Month: February 2019

Product News | October 11, 2021

The recipe for a great DOOH campaign

“Tell an amazing story.”
To get people engaged, and to give your campaign another life, Ric Albert, creative director at Grand Visual, thinks a solid story is a must. This is how a piece of digital out-of-home content goes from a simple advertisement to having a true impact on people’s lives.
Ric took part in our Broadsign Summit Creative Panel this year at ISE, along with Keith Nilsen from voodooh, and Oskar Op de Beke from Kinetic Worldwide, to chat about how creativity and dynamic content are the building blocks of a successful digital out-of-home campaign. If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to watch the panel, and check out our Q&A with Ric below, where we pick his brain to see why he thinks is a creative DOOH campaign is important for brands to tell their stories.

Q&A with Ric Albert

Why should a brand add DOOH to their marketing mix?

Digital out-of-home has a different type of reach than any other medium at the moment. With digital signage, we’re able to create real-life experiences and interactions that aren’t quite possible in the world of print and online. Out-of-home can evoke emotions and can add contextuality and relevancy, much of which is lost with other channels.
Digital out-of-home is still a fairly new medium and is showing impressive growth. It’s less saturated than other media channels and has yet to encounter the same ad-blindness and scroll-past effect that online channels are currently struggling with. Out-of-home is a great tool to cut through ad clutter and is a smart addition to a multi-channel campaign.

What is the recipe for a great digital out-of-home campaign?

There is one main ingredient for a DOOH campaign to be amazing, and that’s a great creative concept. The technology or anything else involved in the campaign is merely a tool to build a story that will truly engage the audience. They are what help the story come to life.
At Grand Visual, we craft stories that lead to a valuable end-experience for the user, and that’s whether we’re working on a campaign for a few people walking by or a group of people gathered in Times Square. No matter the screen, the goal is to create something that the audience wants to interact with.
We often see DOOH campaigns that are too focused on the tech aspect, not really thinking about how the creative concept will fit in. For a campaign to be a success, you need to first consider the story that needs to be told. Then you need to think of how the technology will bring you there.
Now once you have your story settled, another ingredient necessary for a successful campaign is collaboration between all different media partners. This can be a large list, from screen media owners to in-house creative agencies to developers, so it is important to select partners that are all aligned with the campaign vision.
The best campaigns are those where you don’t necessarily notice how it’s built or why it’s built – they just leave you with a smooth, creative and interactive campaign. And if you have a campaign that engages people, you’ve done what you needed to do.

How do brands determine the goal of their digital out-of-home campaign?

As with any channel that doesn’t provide a clickable link, having purely quantitative numerical results can be a bit difficult with digital out-of-home. While the launch of a campaign can definitely be correlated to values like sales uplift, an increase in store foot traffic or website visits, it’s also important to have goals based on how successful the campaign was at storytelling or audience engagement.
As one of the media channels showing the most growth, brands clearly understand the value DOOH brings. With its reach and storytelling potential, DOOH is particularly strong for brand awareness and retention campaigns.
Of course, campaign goals have an impact on the type of story you want to tell with a DOOH campaign. Do you want to use your DOOH campaign to create social media buzz? Do you want participants to interact with the screen in the moment? Do you want to amplify a multi-channel campaign? These will all influence the storytelling approach you take.
The main thing brands need to do here is work closely with their DOOH creative agency or team to determine the appropriate messaging for their needs. DOOH is definitely not one size fits all and each campaign should be unique in its strategy and resulting campaign creative.

How does digital out-of-home work in a multichannel campaign?

What’s interesting about DOOH is that it can be a bit of a chicken and the egg situation. Which comes first? A great DOOH campaign that gets shared on social media or makes the news? Or a cool social campaign that drives dynamic DOOH content?
At Grand Visual, we’ve worked on campaigns from both of these angles. Whether we’re creating an original piece for DOOH, or working with existing content from TV or online, the key here is to make sure messaging is consistent across all channels, but at the same time tailoring it for DOOH.

What are some of your favorite digital out-of-home campaigns?

I love campaigns that can evoke a reaction or some sort of emotion. As an industry, we should collaborate and celebrate everyone who pushes the creative limits of the medium, from media owners to tech platforms to creative agencies.
One of my favourite campaigns in the last year was by Spotify. The campaign was dynamic, clever and used user-generated data.l. They were able to create a story that was completely localized in each country, and delivered to DOOH screens around the world ensuring a global impact.

I also loved the campaign for Spider-Man, Into the Spider-Verse, where visitors at Times Square were able to transport themselves into the movie’s animation style in real-time. There’s something so exciting about thousands of people interacting with a campaign. An advertisement that really becomes part of someone’s life is one that truly has strength.

