A Guide to Buying Programmatic Digital Out of Home

What is programmatic digital out of home?

Programmatic digital out of home (pDOOH) is an advertising strategy that utilizes machine learning to automate the planning, buying, targeting, selling, delivering and measuring of ads across digital screens, out of the home. The term “out of home”, by definition applies to all outdoor media or advertising that exists outside of a consumer’s home. Whether that is a bus shelter, commissioned street art or a digital billboard along the highway, the key difference between out of home and digital (online) advertising is that it is a one-to-many medium rather than a one-to-one, such as an ad on social media or in the results of a Google search.

What makes programmatic digital out of home unique is its ability to serve ads that are contextually relevant and enable the narrowing of audiences into what we like to call a “one-to-select-many”, improving precision and spend efficiency. This has caught the attention of advertisers globally. In the US, programmatic digital out of home ad spend will reach $875.1 million by the end of 2024, per an EMARKETER December 2023 forecast. That’s a growth of 36.1% YoY and Media Owners are taking notice. Publishers are digitizing and programmatically enabling more of their inventory in unique environments – fueling the potential for flexibility, real-time advertising, and data-driven targeting for brands. This makes programmatic digital out of home an essential strategy to add to a buyer’s media mix in 2025 and beyond.

In this extended article we’ll take a comprehensive look at the benefits of programmatic digital out of home, how to plan and build a strategy, develop creative, launch your campaign and measure its outcomes. We’ll be breaking down processes and terminology with the hopes of equipping you with the knowledge to decide if programmatic digital out of home is right for your media mix. 

Benefits of programmatic digital out of home

Globally available supply

Supply-side partnerships with a vast network of media owners means marketers have the potential to buy inventory on some of the most prestigious screens around the world. Accessing these digital screens almost instantly and through a single platform means leaving a global impression is easy.

Adaptability and real-time optimization

Programmatic pricing models are flexible and give brands and agencies the power to increase or decrease ad spend, adjust campaign parameters, or even pause campaigns altogether in response to external changes, all in real-time. This adaptability also applies to how quickly you can create and launch a campaign. Programmatic digital out of home is offered through a self-serve platform where you are in control – upload creative, set pricing and a schedule and you’re able to launch a campaign in a matter of minutes.

Precise audience targeting

As previously mentioned, pDOOH utilizes highly sophisticated tools to help buyers target the right audiences at contextually relevant moments, enabling sensible delivery to achieve the greatest impact and cost efficiency. This is done through a myriad of features such as custom predefined audience segments that possess desirable demographic traits (income, age, gender, interests) and/or location, proximity geofencing and heatmaps. We will take a closer look at selecting your targeting parameters later in this article when we discuss goals.

Priced fair through auction

Like digital (online) advertising, pDOOH benefits from a market-clearing auction framework powered by machine learning known as real-time bidding (RTB). This ensures pricing is transparent, scaleable, instant and fair. Two market options are available; Open Exchange and Private Market Place (PMP). Open Exchange is self explanatory, where inventory prices are decided and exchanged in real time in a non-exclusive auction. PMP is when Media Owners offer premium inventory to a select, limited buyer group at a set price. This market marries the benefits of programmatic with exclusivity of direct deals and allows buyers to compete in different markets depending on their budget and campaign goals.

How to plan a programmatic digital out of home campaign

Select your targeting parameters

Before beginning a DOOH campaign, it’s important to define your objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs); these will help determine your targeting parameters. Remember, the value of programmatic digital out of home is in its ability to serve ads that are contextually relevant and deliver meaningful impressions. Impression based buying is far more cost effective and efficient than simply buying space on a screen or billboard, whether that is for a defined period of time or in a loop. Let’s look at two key ways to target using pDOOH:

Targeting by audience

Every successful DOOH campaign is rooted in strong messaging and creative, and reaching audiences in the right place and at the right time.

Leveraging data to better understand target audiences and their movement patterns adds incremental value and stronger results, driving meaningful connections and audience engagement.

This audience-centric approach allows for advertisers to customize their targeting strategy using pre-built or bespoke customized segments that can be further leveraged for retargeting across mobile and other digital channels, maximizing effectiveness of the campaign from a holistic perspective.

With the right technology partner, precision targeting is as simple as it’s ever been, and here’s how it can be done:

Predefined Segments

A programmatic DOOH platform like the Hivestack DSP can present media buyers with a variety of pre-built demographic and behavioral audience segments, all of which are ready to be activated at the click of a button. This robust selection of pre-built audience segments are created by combining numerous demographic, behavioral, and psychographic datasets from multiple industry-leading data partners. Some examples are; new parents, movie lovers, or pet owners.

