In our screen-driven digital age, the importance of real-world visibility can’t be understated. Today’s audiences are growing increasingly fragmented across their personal algorithms, making that first valuable step, brand awareness, that much harder to achieve.
That’s where out-of-home advertising continues to exceed marketers’ expectations. According to eMarketer, in 2025, out-of-home ad spend hit a new record of $9.46 billion, growing 3.6% YoY. Most of this growth was driven by, you guessed it, Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH). Between 2024 and 2025, DOOH spend increased by an astonishing 10.5%, growing to 36.3% of the total out-of-home spend.
The growth doesn’t stop there. eMarketer predicts that OOH spending will continue to rise at least through 2030, largely driven by DOOH spend, at a rate of 6.2% YoY.
Why This Matter for the Average Marketer
The steady growth of DOOH spend points to a few different things.
1. Brands are investing where attention can be found.
Above, we mentioned that algorithm-driven digital engagement is making it more difficult for advertisers to cut through the noise. If your brand isn’t directly related to your target audience’s online preferences, creating ads that get the attention of your audience can be tough. Brands investing in DOOH are discovering that reaching people in the real world captures attention (outperforming digital by 13.3% to 3.9% for ad awareness).
2. In out-of-home advertising, DOOH provides the flexibility marketers need to drive performance.
While traditional OOH is incredible for reach, inflexible pricing, the manual buying process, and slow creative adjustment is limiting. Programmatic DOOH offers a meaningful improvement over traditional on all counts while retaining the incredible reach and awareness benefits, explaining its rapid growth.
3. As screentime shifts, DOOH offers real-world connection.
According to eMarketer, nearly 50% of US adults say that they’ve deleted a social media or messaging app due to stress or anxiety. What’s more, 55% post less often now than they did five years ago and 51% feel like it’s work to maintain an online presence. Marketers need to meet their audiences where they actually spend time, and increasingly, people are looking away from their apps and at the real world.
What We’re Doing to Help You Take Advantage
With GroundTruth, DOOH is faster, easier, more powerful, and more accessible than anywhere else. With built-in foot traffic attribution and cross-channel retargeting, marketers like you can easily bring campaigns to life where your audience lives, works, and spends time. In actual minutes (or less if you build with our AI assistant, Terra), you can launch across the digital screens of your choosing at the time of day you prefer. Then, after someone sees your ad, you can retarget across our other channels, including mobile, desktop, and CTV, instantly. Finally, you can prove it all works, with last-touch attribution that proves when someone visits your store after seeing your ad in the wild.
As with all of our channels, we’re constantly fine-tuning and seeking new ways to ensure that your campaign drives the results you need. For DOOH, that means a few recent upgrades:
In-Flight Edits: Gone are the days of waiting until the campaign concludes to add new creative. With GroundTruth, you can build and introduce new ad groups to active DOOH campaigns, automatically aligning with existing start and end dates. In-Flight Edits allow you to refresh your creative, introduce new messaging, and more quickly iterate and improve on your campaigns.
Bid Recommendations: We get it. Even in GroundTruth Ads Manager, DOOH can behave a little differently from other digital channels. That’s why we provide bid recommendations for all active campaigns, providing guidance on how to keep pace and ensure your ads are properly served during your campaign.
DOOH is a powerful tool. We believe it should be within reach for every marketer. It’s that simple. From massive multi-city campaigns to highly-targeted local advertising, GroundTruth DOOH is ready for you.
Try DOOH Today
Programmatic DOOH may be growing incredibly quickly, but as a percentage of total programmatic spend, it remains a relatively small player. That means big opportunities for brands to grab their share and drive brand loyalty and in-store visits.
Ready to launch your own DOOH campaign? Create your GroundTruth Ads Manager account today, and start exploring our platform (no minimum spend required). And, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact us.
