Month: August 2021

Product News | October 11, 2021

Lamar Advertising is an enduring brand with a modern outlook thanks to programmatic DOOH

There’s a reason why Lamar Advertising has been in business for 120 years. While years of rolling out successful outdoor advertising campaigns doesn’t hurt, one of the big reasons why Lamar has been so successful in the OOH space for over a century has to do with the company’s eagerness to do things differently. It doesn’t want to just keep up with the trends, but rather to help establish them. That’s how it has built its legacy of OOH success to this point, and that’s how it’s going to continue that tradition as we head deeper into the digital and programmatic future of the industry.

Then and now

Founded in 1902, Baton Rouge-based Lamar is one of the longest-standing out-of-home businesses in the world. The company provides local and national advertisers with a variety of advertising formats including billboards, roadside advertising, transit, airport signage and more. In 1992, Lamar took the business public, giving them increased visibility and more capital to spur growth and development. This helped to drive Lamar to become the largest global out-of-home company.

Lamar has a long history of success in OOH

Currently, their inventory includes roughly half a million screens in two countries, Canada and the United States. This includes the largest large format digital network, comprising 4,000 screens in the U.S. and accounting for roughly 4 billion impressions weekly across 170 designated markets. Recently, it began investing in programmatic DOOH, motivated by the creative potential and programmatic’s unmatched ability to facilitate targeted ad sales.

In pursuit of programmatic DOOH

The vast majority of Lamar’s screen inventory is roadside, with about 99% of their signage placed along major streets, highways, and interstates. The content fed by these screens mainly consists of advertisements—on average, alternating a rotation of six to eight different advertisers—but it also works in other types of content, too, such as weather updates, local event information, sports scores, and even obituaries – whatever adds value for the audience.

Lamar was the first in the large-format space to successfully launch programmatic DOOH and, over time, the company has seen tremendous success in capturing revenue using this offering. It has also used programmatic to spur technical innovation and to make it easier for customers to explore available inventory. Overall, it’s been an asset in helping the company come up with better rates, more options, and a streamlined buying experience.

Programmatic has helped Lamar drive innovation across its business

By coupling programmatic with their expertise in traditional OOH, Lamar has been able to gain a competitive edge by connecting with several SSPs, allowing it to conduct business with a wide variety of DSPs and offer different ad buying options while looking at how to better expose inventory.

Part of Lamar’s long-standing success comes from a relationship-first approach. Right now, one of the company’s big initiatives is to nurture existing client relationships and build new ones through education about programmatic. Lamar takes care to show the brands and agencies it partners with the myriad ways that campaigns can be successfully optimized through programmatic DOOH. This includes sharing appropriate tools, resources, and data to showcase why programmatic DOOH can be useful in delivering dynamic, targeted campaigns—as well as why this is a one-to-targeted medium that deserves attention and a line in the media budget. Through this, they’re able to help business owners and media planners make informed decisions regarding their outdoor campaigns.

Lamar works closely with buyers to help them realize the benefits of programmatic DOOH

Lamar and Broadsign

Lamar onboarded the Broadsign Reach SSP a few years ago. Currently, all of Lamar’s inventory is available on Broadsign Reach, and in the near future, the company intends to onboard a large majority of its airport screens to Broadsign Control players as well.

A recent campaign with Walmart offers a strong example of how Broadsign Reach has helped Lamar to meet and exceed client demands and expectations. For the campaign, Walmart turned to Lamar to help them promote their grocery pick-up services during the pandemic. With the Broadsign Reach platform, the retailer was able to create hyper-local campaigns in approximately 120 different stores. Because only specific stores offered grocery pickup, the campaign needed to be versatile and dynamic, only targeting locations where the message applied. Reach was able to help the retail giant achieve just that.

See how Broadsign can help your programmatic OOH business thrive

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Product News | October 11, 2021

How 75Media increased its fill rates by 15% with the Broadsign Platform

2024 was a record-breaking year for out-of-home (OOH) advertising in the United Kingdom (UK). Total OOH revenue for the region grew 7.7%, pulling in a record-breaking £1.4 billion in revenue. While spend is expected to cool down slightly in 2025 at 7.2%, the medium will grow through technological innovations like dynamic digital billboards, interactive displays, and programmatic advertising. 

Digital OOH (DOOH) now dominates the OOH landscape, accounting for 67.1% of total spend as brands seek the flexibility and creativity that digital offers. That being said, demand for static OOH – also known as classic OOH–  isn’t going anywhere, remaining an effective medium for long-term brand-building campaigns. 

With both formats offering distinct benefits to advertisers, the most effective campaigns combine both. This is where UK-based media owner 75Media comes in. As one of the leading providers of large-format static and digital roadside billboards in the region, 75Media makes it easy for brands, big and small, to tap into the power of OOH with the flexibility, scale and simplicity that modern advertisers need today.

How 75Media makes out-of-home simple for buyers

Wanting to provide brands with national reach through large-format, high-impact roadside billboards, 75Media’s sites are strategically positioned in high-traffic locations across the UK. These include key commuter routes and busy city centres, with placements carefully chosen for their proximity to gyms, shopping centres, supermarkets, and other points of interest. 

Through a series of strategic acquisitions, 75Media has exponentially grown its network, going from 140 to nearly 1,300 digital and static billboards across the UK in just five years. Today, with just over 1,000 large-format static billboards, 75Media’s hybrid network is about 75% static and 25% digital. 

75Media’s static and digital roadside billboards

In addition to their wide-reaching network, advertisers choose 75Media’s network because they make OOH measurable and efficient without compromising on quality. Wanting to deliver real audiences to clients as quickly as possible, 75Media focuses on minimizing the back-and-forth typically needed to book OOH campaigns. 

75Media’s network attracts a broad mix of advertisers and campaigns, including major brand campaigns, fast-moving consumer goods promotions, as well as ads for local businesses, the public sector and charitable organizations. On the digital side of its network, there’s exciting momentum toward dynamic creative optimization (DCO) campaigns. Collaborating with their data partners, DOOH.com, Veridooh and Artbot, 75Media has been unlocking new ways for brands to engage with their audiences in real-time. 

One notable dynamic, data-driven campaign that ran on 75Media’s network was Nike’s campaign featuring renowned Norwegian professional footballer Erling Haaland for the promotion of its new Mercurial football shoe. Leveraging the dynamic triggers available on the Broadsign Platform, the artwork and messaging of the DOOH ad would dynamically update whenever Haaland scored a goal during a match. 

How Broadsign makes it easy for 75Media to run its network

One platform to efficiently scale, manage, and sell their digital and static out-of-home inventory

75Media has been using the Broadsign Platform since day one. Operations Director Alex Simpson—one of 75Media’s founding directors—had previously used Broadsign at his former company and saw first hand how reliable and effective the platform was. So when 75Media launched in 2020, continuing that partnership was a natural choice. And with their significant growth plans, they needed a platform that was capable of seamlessly scaling alongside their business. 

In addition to the platform’s robustness and reliability, 75Media chose Broadsign for its content and network management capabilities. The manual work typically tied to campaign scheduling, booking and execution is now automated, freeing up the team’s time to focus on enhancing advertisers’ experience with OOH.

Moreover, managing their static and digital assets through the Broadsign Platform not only kept things efficient and organized, but also provided them with seamless workflows to plan, execute, and monitor static and digital OOH campaigns without unnecessary complications. 

“The reporting capabilities provided by the Broadsign Platform for our digital and static assets allow us to be totally transparent with our clients. Being able to show brands exactly how their campaigns are performing in-flight is invaluable.”

Alex Simpson, Operations Director, 75Media

How 75Media optimizes fill rates with Broadsign’s flexible campaigns

Another key capability that 75Media has been leveraging is Broadsign’s flexible selling tools for their DOOH campaigns. This gives them access to our flexible campaign types, which are goal-based and data-triggered, allowing you to deliver more targeted results. In fact, 80% of DOOH campaigns that ran on 75Media’s network in 2024 leveraged flexible campaigns.

The most widely used flexible campaign type was the Campaign Average Share of Voice (SoV). This 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 vary day-to-day to accommodate other campaigns requiring the same screens, but the target average SoV across all screens over the campaign’s duration will always be met. 

This is made possible by Broadsign’s rebalancing feature, which leverages our optimization engine to modify the pace at which a campaign is delivered to guarantee targets are met. Since adopting these new flexible capabilities, 75Media has seen an increase of 15% in its screen fill rates and has strengthened its client relationships by offering more flexible solutions. 

“Broadsign’s rebalancing feature helps deliver our campaigns efficiently while allowing us to maximize the space across our inventory. It’s particularly useful in ensuring everything runs smoothly without daily intervention from our delivery team.”

Alex Simpson, Operations Director, 75Media

The Campaign Average SoV campaign type is particularly useful for markets where flexible buying has not been widely adopted. Buyers can maintain the same fixed results typically obtained through slot-based campaigns while providing you with the operational flexibility to fill your network optimally.

