Q&A with Danny Thijssing, Head of Outdoor at Abovo Maxlead

Programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) has become one of the most powerful channels for reaching audiences in the real world, offering the precision, control, and data sophistication once exclusive to online advertising. Driving that momentum in the Netherlands is Abovo Maxlead, the nation’s largest independent media agency.

Danny’s path into OOH may have started by chance, but the agency’s rapid growth in the OOH space is anything but accidental. With strategic investments in talent, technology, and measurement, his team has proven how powerful the channel can be. 

We sat down with Danny to explore the agency’s approach, the acceleration of their DOOH business, and why having a point solution DSP like Broadsign’s OutMoove has become essential for delivering business outcomes for their clients.

Can you start by telling me a little bit about yourself and your role at Abovo Maxlead?

Sure. I’m Head of Outdoor here at Abovo Maxlead. We’re the largest independent agency in the Netherlands. Together with my team, I oversee all forms of out-of-home advertising, encompassing everything from bus shelters and posters to large-format billboards, highway billboards, various types of digital out-of-home advertising, and brand activations.

I’ve been here for about a year and a half. I actually made the switch from working on the publisher side to the media agency side. Since then, I’ve been focused on building up a dedicated team of OOH consultants. We’ve really invested a lot in the knowledge, talent, and technology specifically for out-of-home, to ensure our clients get the maximum value out of the medium.

Watch to learn about Danny’s unlikely path into the OOH industry:

How would you describe Abovo’s approach to out-of-home advertising?

Our approach is to give the medium the attention it truly deserves and needs. OOH is a visual medium that lives in the real world. It’s essential that our out-of-home consultants visit as many live campaigns as possible. Nothing beats spotting the campaign out there at the selected locations. And it brings a lot of pride and joy for both the client and the agency. Because we invested in a dedicated team and the right technology, we are able to be true consultants.

We prioritize spending time advising clients and planning campaigns ourselves, but in order to be truly effective, we need an efficient media planning and buying system. We believe our consultants are better advisors if they have the right tools and can focus on providing personal attention to their clients.

Watch to see how Danny’s team ensures OOH gets the hands-on attention it needs and deserves:

From your experience, where does out-of-home typically fit into the media mix? 

OOH is incredibly versatile. It can fit into a lot of different strategies, whether you’re aiming for a big awareness campaign or you’re more performance-driven, looking for sales or store visits. One of the best things is that it doesn’t interrupt your entertainment; it’s non-intrusive. It’s a very safe visual touchpoint to adopt in a media mix. It’s also challenging because it asks the client and the campaign to deliver the message and brand in a short, powerful way. That’s not always easy, but when it’s done right, OOH delivers great value. And programmatic DOOH is the tool that gives us the full range of opportunities and control. We can plan smarter campaigns with targeting, different creatives, and specific moments. It gives us all the tech and insights we need to make an impact.

Watch to discover how Danny’s team positions OOH within clients’ wider campaigns to deliver both awareness and performance goals:

Creative is a crucial determinant of campaign success. How do you approach creative with your clients, and how do you tailor it for this medium?

The creative side is the most important part of any campaign. We integrate the creative discussion very early in the strategy and proposal phase. The power of OOH is that it’s visual. We show our clients a lot of pictures—we give them examples and even bad examples of what not to do —so they can visualize where their message will live. We also put in slides for creative pre-tests to give them immediate feedback.

This early involvement and attention for creatives is key because when we talk it through, we get smarter campaigns. We’re seeing more creative variety, where clients adjust the creative based on the location. For instance, we get one creative for the train stations and a different one for inner-city screens or even different days of the week. This has been a really effective development.

Watch to learn the Abovo team’s collaborative approach to OOH creative, including pre-testing with clients:

Recently, programmatic DOOH has experienced a data renaissance. And this has been particularly true of reporting and attribution capabilities. How have these new advancements affected your work?

The measurement updates in the Netherlands over the last year and a half have been crucial. We now have new research that gives us a solid foundation, so most publishers and agencies are speaking the same language in terms of currency and methodology. That trust is there now.

To measure beyond brand KPIs, we rely on programmatic DOOH for two main reasons:

• Data superiority: With direct buying, you get very little insight— maybe just planned and realized context. With the DSP, we get granular data: hourly, by the city, and by the creative.
• Proving impact: This granular data is the basic building block for measuring business outcomes. We can check for uplift by comparing areas where we had more media pressure versus those where we didn’t. We’re taking a more data-driven approach to prove that OOH drives business KPIs, not just brand KPIs.

Watch to discover how the Abovo team reports on campaigns and the benefits of data insights from programmatic DOOH:

You’ve been able to grow the digital out-of-home side of your business significantly. What’s been the driving force behind your success?

Our successful scaling of pDOOH is rooted in two key pillars: the passion of our people and the efficiency of our tech stack. My team has a genuine interest and passion for the medium. They want to control, tweak, and optimize everything to drive maximum insights. This drive, combined with the right tooling, is the key factor in our success.

Watch to hear from Danny on the key to his team’s success:

Speaking of buying tools, what’s your experience with OutMoove DSP been like? And how has it enabled your team?

OutMoove has been a game-changer because it gives us unprecedented control and insights. I thought I knew a lot about OOH, but I keep learning more now that I have access to all this data. The platform provides a full overview of all screens, allowing our consultants to check, test, and instantly validate their planning decisions. When talking to clients, we adhere to a ‘show, don’t tell’ philosophy. We show them the platform to demonstrate its ease of use and the complete transparency of their buy.

OutMoove is also an excellent onboarding tool for our new employees. They can put in a budget, see the difference in frequency or screen selection, and learn a lot in a few months.

Watch to see how Abovo uses the OutMoove DSP to gain full control over campaigns and to access valuable insights:

I understand that you recently ran a campaign with Broadsign’s new In-Advance capability. What was that experience like for you?

The reason we wanted to test Broadsign’s In-Advance capability was to maximize our workflow efficiency. We prefer to work with just one platform because that’s the most efficient way. I don’t want to have to live in the email cycle. The ability to process direct-buy type deals through the same programmatic platform ensures standardization in campaign management, buying, and reporting. This centralized approach saves time and ensures our data flows seamlessly into our cross-media dashboards. So, the biggest difference for us was in the backend workflow, which is exactly what we wanted.

Watch to hear about Abovo’s experience with Broadsign’s In-Advance compatibility and the benefits for efficiency:

What do you see as a trend for this space in the upcoming year? What is your team investing in?

Our strategy for the next few years is focused on three core pillars: efficiency, insights, and the people. We need an efficient machine running the execution, so my consultants dedicate most of their time and attention to strategy, client consultation, and, of course, visiting a lot of campaigns.

We’re using AI as a playground to test new ideas, make processes more efficient and to gain more insights. For instance, testing how to easily generate location lists and get more insights out of it or a simple way of generating creative mockups. If a test proves successful, we move quickly to build it into our systems.

Watch to learn how Abovo is using AI for OOH, including generating location lists and creative mockups to increase efficiency:

What excites you most about what’s coming in out-of-home? 

What excites me most about the future is closing the loop on measurement and providing more proof points of business impact. At the end of the day, I want to know what my clients want to know: what’s the true impact of the campaign?

We know OOH works well for brand KPIs, but we need more collective data and more case studies to prove its power for bottom-funnel business KPIs. Through our continued investment in programmatic and data-sharing partnerships, we are determined to deliver those results.

Watch Danny share his passion for data and his goal of measuring the true business impact of OOH campaigns: