Land O'Lakes today announced an advertising campaign with Getty Images and Clear Channel Outdoor that pairs imagery of contemporary rural life with placements in New York City during Advertising Week, followed by a wider rollout around National Farmer's Day on October 12, according to Land O'Lakes.

In Shorts

A farm cooperative, Land O'Lakes, is putting pictures of everyday rural life on big advertising spaces in New York City, working with the photo company Getty Images and the billboard company Clear Channel Outdoor. The pictures respond to Getty research saying that only 5% of popular US visuals are set in rural places and that nearly two-thirds of people in rural communities feel advertisers do not understand them. After New York, the companies say the campaign will spread to more cities around October 12, though they have not named the cities or said how many screens are involved.

What Land O'Lakes announced

The Minnesota cooperative issued its statement from Arden Hills today. According to Land O'Lakes, the campaign is "bringing authentic images of modern rural America to some of the country's most visible advertising spaces." The first phase sits in New York City during Advertising Week New York, which runs from October 5 to 8. The event is held at The Penn District in Manhattan, according to Advertising Week, while the statement places the imagery in Times Square and "other high-profile locations surrounding one of the advertising industry's most influential gatherings."

A second phase follows. According to Land O'Lakes, the campaign will expand after Advertising Week to additional metropolitan markets across the country, framed as a nationwide effort in recognition of National Farmer's Day on October 12. The statement names none of those markets.

Heather Malenshek, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Land O'Lakes, is scheduled to take part in Advertising Week New York, where she will discuss accurate representation and the part brands can play in a fuller picture of rural America, according to Land O'Lakes. In the statement she said the goal is to "close the gap between how rural America is perceived and how it truly lives."

The creative and the data layer

The imagery comes from Repicturing Rural, the collection Land O'Lakes and Getty Images started in 2025 through the Modern Rural Collective, a network that Land O'Lakes convenes. Alongside existing material, the campaign includes newly captured content built around additional themes of rural identity. Two Getty Images products sit behind it, according to Land O'Lakes: the VisualGPS audience-insights platform and a bespoke collection from the company's Custom Content team.

Tawnya Crawford, vice president of Custom Solutions at Getty Images, said in the statement that many brands "want to reach rural audiences more effectively, but they're often working with an incomplete visual picture of rural America." She added that the work shows how brands can "move beyond identifying representation gaps and create visual content that can be trusted."

The placement partner

Dan Levi, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Clear Channel Outdoor, framed the medium's role in the statement: "Out-of-home has always been a powerful platform for brands to create moments that stay with people." He said Clear Channel can help bring "a more authentic view of modern rural life to audiences at scale."

The numbers behind the campaign

Four figures carry the argument. VisualGPS Insights found that nearly two-thirds of Americans living in rural communities feel advertisers do not understand them, according to Land O'Lakes, and that only 5% of popular U.S. visuals are set in rural locations. Searches for rural America imagery rose 22% in 2024 and continue to climb, the statement adds. Marketing Report, covering the 2025 start of the collaboration, put searches for rural-related content at a further 8 percent higher in the first part of 2025, citing the same platform.

Two caveats attach. Every one of these figures originates with Getty Images, a commercial partner in the campaign, and the statement supplies no sample size, survey date or margin of error for the two-thirds finding. The 2025 project drew on VisualGPS and YouGov research, according to MediaPost; today's statement credits VisualGPS alone.

The supply side is better documented. Since 2025, according to Land O'Lakes, the initiative has engaged 38 photographers to produce 3,500 new stills and videos, and the collection will keep being updated through early 2027. In its first month the library recorded 200,000 downloads, according to Chief Marketer's report of an interview with Malenshek, in which she described the Getty project as a small share of the overall marketing budget. No cost figure accompanied today's announcement.

Where the placement sits in the out-of-home market

Out-of-home remains a large medium that is still shifting toward screens. US revenue reached a record $9.46 billion in 2025, up 3.6% year over year, with digital out-of-home accounting for 36.3% of the total and growing 10.5%, according to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America. A single play on such a screen reaches many people at once, so audiences are estimated through modelled multipliers rather than counted, and since November 2022 the IAB Tech Lab's OpenRTB standard has carried a dedicated object for these screens, which allows inventory to be sold through real-time bidding. Clear Channel's boilerplate in today's statement refers to the integration of data analytics and programmatic capabilities.

On returns, research released in October 2025 by Keen Decision Systems put the marginal return of out-of-home at $7.58 per incremental dollar, against $5.52 for the average media type, though the channel accounts for less than 1% of all media spending. That is a modelled estimate from a single study, not an audited outcome. As for Clear Channel's footprint, it operated 64,521 displays at June 30, 2026, of which 5,145 were digital, according to Billboard Insider's reading of the company's quarterly report.

What would the New York placements be, then? Digital or static, bought or donated, sold programmatically or booked directly? The statement does not say. It gives no screen count, flight length or audience estimate, and it names no measurement partner. Malenshek has described the Modern Rural Collective's success as a matter of whether brands adopt the assets rather than how many impressions accrue, according to The Current's summary of a podcast appearance. An activation on Times Square screens and a library of free-to-use pictures are therefore being judged, at least implicitly, by different yardsticks.

Two partners in transition

The statement is silent on the corporate circumstances of two of its three participants, and both are documented in public filings and trade coverage.

