What is Digital Out-Of-Home (DOOH)?
Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) is advertising displayed on digital screens in public spaces outside the home, rather than on a person’s personal device or television. Digital out-of-home advertising covers stadiums, shopping centers, retail stores, museums, transportation hubs, restaurants, and corporate buildings, among many other settings. Instead of static posters or printed billboards, DOOH screens show video, images, weather data, menus, and other content that can change throughout the day. This gives marketers a way to reach customers in the public realm, at moments when they’re near a store, a transit stop, or a venue, not just sitting at home.
Where Digital Out-of-Home Advertising Appears
DOOH shows up across a wide range of formats and locations, including:
- Digital billboards along highways and city streets
- Screens in shopping malls and retail storefronts
- Menu boards and displays inside restaurants
- Transit displays in airports, subways, and bus shelters
- Digital signage at stadiums, arenas, and live events
- Screens in office lobbies and corporate buildings
Because these placements sit in high-traffic public spaces, DOOH advertising works well alongside real-world targeting strategies that connect a person’s physical location to the ads they see.
Programmatic DOOH: Buying Digital Out-of-Home at Scale
Programmatic DOOH refers to buying and managing digital out-of-home ad space through automated, data-driven platforms rather than negotiating each placement manually. With programmatic DOOH, marketers can plan campaigns across many screens and locations at once, adjust creative based on factors like weather or time of day, and use audience data to decide where and when an ad runs. This is a shift from traditional DOOH buying, which typically involves fixed contracts for specific billboards or screens over a set period.
Platforms like GroundTruth’s programmatic solutions let advertisers manage programmatic DOOH buys through the same interface used for other channels, making it easier to coordinate DOOH with mobile, audio, and other formats in one campaign.
Measuring the Impact of Programmatic DOOH
Because programmatic DOOH is data-driven, it can be tied to measurement in ways traditional billboards can’t. Marketers running programmatic DOOH campaigns can use GroundTruth’s omnichannel measurement to connect those DOOH impressions to actual store visits or sales. This closes the loop between a screen someone passed on the street and the actions they took afterward, something that was difficult to track with traditional out-of-home formats.