Month: October 2020

Product News | October 11, 2021

Introducing our intelligent cloud-based ad server: Broadsign Air

When we envision the future of out-of-home, we envision an industry free to deliver amazing content in all sorts of contexts. We envision a space that allows for boundless creativity, and the ability for just about any OOH business to access powerful tools that save them time and maximize the value of their inventory.

To get to that place a little sooner, we created Broadsign Air, an intelligent cloud-based ad server that brings all the power of the Broadsign Control CMS to non-Broadsign players. With Broadsign Air, players running Android, or other architectures previously unsupported by our platform, can be added to networks alongside Broadsign Players.

If you want to build a network with a great deal of hardware flexibility but don’t want to sacrifice on software features, now’s your chance. Broadsign Air can help you make it happen.

How Broadsign Air Works

Broadsign Air is basically the ad-serving capabilities of Broadsign Control, just uncoupled from the Broadsign player software used by PC players to handle incoming media.

With Air, when content is uploaded to the Control CMS, the content also gets uploaded into an Amazon Web Services S3 repository. The URL indicating the location of the piece of content within the repo is then sent by Broadsign Air to your third-party player of choice.

Upon receipt of the URL, your Air-connected player will need to download the associated media file and then render the content for the display.

Note: Broadsign Air alone will not be capable of playing media on your network. You must connect Broadsign Air to separate software that can play the content it serves.

What does all of this mean?

For day-to-day use, using Broadsign Air will be basically the same as using Broadsign Control normally. Users will log in to the Broadsign Control administrator tool and be able to enjoy all the great features it has to offer. That means automated scheduling and delivery, industry-leading security, and a virtually unlimited ability to scale your business while maintaining a streamlined workflow.

You will be able to use players connected through Broadsign Air both on their own or as part of a larger network that includes full Broadsign Players, giving you increased flexibility and choice when building out your network.

And, finally, you can also make full use of the Broadsign Direct sales solution, and will be able to connect any players running on Broadsign Air to the Broadsign Reach supply-side programmatic platform.

The main complication is just that it takes some time and development resources to establish the connection between Broadsign Air and your player of choice.

What do I need to use Broadsign Air?

Because Broadsign Air does not make use of the native connection between the Control Administrator tool and the Control Player, you will need to do some development work to establish the connection between the Broadsign Air ad server and your players of choice.

We will provide REST API endpoints for your team to connect your client application. This will allow your client to send POST requests. Your developer or team of developers therefore will need to know how to work with Postman, CURL, or some other development environment suitable for working with a REST API to make the connection.

Note that this project can be complex, and so it is not the kind of thing that can be handed off to the average intern. A dedicated, experienced developer, either in-house or outsourced, can likely achieve the required connection with a couple of months of work (assuming you already have a player ready/selected).

Limitations of Broadsign Air

Broadsign Air was built to deliver everything you know and love about Broadsign’s intelligent scheduling and ad serving capabilities to a wider array of players. There are, however, a few important details to keep in mind when selecting this software to power your content scheduling.

Broadsign Air does not handle playback

We’ve mentioned this above, but it’s a point worth repeating: Broadsign Air allows you to connect the Broadsign Control scheduling and ad-serving capabilities to a non-Broadsign player. It will not provide content playback, incident reports, or network monitoring for your network. It will only generate content playlists based on campaign conditions and creatives, and then make media available for download by your third-party player accordingly.

Note: Proof-of-play functionality powered by Broadsign Air is supported. It is up to your third-party player to report successful playback back to Broadsign Air so that it can be included in proof-of-play reports.

Broadsign Air must be used with Control as the CMS

Broadsign Air is not a totally standalone product. Rather, it requires that you adopt Broadsign Control as your CMS and use it to schedule content to Air-connected displays. Without the use of Broadsign Control as the CMS, Broadsign Air will not function.

Currently incompatible with Broadsign Publish

At launch, Broadsign Air will not support custom HTML5 content managed through our local messaging service, Broadsign Publish.

Got questions? We’ve got answers

If you want to learn more about what Broadsign Air can do for you, please reach out to your Broadsign rep or request a free demo to see what it’s all about!

Product News | October 11, 2021

How Québecor’s DOOH campaigns deliver 99.9% on target with the Broadsign Platform

Advertising is woven into nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Whether you’re scrolling on your phone at home or walking down the street, ads are everywhere. With audiences exposed to such a high volume of messaging, breaking through the noise has never been more critical. 

At the core of every successful campaign are two key elements: personalized content that speaks directly to the audience, and a channel that effectively reaches them where they are. Tailored messaging plays a crucial role in building meaningful connections between brands and consumers. According to McKinsey’s Next in Personalization 2021 report, 71% of consumers now expect personalization, and 76% are more likely to consider purchasing from brands that deliver it. 

When it comes to reaching consumers where they are, few channels do it better than out-of-home (OOH) advertising. By engaging with audiences in the real world, like during a commute, while shopping, or at a live event, the medium delivers messages where consumers can take action. When looking at the effectiveness of personalized content with OOH, Leger and COMMB’s joint research study shows that 51% of its respondents state they enjoy seeing OOH advertisements that are personalized to them. 