About Ric


Ric Albert is the Creative Director of Grand Visual, an award-winning production and creative technology company that is driving dramatic evolution across the Digital Out of Home Landscape.
Ric has been the driving creative force behind many of Grand Visual’s ‘Media First’ campaigns which have gone on to win Cannes Lions, D&AD’s and Creative Circle awards. Ric has directed AR tigers along London’s Oxford Street for Pepsi, orchestrated a dance-off with Mickey Mouse for Disney Parks, ensured the Oreo eclipse was the stand-out celestial event of the year and delivered large-scale Digital Out of Home campaigns for over 45 Warner Bros. films globally.

Product News | October 11, 2021

Digital out-of-home for holiday marketing: How to win high-intent shopping moments

A busy two-level shopping mall atrium with shoppers gathered along the upper-floor railing. A large digital billboard dominates the center, displaying a SportChek holiday advertisement beneath a glass skylight.

If your holiday marketing strategy is still built around the same playbook from a few years ago, you’re already behind. 

In 2026, consumer trends point to a more deliberate, hybrid holiday shopper: one who starts deal hunting months before decorations go up, takes more time to research and compare options, and routinely moves between mobile devices, AI tools, and physical stores before making a purchase. As a result, the path to purchase is becoming longer and more fragmented, creating dozens of high-intent micro-moments where brands have an opportunity to inform or influence what shoppers do next.

As agencies and marketers seek ways to connect digital discovery with brick-and-mortar purchasing behaviour, digital out-of-home (DOOH) inventory offers them a unique opportunity to reach consumers at key moments throughout their IRL holiday shopping journey. And with programmatic making campaigns faster and easier to launch and adjust, DOOH can play a vital role in an omnichannel holiday strategy — with the flexibility to meet campaign needs as they evolve.

Why holiday shopping micro-moments matter in 2026 — and how DOOH can help

Major sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain at the centre of the holiday shopping calendar, but they represent just a few moments in a purchase journey that now starts earlier and moves fluidly between digital and physical touchpoints. According to new Microsoft research, the average holiday conversion journey now takes 52 days, with 63% of U.S. shoppers starting before Halloween. That journey is also increasingly hybrid: per Salesforce, 42% of shoppers visit stores to buy products they previously researched online, while 79% use smartphones while shopping in-store. 

It’s within this extended, omnichannel journey that holiday shopping micro-moments occur: reflexive, high-intent windows when consumers turn to a device or their surroundings to act on an immediate need, like:

  • Comparing gift ideas or researching products
  • Looking for a nearby store or point of sale
  • Seeking inspiration for holiday hosting, decorating, or gifting
  • Checking local product availability, promotions, or seasonal offers
  • Making a last-minute purchase

For advertisers, these moments create opportunities to reach shoppers with messages that reflect what they need in that moment. And because DOOH combines broad reach and repeated exposure with the ability to deliver relevant messaging in real-world contexts — often close to the point of purchase — it’s particularly well suited to making those moments count.

Chanel campaign displayed on Simon Media’s DOOH inventory at The Galleria in Houston, Texas

Strategy #1: Leverage advanced targeting to reach holiday shoppers at high-intent moments

Use advanced DOOH targeting to activate screens in and around the physical locations where your target customers are most likely to be — particularly when proximity to a store, venue, or other destination signals stronger purchase intent.

Depending on the campaign objective, advertisers can narrow their inventory using:

  • Location targeting: Go broad with nationwide or city-level campaigns, or get more granular with zip codes, POIs, custom geofences, and individual screens. A retailer promoting a Black Friday sale, for example, could prioritize screens within walking or driving distance of its stores.
  • Audience targeting: Use first-party data and third-party audience segments to identify screen locations where target customers are most likely to be present — whether that’s parents shopping for toys, beauty buyers looking for gifts, or travellers heading home for the holidays.
  • Venue and asset targeting: Match placements to the activity happening around them, from gift shopping at malls and stocking up at grocery stores to dining, celebrating, and travelling over the holidays.
  • Dayparting: Adjust when ads appear to align with relevant shopping and travel behaviours throughout the day.
  • Layered targeting: Combine multiple signals to get more precise. For example, target mall-adjacent inventory within a specific New York City geofence during peak afternoon and evening shopping hours.

De’Longhi recently put this kind of high-intent targeting into practice with a programmatic DOOH campaign promoting its Eletta Explore coffee machine during the competitive holiday shopping season in Poland. By activating inventory in high-traffic shopping malls, reaching gift-seekers close to the point of purchase, and using dayparting to align ad delivery with peak shopping hours, the campaign ultimately drove a 121% lift in brand preference and a 190% lift in intent to interact with the brand or visit its website.

