10 Benefits of Programmatic Digital-Out-of-Home (pDOOH)

Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home refers to the automation of buying, selling, and delivering digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising.  Enhanced through innovative technology and machine learning, programmatic DOOH empowers advertisers with the tools to target audiences with unmatched precision and scale. This approach ensures that ads appear in the most strategic locations and opportune moments, maximizing visibility and impact. As such, programmatic DOOH offers a dynamic and cost-effective solution for brands looking to enhance their strategy. 

This article will explore the top 10 benefits of incorporating programmatic DOOH into your advertising strategy. 

Key Highlights

• Programmatic DOOH uses AI, machine learning, and real-time data to plan, deliver, and optimize ads efficiently and reduce waste.

• High-impact DOOH  ads in premium locations with audience concentration boost brand awareness and recall.

• Ads served in contextually relevant environments lead to higher engagement and better outcomes.

• Rapid campaign activation and optimization allow advertisers to respond to market changes with timely messaging quickly.

1. Enhanced Targeting

Leveraging pDOOH maximizes exposure, enhancing brand awareness and engagement. 

Programmatic DOOH leverages advanced targeting capabilities to ensure ads are delivered precisely at the right time and the right location. For example, pDOOH can serve ads to commuters on their way to work, targeting them based on the time of the day, location, movement patterns, and even weather conditions. This precise targeting means that brands can engage with potential customers when they are most likely to be receptive to their messages, thus enhancing the effectiveness of the campaign. Additionally, the ability to adjust ads in real-time based on live data ensures that the content remains relevant and impactful. 

There are many ways you can leverage programmatic DOOH advanced targeting: 

• Use your first-party data to create and target audiences
• Create persona-based audience targeting based on the locations people visit 
• Get third-party audience data 
• Re-engage customers with mobile retargeting 

The enhanced targeting capabilities are one of the drivers of pDOOH growth. For instance, research by IAB Australia found that data and targeting are the main drivers for buying programmatic DOOH.

Source: IAB

Supercharge your programmatic DOOH campaigns with real-time optimization. Contact us today. 

2. Higher Brand Exposure 

One of the key advantages of programmatic DOOH ads is their ability to reach their audiences in the real world, globally. These ads capture commuters on their way or shoppers at the time of purchase. By serving the ads as messages tailored to specific audiences, locations, and times, it extends the brand’s reach, allowing it to scale campaigns anywhere across the globe.

Leveraging pDOOH maximizes exposure, enhancing brand awareness and engagement. 

Increasing brand exposure is one of the main objectives for programmatic advertising among marketers. 

Source: OAAA

An example of how Perion’s Hivestack increases brand exposure is the Fiji Airlines campaign. The attention-grabbing campaign was activated against a pre-built demographic, behavioral, and contextual audience within the Hivestack DSP. 

Thanks to programmatic DOOH, the campaign was a huge success and increased the impressions by 40% worldwide, reaching 79M impressions globally. 

Source: Perion

3. Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting in programmatic DOOH campaigns delivers ads that match the content and environment where they’re displayed, enhancing relevance and engagement. Relevance is the key to contextual targeting. Ads should be placed where they make sense for the user. pDOOH strategically displays ads in placements where they are most likely to reach viewers. For instance, athletic equipment can show ads near gyms or sports equipment stores. 

An example of how programmatic DOOH delivers contextual advertising capabilities is the Samsung Malaysia campaign using Perion’s Hivestack’s SSP. By leveraging dayparting capabilities, Samsung served 105 dynamic versions of day and night creatives. The ads were strategically displayed when target audiences were most concentrated, with night-specific ads running from 6 pm to 6 am. 

The campaign achieved over 3 million impressions to 2.1 million users, with the highest footfall recorded during peak commute hours on key days, validating Samsung’s consumer behavior hypotheses. 

Source: Perion

Another contextually-centric solution in programmatic DOOH that is rising in popularity is dynamic creative or DCO ads. Leveraging the power of pDOOH, AI, and machine learning, DCO allows for campaign creative to be served dynamically based on select targeting criteria or triggers such as weather, time of day, UV index, or even live sporting events or concerts. Another advantage of contextual targeting for programmatic campaigns is its cost-effectiveness. Contextual targeting allows advertisers to place ads only where they are most relevant. Learn more about DCO for programmatic DOOH here. 

4. Speed to Activation

Programmatic DOOH allows advertisers to efficiently and seamlessly plan, approve, activate, and optimize campaigns in real time, significantly reducing the time required for campaign rollout. Adjustments can be made swiftly, allowing brands to react to market dynamics accordingly. By automating the buying, delivery, and optimization processes, programmatic DOOH not only accelerates the launch and execution of campaigns but also enhances its adaptability. Therefore, advertisers can stay ahead of the competition by continuously refining their campaigns to align with shifting market conditions and consumer behaviors. 

Faster campaigns also help bring on faster results. That’s why we’re seeing an increase in advertising across DOOH.. Programmatic DOOH is a key driver of growth across the DOOH landscape, which Statista forecasts will reach $29.8 billion by 2029. 

Source: Statista

5. Real-time Optimization

One of the most significant advantages of programmatic advertising is its ability to adjust campaigns on the go. This flexibility lets brands make real-time decisions based on performance data, enabling instant changes to bid strategies, targeting parameters, and creative content. Such adaptability ensures that campaigns remain relevant and effective in dynamic market conditions. 

Moreover, the automation behind programmatic advertising is a key driver of real-time optimization. This improvement is attributed to the efficiency and precision of automated bidding and optimization, which ensures that ads reach the right audience at the right time. 

