Chicago
The short answer
Chicago prices as a top-10 DMA: premium digital units at $20-$25 CPM, standard units inside the national $5-$18 band, 4-week digital flights $3,500-$25,000 AdQuick 2026. No Chicago-specific rate card is published; anchor your deck to the tier band and get per-unit quotes for the corridors you actually want.
The signature placements
- Expressways: Kennedy, Dan Ryan and Eisenhower approaches carry the region's heaviest vehicle counts; these are the volume buys.
- The Loop and River North: street-level and wallscape context where pedestrian formats compete with bulletins.
- CTA: rail and shelter inventory runs through transit contracts, quote-only like every US transit system; structure explained in transit.
Where Chicago sits in the tiering
Between the coasts and the mid-markets: expect quotes above a mid-market like Indianapolis and generally below marquee NYC/LA premium units, but inside the same published tier band. The honest deck line: "top-10 DMA, $5-$18 CPM band, premium units to $20-$25 (AdQuick 2026), unit quotes pending". That sentence survives a CFO; a point estimate does not.
What makes a Chicago flight worthwhile
At the tier band, $10,000 buys roughly 400k-2M impressions (10,000 / 25 x 1,000 to 10,000 / 5 x 1,000) depending on unit mix. Weather and seasonality matter here more than in LA: Q1 loops go unsold more often, which is negotiating room; timing levers are in negotiation. A first Chicago test fits the $25k single-market structure.
Compare: New York, Los Angeles. Bands: rate board.