One media owner that makes it easy for advertisers to deliver personalized content directly to their desired audiences is Québecor. With a combined inventory of over 17,000 static and digital out-of-home (DOOH) assets across all major Canadian markets, Québecor has firmly established itself as a leading force in Canada’s OOH advertising landscape. With its unmatched national reach yet strong local presence, advanced targeting capabilities, and premium inventory, Québecor makes it easy for advertisers to reach a wide variety of audiences across a broad set of points of interest. 

Why advertisers love Québecor’s network

Flexible outdoor formats that provide broad reach and hyper-local impact

Québecor OOH offers advertisers a wide range of high-impact DOOH screens across both indoor and outdoor environments. Its outdoor inventory includes large-format static billboards, static and digital bus shelters, digital gas pump screens, mobile static faces on buses, mobile digital screens on taxis, and window displays in pharmacies and convenience stores.

In fact, the Canadian media owner operates the most extensive street furniture network in Quebec, where its headquarters are located. This includes 150 digital bus shelter screens across key cities like Montreal, Sherbrooke, Laval, the South Shore and Lévis, providing targeted and strategic community presence at scale.

One unique offering by Québecor is its Express Video Station network, which is available across Quebec and Ontario. This network features digital screens with audio at gas pumps, allowing advertisers to run 15- to 30-second video ads in a high dwell-time environment, an average of 4 minutes with minimal distractions. The Express Video Station creates a rare opportunity for mass visibility while fostering high-engagement, one-to-one interactions with audiences in a brand-safe, clutter-free environment.

Another distinct offering is Québecor’s fleet of 50 Mobile digital screen – taxi top. Travelling 77 000 km per week and generating over 1M impressions weekly, the double-sided LCD screens provide advertisers with an extended reach into areas with limited billboard availability. Available programmatically, this mobile inventory gives advertisers the flexibility to quickly launch contextual campaigns, bringing dynamic messaging to high-traffic zones.

Influencing decisions indoors with high-impact screens in high-traffic areas

Québecor also maintains a strong footprint in strategic indoor environments through its Shopping Destination, Fitness Destination, and Express Destination networks. These networks are designed to reach consumers at pivotal moments in their day when they’re most receptive to advertising and most likely to make purchasing decisions. Its indoor screens can be found in shopping malls, gyms, convenience stores, and drugstores. 

Large-format indoor inventory includes the Toronto Pearson Airport, featuring eight 65” screens that play in synchronization thanks to Broadsign technology, available exclusively through a programmatic private marketplace deal. Québecor also has a premium network of large-format digital screens at Montreal’s Palais des Congrès, ideal for reaching attendees during major events and conferences.

Furthermore, Québecor’s indoor screens have the same ratio as its outdoor screens, making it easy to create a seamless experience across both indoor and outdoor environments that delivers a cohesive and consistent message. Québecor is also the only pan-Canadian indoor advertising network that offers consumer content, national news, weather, and content tailored to its different environments. 

Some iconic campaigns that ran on Québecor’s network

Beyond delivering results for advertisers, Québecor has also leveraged its network to showcase how OOH can drive meaningful social impact. For Earth Day on April 22, 2025, they launched an eco-conscious campaign promoting sustainable transportation. With messages like “Every public transit trip is a step towards a common future” and “The electric taxi, driving towards a common future,” the campaign appeared across digital bus shelters and mobile digital screens, raising environmental awareness while highlighting the agility of Québecor’s formats to support timely, contextually relevant messaging.

Another notable campaign was Molson’s “Sponsor the Parents”, which was a heartfelt tribute in support of Team Canada at the Olympic Games and the parents cheering on the athletes behind the scenes. Running across Québecor’s indoor networks located near the athletes’ hometowns, the campaign masterfully combined sentiment, relevance, and geographic targeting. It demonstrated not only the power of Québecor’s network reach but also how OOH can create authentic, personal connections on a national stage.

Why Québecor chose the Broadsign Platform

Increased network reliability and stability

Québecor chose to run its network with the Broadsign Platform due to the company’s longstanding experience and recognition as one of the leading out-of-home software providers in the industry. Since adopting the Broadsign Platform in June 2020, they’ve noticed greater network stability thanks to the platform’s network monitoring capabilities, which have allowed them to quickly identify and resolve system issues, reducing potential downtimes. 

Some of Québecor’s favourite features include Broadsign’s campaign delivery, inventory management and reporting capabilities, which, when used together, offer real-time insights on how to maximize network performance. Additionally, Broadsign’s multi-frame feature has been especially useful for its digital bus shelters, enabling dynamic content delivery, like live transit schedules to play alongside ads.  

Flexible selling tools that deliver campaigns 99.9% on target

However, the standout advantage to being on the Broadsign Platform has been its flexible selling capabilities, which they leverage for most of its large markets, like Montreal and its neighbouring areas, and for networks with 10 screens or more. Since adopting Broadsign’s flexible selling tools, Québecor has been able to open up its network to more advertisers thanks to goal-based campaigns.