For holiday campaigns focused on purchase-ready micro-moments, targeting can extend all the way into the store. According to Salesforce, 77% of consumers plan to shop in physical stores this holiday season, making in-store advertising a particularly valuable way to reach shoppers when they’re most likely to make a purchase. The same targeting principles still apply: advertisers can prioritize the stores, audiences, locations, and times most relevant to what they’re selling rather than treating all retail foot traffic equally.

Cineplex Media DOOH screen at CF Carrefour Laval in Quebec, Canada, directs shoppers to nearby Bell stores

Strategy #2: Use dynamic creative and contextual triggers to match DOOH messaging to the moment

Targeting can help put a holiday ad in the right place at the right time. Dynamic creative in DOOH takes that relevance a step further by adapting the ad itself based on what’s happening in that moment. Using signals like time, weather, location, proximity, product availability, or other live data, advertisers can automatically serve the creative variation that best fits the current context. 

For holiday campaigns, that opens up practical ways to make creative more useful and timely:

  • React to the weather: Promote coats, hot drinks, delivery, or indoor activities when temperatures drop, then switch creative as conditions change.
  • Make proximity useful: On screens near a store, dynamically show the closest location, distance, or a directional call to action.
  • Adapt as shipping deadlines approach: Shift from standard delivery messaging to expedited shipping, pickup, immediate availability, or digital gift cards as Christmas gets closer.
  • Build urgency around key sales moments: Use live countdowns to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, promotional deadlines, or other limited-time offers.
  • Respond to inventory levels: Feature products or offers based on what’s currently available at nearby locations rather than promoting something shoppers can’t buy. 

The most effective dynamic DOOH creative strategies are built around signals that meaningfully change what’s useful or relevant to the shopper, allowing advertisers to adapt messaging at scale without manually building and trafficking every possible variation. 

READ ALSO: What marketers need to know before launching their first dynamic DOOH campaign

Strategy #3: Pair physical DOOH exposure with mobile activity to extend reach and drive action

Mobile plays a major role in holiday commerce, with eMarketer projecting that nearly 60% of online holiday purchases will happen on mobile devices in 2026. That makes mobile and DOOH a natural pairing, with each channel reinforcing the other across the shopping journey. OAAA research also found that 74% of mobile users took action on their devices after recent exposure to DOOH ads, while an Ocean Neuroscience study found consumers are 48% more likely to engage with a mobile ad after seeing the same campaign on a DOOH screen.

For holiday campaigns, advertisers can use that relationship in several practical ways:

  • Location-based retargeting: Extend a DOOH campaign with follow-up mobile ads served to audiences who were near campaign screens. A shopper who encounters a holiday campaign while out shopping, for example, could later see a mobile ad featuring the same product or promotion. 
  • Mobile push notifications: For opted-in app users, use location signals like geofencing or beacons to deliver relevant notifications when they’re near a store or campaign location — for example, alerting loyalty members to an offer nearby.
  • Interactive QR codes: Give shoppers a direct path from a DOOH ad to an offer, coupon, product page, store locator, or other mobile experience. Dynamic QR codes are particularly useful on screens where consumers are close enough — and have enough dwell time — to scan.
  • In-app AR experiences: Use DOOH creative as an entry point to augmented reality experiences on a shopper’s phone, like virtual product try-ons, interactive holiday experiences, or content designed for social sharing.

The best approach depends on what you want the shopper to do next. QR codes, push notifications, and AR can encourage action while a shopper is still nearby, while mobile retargeting can reinforce the message later in the purchase journey. 

Read more: 3 reasons why you should combine digital OOH and mobile advertising for maximum impact

Ready to make the most of this year’s holiday shopping micro-moments? Explore our inventory catalog to discover premium digital screens in high-impact locations.

Product News | October 11, 2021

How VAST Billboards is redefining out-of-home in New Zealand

VAST digital billboard beside a busy roadway in Christchurch, New Zealand, displaying the VAST Billboards logo.

In a market long shaped by a handful of dominant players, VAST Billboards has carved out a distinct identity as New Zealand’s independent, Kiwi-owned out-of-home (OOH) network. Headquartered in Christchurch, VAST has built its growth story not by trying to out-scale the biggest networks, but by complementing the broader OOH landscape with a strong presence across regional cities, suburban corridors, and strategically important locations.

We sat down with Gary Rosewarne, Head of Growth Strategy at VAST, to talk about the company’s rapid growth, its programmatic ambitions, and why Broadsign has become a core part of how VAST runs its media operations.

A network built on purposeful growth

VAST’s strategy is built on a simple but deliberate idea: the network doesn’t need to be the whole plan — it needs to be the right complement to it. “We don’t believe VAST needs to be the whole plan,” Rosewarne explains. “In Auckland, for example, we can provide a complementary layer around established networks; in Christchurch, we have significant strength across suburban and arterial environments; and regionally, we give brands access to audiences across a growing number of markets.”