Clear Channel Outdoor

Clear Channel is partway through a change of ownership. The company agreed on February 9, 2026 to a $6.2 billion take-private deal with Mubadala Capital and TWG Global at $2.43 per share, a 71% premium to the $1.42 close on October 16, 2025, with the investor group stating plans to invest in data, measurement and transaction platforms. Stockholders approved the merger on May 12, 2026, according to Clear Channel, which said on August 5 that it expected closing by the end of the third quarter of 2026, subject to remaining approvals including review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. A Regulation FD item in a filing dated October 1, 2026 still refers to obtaining the remaining required regulatory approval as an outstanding condition to closing, according to Clear Channel.

The portfolio has also narrowed. Bauer Media Group completed a $625 million acquisition of Clear Channel's Europe-North segment on March 31, 2025, and Clear Channel completed the sale of its Spain business on August 4, 2026 for approximately $132.3 million, according to the company. Today's boilerplate lists the company as NYSE: CCO and does not mention the transaction.

Getty Images

Getty Images faces a different set of circumstances. The New York Stock Exchange suspended trading in Getty Images Holdings on September 29, 2026 and opened delisting proceedings, after the shares settled at 12 cents on September 28, down roughly 93% over twelve months. The company carried about $1.47 billion in face-value debt against $51.6 million of cash at June 30, 2026, and a going-concern warning was filed on August 10. Its merger with Shutterstock, agreed on January 7, 2025, was ended by a termination notice on July 7, 2026 after the UK Competition and Markets Authority required divestiture of Shutterstock's editorial business. A Debtwire report of September 11, cited in the same coverage, said Getty was preparing for a possible Chapter 11 filing; as of September 30, no filing had been disclosed.

The boilerplate in today's statement lists Getty Images as OTCPK:GETY. A teaser on the same page for the October 2025 initiative shows NYSE: GETY. The statement does not explain the change.

For the marketing trade, the operating detail matters as much as the listing. In its second quarter Getty reported revenue of $229.1 million, down 2.5%, and chief executive Craig Peters said revenue from advertising agencies fell 13%, which he tied to consolidation among buyers and in-house production that now includes generative tools, according to the same coverage. Getty has also been moving toward AI platforms: a multi-year display agreement with OpenAI, announced on June 21, 2026, places its licensed images in ChatGPT search and discovery. Today's statement describes the Repicturing Rural collection as available now and to be updated through early 2027, and says nothing further about Getty's financial position.

Why the announcement matters to marketers

Three threads meet in a single press release. The first is representation as a planning input. A research programme has produced two headline numbers, and those numbers now underpin a paid-media effort in Times Square. Whether that pairing changes how agencies and brands brief imagery is not something the statement can answer, but it shows a data product being converted into an out-of-home argument.

The second is the supply chain for stock imagery. The collection is designed, according to Land O'Lakes, to help brands, publishers and media organizations reflect rural communities more accurately, and MediaPost reported in 2025 that it is available through Getty Images, Unsplash and the Modern Rural Collective's own website. Content created for one brand's campaign therefore also enters a shared library. That sits against a stock-imagery business whose agency channel, by Getty's own account, is shrinking.

The third is ownership of the physical media. Out-of-home is being bought, sold and financed in larger blocks, from Clear Channel's pending $6.2 billion buyout to VIOOH's connection of OUTFRONT screens to automated buyers, described by PPC Land as putting roughly a quarter of the US digital market within reach of programmatic demand. Within that market, this campaign involves a media owner awaiting a final regulatory approval and a content partner whose shares have been suspended from NYSE trading.

What the announcement leaves open

The list of unstated items is long. No second-phase markets were named. No screen count, format, flight dates or budget was given. The statement does not say whether the space was purchased, donated or exchanged, whether any audience measurement or brand-lift study will accompany the flight, or how the Getty financial situation bears on the collection's update schedule. What it does supply are dates (October 5 to 8 and October 12), three named executives, and the research figures that frame the effort.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Land O'Lakes, a member-owned agribusiness and food cooperative headquartered in Arden Hills, Minnesota, with Getty Images (visual content and the VisualGPS research platform) and Clear Channel Outdoor (out-of-home media owner). Named executives are Heather Malenshek of Land O'Lakes, Tawnya Crawford of Getty Images and Dan Levi of Clear Channel Outdoor.

What: An advertising campaign that places imagery from the Repicturing Rural collection, plus newly created content, in high-visibility out-of-home spaces, supported by Getty research stating that nearly two-thirds of rural Americans feel advertisers do not understand them and that 5% of popular US visuals are set in rural locations.

When: Announced today. The first phase runs during Advertising Week New York (October 5 to 8, 2026), with expansion to additional metropolitan markets in recognition of National Farmer's Day on October 12. The collection is due to be updated through early 2027.

Where: New York City, including Times Square, and then unnamed US metropolitan markets.

Why: Land O'Lakes and Getty Images say the campaign is meant to narrow the gap between how rural America is perceived and how it lives, by putting authentic imagery in prominent urban locations and giving brands, publishers and media organizations a library to draw on. The announcement leaves unstated the budget, screen count, measurement approach and second-phase markets, and it does not address the pending ownership change at Clear Channel or the trading suspension at Getty Images.