For clients with smaller budgets or occasional DOOH buys, Québecor offers Play Goal campaigns as a more accessible buying option. With this campaign type, advertisers can book a DOOH campaign with a set number of ad plays based on their budget, and the Broadsign Platform will optimally distribute the plays across the selected screens throughout the campaign’s duration. 

For Québecor, flexible selling gives them access to Broadsign’s optimization engine. Composed of two features, the optimization engine reallocates campaigns to maximize inventory usage and rebalances ad delivery to guarantee results to advertisers. While the flexible buying approach required an initial adjustment for both Québecor and its clients, the results quickly proved the value of flexible campaigns with ad delivery rates of 99.9%. 

“Broadsign’s optimization engine has allowed us to deliver flexible campaigns 99.9% on target, and to say yes to revenue opportunities that we previously wouldn’t have been able to.”

Évannick Godbout Villeneuve, Manager, Business Solutions and Technological Development, Out-of-Home at Québecor.

What’s next for Québecor

Québecor’s dynamic team of seasoned professionals are looking to drive growth by expanding the company’s footprint across the Canadian market. They’ll be focused on developing and optimizing their existing networks while forging new partnerships that will help them deliver an even more impactful experience for advertisers. 

Product News | October 11, 2021

Optimize your DOOH network with dynamic campaign management

When discussing growth strategies for an out-of-home (OOH) network, the focus often remains on how to sell more to more buyers. While it is an essential factor for growth, a more urgent question is whether your operational processes are robust and efficient enough to support your desired growth seamlessly.

Despite significant technological advancements in campaign management, particularly for digital out-of-home (DOOH), many media owners still optimize their network and inventory usage manually. Although adopting new technology may seem like a substantial investment of time and cost, maintaining the status quo not only hinders but also limits your network’s growth potential.

Manually shuffling campaigns to optimize inventory usage and accommodate incoming campaign requests from advertisers is not only time-consuming and error-prone but also unsustainable for long-term growth. Why opt for a manual process when there are tools purpose-built to provide the best way to allocate inventory and maximize fill rates? 

Meet Broadsign’s optimization engine

For media owners looking for a smarter, more automated approach to optimizing their network, Broadsign’s optimization engine is the tool for you. Available for directly sold DOOH campaigns leveraging flexible campaign types, it’s designed to ensure that campaigns deliver on target, while optimizing your inventory usage to maximize revenue. Our optimization engine runs continuously in the background, even overnight, to ensure your network is always optimally filled. 

Broadsign’s optimization engine works its magic through two key features: campaign rebalancing and reallocation. Rebalancing adjusts the pacing of a campaign, speeding it up or slowing it down, to keep under- or over-performing campaigns on track.

The reallocation feature is used at the time of booking. If an advertiser’s incoming request requires a screen that is already booked by another campaign, the system will automatically reorganize how screens are allocated to each campaign, while ensuring that newly allocated screens still fit campaign requirements. 

How we helped media owners deliver more campaigns, more efficiently

You might be wondering how Broadsign’s optimization engine performs in the real world. Well, here’s some data just from 2024 demonstrating how we helped media owners make the most out of their inventory. 26% of all directly sold flexible DOOH campaigns booked through the Broadsign Platform leveraged our rebalancing feature. Users who leveraged our rebalancing feature had three times more campaigns on target and 37% fewer underperforming campaigns. 

While the data for reallocation varied due to each media owner’s network being different, most could accommodate, on average 10% to 20% more campaigns. However, a few select were able to achieve up to 40% more campaigns. If that wasn’t enough to convince you, let’s take a look at some customer success stories.

75Media was able to increase its fill rates by 15%

In 2024, 80% of DOOH campaigns that ran on 75Media’s network leveraged flexible campaigns. The favoured campaign type was the Campaign Average Share of Voice (SoV), which allows advertisers to define the average percentage of screen time their ad should get over the campaign’s duration.

So what makes it flexible? The SoV on each screen can shift from day to day to make room for other campaigns, as long as the target average SoV across all screens is consistently met over the course of the campaign. Broadsign’s optimization engine makes this possible by leveraging our rebalancing feature to modify the pace at which a campaign is delivered to guarantee results. 

Orb achieved 99% ad delivery rates

Irish media owner Orb leveraged Play Goal campaigns to introduce flexible selling to its more traditional clients. This allows the client to define how many times they want the ad to play within a given time frame, and Broadsign’s optimization engine ensures that the goal is not only met but optimally distributed across all selected screens throughout the campaign’s duration.

Through Broadsign’s PoP reports, Orb has shown ad delivery rates of up to 99% on flexible campaigns and 95% on slot-based campaigns. Access to this data has not only allowed Orb to reassure its traditional buyers of the effectiveness of flexible campaigns but also helped them attract new customers.

As media owners, like 75Media and Orb have demonstrated, embracing automation through Broadsign’s optimization engine isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a strategic advantage. By automating certain operational processes, like campaign pacing and screen allocation, media owners can unlock new inventory potential, deliver more campaigns with greater precision, and ultimately boost revenue without increasing workload. If you’re serious about scaling your network while maintaining top-tier performance, it’s time to leave manual processes behind and let Broadsign’s optimization engine work for you.

Ready to make the most of your network? Contact us today.