That positioning shapes where VAST builds inventory and how it prices and packages it, with a focus on keeping the network competitively priced and easy to buy. Its predominantly digital, large-format footprint extends beyond New Zealand’s largest cities into regional markets including Tauranga, Hamilton, Napier, Hastings, Taupo, Nelson, Blenheim, Timaru, and Invercargill, across both landscape and portrait formats.

“The objective isn’t simply to accumulate screens, but to add locations that create useful geographic spread, strengthen coverage and give advertisers access to audiences they may not be reaching elsewhere,” says Rosewarne. “That combination of metro, suburban and regional inventory is really what defines the VAST network.”

VAST digital billboard on Ferry Road in Christchurch, New Zealand

Serving national brands and local businesses alike

The company’s advertiser base spans national agency clients, major brands, and local direct advertisers. In 2025, its network saw strong growth across these segments, becoming an increasingly important part of national campaign plans while maintaining its strong connection to businesses looking to reach audiences in their local communities.

VAST has also used its own network to experiment with new ways of engaging audiences and demonstrating the potential of OOH. One example is Bill Is Bored, a campaign that used curiosity-driven billboard creative to capture attention and encourage people to continue the experience online. More recently, the Win A Grand – Your Region, Your Voice campaign invited New Zealanders to share what matters most in their local communities. The responses helped inform Beyond the Big Three, a research study examining the scale, value, and audience opportunity of regional New Zealand beyond the country’s three largest cities.

Together, these campaigns have given VAST a way to test ideas, gather audience insights, and demonstrate what OOH can achieve beyond simply delivering impressions. “These projects let us test ideas on our own network, learn from the response and build evidence that can ultimately help advertisers use OOH more creatively and effectively,” Rosewarne says.

That combination of clarity of purpose and consistent execution earned VAST recognition as Beacon’s 2026 Sales Team of the Year—one of New Zealand media’s leading industry awards, and a notable achievement for a relatively small team competing against some of the most established names in OOH.

“In 2025, VAST grew revenue at 5x the pace of the broader market, but the story was bigger than the numbers,” Rosewarne says. “We stopped thinking about ourselves as simply selling billboards and became much more focused on solving planning problems.”

Central to that shift was the “complete, not compete” philosophy, helping agencies see where regional and suburban audiences could add incremental value. Being a smaller, independent player also gave VAST room to move quickly. “Being small probably helped as well: we could be nimble, authentic, try things, have some fun and respond quickly when an opportunity emerged.”

VAST roadside screen in Ashburton, New Zealand

Why VAST chose Broadsign

As both the network and ambitions have grown, so has the need for technology that can scale alongside them. That search led VAST to the Broadsign Platform.

“For us, Broadsign came down to trust, reliability and fit,” Rosewarne says. “We wanted an established platform with deep expertise in OOH, rather than something we would potentially outgrow. As we scale, the technology sitting underneath the network has to be dependable, but it also has to give us the flexibility to keep evolving how we package, manage and monetise inventory.”

Broadsign’s position within the programmatic DOOH ecosystem and its established relationships with major trading platforms and partners were other deciding factors, particularly as programmatic became a larger part of VAST’s business. “Broadsign brings experience, expertise and an established ecosystem that we can grow alongside.”

Programmatic as a new route to market

Programmatic buying has shifted how the media owner thinks about its inventory, moving the conversation beyond locations and weeks toward a more dynamic view of audiences, availability, and demand. “It creates another route into the VAST network and makes it easier for advertisers who may already be buying other digital media programmatically to include OOH within that ecosystem,” Rosewarne explains. “For a challenger network like ours, reducing that friction is particularly valuable.”

That shift has also prompted VAST to rethink how it values and packages inventory for programmatic buyers, treating it as a distinct buying pathway with its own use cases rather than a variation of direct bookings. Just as importantly, programmatic expertise has been embedded across the sales team, helping ensure the right buying approach is recommended for each campaign.

Looking ahead

VAST’s long-term vision centers on purposeful growth, not expansion for its own sake. Rosewarne describes the goal as building “a highly useful independent OOH network that has a clear role within the New Zealand market”, one that continues to strengthen its regional footprint, protect its position in Christchurch, and selectively add metropolitan inventory that creates genuine new audience opportunity.

Looking at the broader industry, Rosewarne sees OOH becoming increasingly measurable, connected, and flexible, with programmatic adoption and audience measurement both continuing to mature. “Our job is to combine those capabilities with the things that still make OOH powerful: great locations, simple creative, local relevance and real-world visibility,” he says. “If we can keep doing that while remaining independent, nimble and easy to work with, we think there is a very exciting future for VAST.”

Ready to scale your network without scaling your workload? Learn more about the Broadsign Platform here.