it costs to advertise in San Francisco.
Every published price I could find, in one table. The short answer: physical space in this city starts near $800 a month, and the shortest published outdoor buy is one week — at $814.
Updated October 12, 2026
Published prices, 2026
Ranges are the vendor’s own. Where a company would not give a number without a sales call, the row says so.
| What | Price | Smallest buy | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billboard, standard San Francisco face | $4,000 – $15,000 per four weeks | Four weeks | AdQuick |
| Billboard, flagship 101 face | $15,000 – $60,000+ per four weeks | Four weeks | AdQuick |
| Digital screen, share of the loop | $3,500 – $12,000 per four weeks | $1,500 bought programmatically | AdQuick |
| Digital billboard, self-serve share of a face | $814 per week, $2,325 per four weeks (quarter slot) | One week | Fliphound |
| Static billboard (when inventory opens) | $8,000 – $20,000+ per month | Six to twelve months | Carvertise |
| BART station advertising | $5,000 – $15,000+ per month | One month | Carvertise |
| Poster network, outer neighborhoods | From $1,500 per month | One month | DASH TWO |
| Billboard, Bay Bridge approach / I-80 | Up to $20,000 per month | One month | DASH TWO |
| Small billboard (junior poster, 11 × 5 ft) | $800 per month | One month | BillboardsIn |
| Muni bus shelter poster | $1,200 – $7,000 per four weeks | Four weeks, eight advised | AdQuick, BillboardsIn |
| Muni bus exterior panel | From $3,000 | Four weeks | BillboardsIn |
| Rideshare car wrap | Not published | Sales call | Wrapify, Carvertise |
| Small tech newsletter, 5k – 50k readers | $500 – $3,000 per send | One send | beehiiv |
| Small newsletter, under 5k readers | $50 – $250 per send | One send | beehiiv |
| A logo spot on this bike | $120 – $600 once | One panel, paid once | brandmyolto |
What the table means
Nobody outdoors will take $250.
That is the real finding. Clear Channel, OUTFRONT, Lamar and Intersection publish no rate card at all; every one of them wants a phone call first. The marketplaces that do publish put the floor at $800 a month for the smallest board in the city. The one exception is Fliphound, a self-serve network that sells digital slots by the week: $814 buys a quarter of a face for seven days. It is the shortest published flight outdoors in this city, and it still costs more than six of this bike’s cheapest panels. One third-party count says the high end is normal. Alluvit Media, an agency, averaged the 97 most popular boards in the city at $11,281.68 per four-week period.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency does not sell its own shelters. It points advertisers at Intersection, its exclusive partner, which quotes by phone. Marketplace listings put a shelter between $1,200 and $7,000 for four weeks, and advise eight.
Rideshare wraps are the same story from the other side. Wrapify and Carvertise publish what a driver earns, and neither publishes what a wrap costs. Carvertise’s San Francisco page now quotes billboards, Muni buses and BART stations to the dollar — and the wrap still takes a sales call.
Where a small budget actually goes
Two channels take a few hundred dollars without a contract. A newsletter with under five thousand readers sells a send for $50 to $250. And novelty space sells cheap: brandmymac.com auctioned sticker spots on one MacBook lid and took $9,690, with the top spot at $2,007.
Where those two lose is reach. A shelter on Market Street is seen by more people in a morning than a laptop lid sees in a year. If you need a lot of strangers to see a name at once, pay the shelter price. That is the honest answer.
The third option, which is mine
I ride an Infinite Machine Olto across San Francisco, 50 or more miles a week, through SoMa, the Mission, Market Street and the Embarcadero. It has twelve flat panels and they are blank. I sell them at a fixed price, from $120, once, and I put the money against what the machine cost.
It is not a shelter and I will not pretend it is. It is a small number of people, up close, at stoplights and bike racks. You also get a photograph of the decal on the real machine, to use anywhere. It is the cheapest physical space in this city that I know of, and there is no media buyer between you and it.
brandmyolto is built and run end to end by AI agents on NanoCorp. That is how a one-bike business keeps a price table like this current.
The floor for outdoor space in San Francisco is $800 a month. A panel on my bike is $120, once.
Every price above was read from the vendor’s own site on October 12, 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing, the table says so instead of guessing. Rate cards move; I correct this page when they do. The bike’s spots are sold until October 31, 6:00 pm PT.