6. Creative Adaptability

The adaptability of creatives in programmatic DOOH advertising allows brands to fine-tune their messages in real-time, aligning with specific audience segments and varying contexts. This capability leads to more personalized and relevant ads that resonate better with the audience. As a result, brands experience enhanced engagement and higher conversion rates, as the content is more likely to capture attention and drive action.

Thus, brands can continually optimize their creatives, ensuring they remain effective across different locations and times, ultimately maximizing the impact of their campaigns. 

An example of the impact of creative adaptability is the Nexon campaign in Seoul. The brand’s action role-playing game (RPG) “Building & Fighter” allows users to use GPS tracking to fight over real-world landmarks all around South Korea. 

Source: Perion

Nexon used the Hivestack platform to select well-known buildings in Seoul and integrate them into the game by displaying large digital billboards on them. Thanks to Hivestack’s programmatic DOOH capabilities, the brand served 84 ad versions customized with the location and the player’s names. 

The results of this two-week campaign generated over 1.6 million impressions, using the audience concentration data to target each custom audience group at the best time. 

7. Ad Effectiveness & Performance 

Another key advantage of using programmatic DOOH is its ability to adapt ads based on effectiveness and outcomes. In traditional OOH advertising, and even in DOOH, measuring attribution is extremely complicated and ambiguous. Insights from programmatic platforms provide a clearer view into ad or screen performance and attribution, and allow for campaigns to optimize against the best-performing inventory and/or creative ads.

One-third of marketers are unaware that DOOH has attribution analysis capabilities, according to the Media Decision’s Maker Study of 2021. The other two-thirds use only a few from the wide range of available metrics. The rise of programmatic DOOH changed the landscape, and in the latest iteration of the study in 2024, 58% of marketers see DOOH as an important part of omnichannel campaigns. 

Programmatic DOOH allows you to capture campaign attribution data in real-time and make changes on the fly. Additionally, with advanced tracking and data analytics, programmatic advertising offers precise attribution models that can identify the most impactful channels. 

Maximize ROI with Perion’s Precision Targeting. Request our demo today. 

8. Deeper Campaign Insights & Analytics

Programmatic advertising provides access to a wealth of data and insights, offering reliable metrics that are critical for tracking and optimizing advertising campaigns. By leveraging data analytics, advertisers can access detailed insights into forecasting a planned campaign or performance of an in-flight or completed campaign, allowing them to gauge the effectiveness and adapt if needed.

This wealth of data ensures decisions are based on accurate performance metrics, helping advertisers refine their strategies and maximize ROI. For instance, audience concentration or screen scoring metrics help determine potential visibility or reach of an ad before delivery, while screen-level delivery metrics offer insights into how the campaign is performing by location or by format in real time, leading to informed and impactful campaign adjustments. 

Being able to have accurate metrics results in marketers trusting more in the process and investing more in programmatic advertising. As a result, the global programmatic DOOH market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 31.5% from 2024 to 2030, from $237.2 in 2023. 

9. Unskippable, Unmissable Yet Not Disruptive 

DOOH ads are not affected by ad blockers, which gives them a tremendous advantage over other forms of advertising

Intrusive ads can significantly contribute to user fatigue, leading to a growing reliance on ad blockers. Recent research reveals that approximately 912 million people globally are using ad blockers across desktop and mobile platforms. The widespread adoption of ad blockers shows the frustration consumers feel towards disruptive advertising tactics.

Source: Statista

However, DOOH ads offer a unique advantage as they are not affected by ad blockers, which gives them a tremendous advantage over other forms of advertising. This unique capability allows brands to reach their audience without being benign and intrusive, providing a seamless and engaging experience. As a result, DOOH advertising stands out as an effective alternative in this area of increasing ad avoidance. Furthermore, DOOH is seamlessly integrated into out-of-home environments, providing an urban or organic canvas within our daily lives. 

Cases like the Nulo campaign draw attention to responsible pet ownership without interfering. This premium North American pet food brand partnered with Perion’s Hivestack to drive reach and awareness using programmatic digital-out-of-home (DOOH). The brand used the “Proximity Geofencing” tool so the ad appears on DOOH screens within 5 miles of pet retail stores. 

Source: Perion

The campaign resulted in a 40% lift in brand interest, which is 15% over the industry benchmark. The product consideration and brand familiarity also lifted 38% and 25% respectively, over the industry benchmark. 

10. High Engagement Rates

Programmatic DOOH’s ability to incorporate interactive and dynamic creatives further elevates experience and engagement. Research by eMarketer (via OAAA) showed that 76% of people who viewed a digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertisement took action. There are a few reasons for this success. First, the spectacular canvas of DOOH is often eye-catching and engaging, and, depending on the creative, has strong potential to drive users to additional screens such as mobile or online for direct action. Second, interactive ads invite viewers to participate, making the viewer experience more memorable and engaging. Additionally, the flexibility to adjust creatives in real-time enables brands to stay relevant, keeping the message fresh and in tune with current events or trends. This combination of precise targeting, engaging creatives, and seamless integration with other channels makes pDOOH a powerful tool for driving higher engagement, action, and deepening brand connections. 

Taking Programmatic DOOH to the Next Level with Perion’s World-Class DOOH Platform 

Perion’s award-winning platform elevates programmatic Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising by integrating advanced technology and strategic insights. The platform offers a comprehensive solution that enhances ad targeting, optimizes campaigns in real-time, and maximizes ROI. 

With benefits such as seamless omnichannel integration, data-driven optimization, and extensive global reach, Perion empowers advertisers to deliver more impactful and personalized experiences. Key features include AI-driven bidding, pre-built and custom audience data and targeting solutions, and robust analytics, all designed to ensure that campaigns are not only efficient but also effective in achieving desired outcomes.