Custom Audiences

Creating custom audience segments according to your campaign goals is ideally the most effective way to ensure you are reaching your true target audience with precision and accuracy. Advertisers have the ability to layer multiple different datasets together, creating a bespoke audience segment from demographic data, predefined segments, curated geo-locations and POIs and even their own first party data from a CRM.

Custom audiences optimize the delivery of your campaign by prioritizing delivery on screens where and when the concentration of your target audience is highest. 

With data-driven precision targeting, combined with real-time campaign monitoring and measurement capabilities, programmatic DOOH has the potential to redefine ROIs in out of home.

Targeting by Location

Historically location was the primary focus in OOH, of course, location is still incredibly important, but what has changed is how you select the location of your campaign. Combining DOOH geolocation data with unique sources of audience data, marketers can better understand audience movement patterns, density and concentration of people relative to a point of interest (POI), business or DOOH enabled screen. The result; choosing the right screen for your campaign.

Screen Targeting

Sometimes, you know exactly where you want to run a campaign, and for these instances, you can select screens directly in the platform.

Geo-Location Targeting

Targeting by location is as easy as creating a geofence around points of interest (POIs) such as a retail business or event. This is done using automated polygon tools in the platform directly on a map rendering. Targeting parameters play a crucial role in effective ad delivery as they set the foundation for an impactful location-based targeting campaign. Using historical mobile location data, DOOH screens can then be activated when there is a concentration of mobile devices detected in those set geofenced areas.

A similar tactic is to target the consumers that pass through a geofenced area on their path to purchase.

A programmatic digital out of home pre-flight checklist

Before diving into your campaign, it’s crucial to have a comprehensive briefing checklist that outlines important details. This checklist should include:

• • Campaign objectives: Clearly define the objectives of the campaign, such as increasing brand awareness, targeting a specific audience, or driving foot traffic to stores.
  • Campaign budget: Outline the total budget allocated to the campaign and if relevant, what the split by market should look like and any CPM guidance.
  • Target audience: Identify the specific target audience for the campaign (e.g. demographics, interests, locations). Provide any relevant insights, or audience segmentation data that can help shape the campaign strategy.
  • Targeting options: Select days of week, time of day, point of interests, preferred environments, creative formats and any supporting data triggers, such as weather, traffic, events, etc.
  • Advertising period: Provide the duration of the campaign. It can be evergreen/always on, or a fixed time period.

• Creative execution: If known, provide information about the creatives that are expected. Landscape or portrait, static or dynamic, as well ad any advertiser or category restrictions.

• Post-campaign measurement: Consider your post-campaign measurement approach before you get started. Hivestack offers measurement products, known as lift studies, that quantify the impact of a DOOH campaign. Two types of lift studies are available: Footfall Lift and Brand Awareness. Visit the Measuring Your Campaign section below.

Creative tools & tips

With features like advanced audience targeting, brands now have the ability to leverage their creativity on DOOH screens and build relationships with their audiences at scale. The key to success is in designing a memorable creative and to keep DOOH in mind when building assets for omnichannel campaigns and/or leveraging existing creative.

One aspect to prioritize when building creative for DOOH is readability, especially for roadside placements. Researchers have found that the average viewing time of a billboard is four seconds. Ensure that the message is simple yet impactful enough to capture the attention of your audience. 

Here are a few creative tips & best practices for strong DOOH creative:

Proper formatting

Make sure your creative file is set up to the appropriate size and format. Most media and technology suppliers will provide information related to both static and video requirements in order to make sure your ad is optimized and ready for approval. Failing to do so can limit the screens you are able to run your ad or your creative may be rejected.

Contrast and color

In order to successfully shift people’s attention to your ad, use optimal colors and color schemes within the given environment. If your ad is running on a roadside billboard, be conscious of greenery. If it is in a more urban environment, muted colors will fail to resonate. Pro tip: don’t forget that contrast is needed for visibility and accessibility.

KISS method

Keep It Super Simple. We recommend using a basic content structure (headline, subhead and call-to-action) and limiting your count to 8 words or less for static images.

Typography and font size

Certain fonts don’t translate well into digital formats particularly thin cursive fonts, and especially if they’re too small. Make sure to run a visibility test to confirm that your text will appear legible at its display size.

A clear call-to-action (CTA)

Champion a clear and concise action without any competing, or confusing messaging. A website URL, a hashtag, or a “visit us in store” message are all good call-to-actions, but only if it is clear to potential customers and helps move them down the sales funnel. Remember to KISS and that viewing time is an average of 4 seconds. Try not to say too much with your CTA.

Imagery

Only use owned or licensed imagery. No watermarks or pixelated graphics, as quality is key. Avoiding stock imagery means avoiding the chance of someone else using the same image elsewhere. It happens more often than you think.

Context and relevance matter

Create content that is either contextually or situationally relevant to the end user. The ad should fit in with its surrounding environment. Also consider these factors when scheduling the ad, time of day, location and weather can all enhance the way audiences may engage with an ad. Afterall, that is the beautiful thing about serving ads programmatically!

Interactivity

Using motion and interactive content where applicable (QR codes, augmented or virtual reality, etc) can definitely elevate the user experience. Remember, DOOH is a different medium than a static OOH billboard, so take advantage of the technology!    

For more creative best practices, read our article on the “Measuring the effectiveness of digital out of home”. 

Launching & activating a programmatic digital out of home campaign

Choosing your inventory

Media owners assign a venue type to their inventory to indicate the environment where each screen is installed. For example; a bus shelter, gym, condo building elevator, and so on. Buyers can then use venue types as an inventory selection criteria when setting up line items.

When choosing venue types, it’s worth considering the format and creative requirements of each venue type and ensuring that the message is relevant for the context and environment in which the ad will be seen (remember our creative tip on contrast and color). It’s also possible to see the potential impressions on any given screen integrated via your chosen programmatic DOOH partner. 

Common sizes

While screen sizes differ across markets and number in the hundreds, some common height and width specs according to location are:

• 1920×1080 – a landscape format found in gyms, bars, quick service restaurants, doctor offices etc.
• 1080 x 1920 – portrait format that can be found in residential locations, gas stations, street furniture, urban panels, bus stops, charging stations and more
• 720×208 or 560×160 – a format typical of taxi tops
• 1400×400 and 840×400 – large street side billboards

There are thousands of screen sizes worldwide which can be overwhelming when building or reformatting creative assets. The Hivestack DOOH Planner can help you prioritize the best screens for your campaign.

Optimizing in-flight

Unlike many traditional advertising channels such as radio, TV, or static OOH ads, programmatic DOOH can be optimized in-flight, and ad location can be changed to maximize impressions and reach a targeted audience. DOOH combines the high-impact creative associated with many traditional channels, with the advanced audience targeting and measurement capabilities of online. 

The Hivestack Platform offers advertisers real-time data intelligence about audience movement patterns and high traffic locations, empowering them with a new ability to adjust their strategy “mid-flight” in order to maximize the performance of their campaign(s). This provides the user with a deeper understanding of which time of the day, day of the week, location, and on which screen their campaigns are performing the best.

With the power of this information at their fingertips, advertisers can shift budgets or creative while the campaign is still running and maximize spend across the highest performing areas based on their KPIs, ultimately reaching audiences with more precision and efficiency. They can also react to worldly events in a timely manner, something we saw first hand during the global pandemic.

Measuring programmatic DOOH success

Unprecedented measurement

Compared to traditional advertising methods, digital out of home offers marketers measurement capabilities that help substantiate efforts and provide ROI. It is one of the many reasons it has grown to be so popular. In order to determine the impact of your campaign, comprehensive measurement solutions exist within the Hivestack DSP that allow you to track your progress and results through a variety of custom dashboards and reports. These are made possible through third party anonymized mobile data,  proprietary insights and analytics and enhanced by strategic partnerships with industry leading mobile and data resources. Let’s take a look at the metrics available in real-time or “in-flight” and once a campaign is complete.

In-flight campaign measurement enables advertisers to optimize their budget against audiences and screens that are driving the best performance post-launch. Metrics such as impression delivery by hour, timeline of delivery by hour-of-day and percentage of delivery across each individual screen allows marketers to carefully monitor the overall pacing of a campaign and pinpoint inventory that is over performing or under delivering.

Brand lift is a method used to measure the effectiveness of a campaign. It involves comparing the behavior of two groups: a control group that has not been exposed to the campaign, and a test group that has been exposed to the campaign. By comparing the two groups, advertisers can determine the impact of their advertising on various key performance indicators (KPIs) such as brand awareness, message recall, purchase intent, and other relevant metrics. 

Footfall attribution is a similar methodology to brand lift, but measures the increase in visitor traffic to a selected location. Sometimes referred to as “footfall traffic lift,” it is particularly useful for marketers representing a retail or restaurant location. A footfall traffic lift analysis is achieved by monitoring corresponding anonymized mobile devices IDs observed near a screen and again visiting a specific commercial location.

Whichever method you choose, these measurement tools allow buyers and media owners to truly understand the impact and ROI of their DOOH campaigns.