What we can expect from 75Media in the near future

While 75Media will continue to invest in new digital and static sites to extend its coverage and reach, its focus in the near future is to become the most efficient OOH operator in the market. It plans to do this by investing in new technology and automation, removing the medium’s preconceived pain points, and providing the quickest way to buy OOH. 

Additionally, as programmatic capabilities continue to evolve, advertisers will grow more confident in data-driven OOH. With demand expected to rise, 75Media is actively exploring new audience analytics and multiple data integrations to enhance targeting and boost campaign effectiveness. 

Product News | October 11, 2021

Revolutionizing Broadsign’s Programmatic SSP: AI creative assistance and extended brand safety

According to GroupM’s 2024 End-of-Year Global Advertising Forecast, digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is projected to account for 42% of total out-of-home (OOH) ad revenue by the end of this year. One key factor of growth for DOOH is the integration of programmatic technology, allowing for real-time bidding and dynamic content delivery, enhancing targeting capabilities and operational efficiency. 

As programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) only continues to grow in importance, we’re excited to unveil groundbreaking enhancements to Broadsign’s programmatic Supply-Side Platform (SSP), designed to modernize workflows, maximize revenue, and reinforce brand safety for our media owners. The introduction of our patent-pending AI Assistant, Broadsign Header Bidder Pro, and enhanced Competitive Separation features, is going to revolutionize the way you sell, manage and deliver programmatic DOOH campaigns.

Your AI Assistant has arrived

Unveiled at our annual customer summit, Broadsign Connect, in Barcelona, Spain, back in January, Broadsign’s AI Assistant is a patent-pending tool designed to reduce the time media owners spend on repetitive tasks. This includes reviewing, categorizing, and approving incoming ad creatives from programmatic bids sent through demand-side platforms (DSPs). 

In 2024 alone, Broadsign media owners received between 32,000 to 43,000 unique OOH creatives each month that need to be manually reviewed and categorized. With that number expected to double this year, Broadsign’s AI Assistant will provide significant time and cost savings. As ad creatives are submitted to the Broadsign SSP, the AI Assistant sends an automated email with category and approval suggestions. 

To ensure that it integrates seamlessly with your current review and categorization process, Broadsign’s AI Assistant learns your network’s unique categories to organize and review creatives. It will continue to learn and evolve over time, and you get to decide whether to use the AI Assistant to fully automate the process or to continue providing recommendations only. 

By automating the categorization process, Broadsign’s AI Assistant can minimize common misclassification errors and quickly identify sensitive content that could hinder brand safety efforts. For instance, ads featuring alcohol on a screen near a school, or an ad that violates local laws like displaying a political ad next to a polling location, would be flagged by the AI Assistant with recommendations to reject the creative.

Priced-based auctions are now available with Header Bidder Pro

As part of the evolution of our Header Bidder offering, we’re excited to introduce the Broadsign Header Bidder Pro. As a refresher, we introduced our Header Bidder in 2022, which consolidates demand from multiple supply-side partners. This one-to-many programmatic approach allows media owners to simplify ad operations, maximize yield value, and increase fill rates. 

With Broadsign’s Header Bidder Pro, you now have the ability to run price-based auctions, helping you get the most out of your programmatic campaigns through higher yields and fill rates, not to mention a simplified auction process. A key advantage of header bidding, or mediation layers, is the ability to consolidate your programmatic demand into one slot, freeing up valuable space on your network. You also get access to better content controls, creative caching, and synchronization capabilities that aren’t possible with container-based setups. 

The combined benefits of Broadsign’s AI Assistant with Header Bidder Pro

As Broadsign’s AI creative assistant can categorize creatives more accurately, Broadsign’s header bidding solution will be able to easily match the right inventory with the right demand, resulting in higher-quality ad placements, improved buying satisfaction, and increased competition for premium inventory. Moreover, the combined features will facilitate the alignment of creatives with the varying compliance requirements across demand sources. 

Enhanced brand safety for programmatic out-of-home campaigns

Broadsign media owners have long been able to set competitive separation criteria for directly sold campaigns. With this release, we’re excited to extend that capability to programmatic campaigns. More specifically, categories created in the Broadsign CMS will now sync with Broadsign programmatic and platform interfaces. 

So, how does it work? Let’s say you have two fast food restaurants, neither of which want their ad to play next to each other. If these campaigns are booked directly, you can easily separate the campaigns with the existing capabilities mentioned above. However, if one – or both – campaigns were booked programmatically, there would have been no way to guarantee that the programmatic slot would not play next to the directly booked slot. 

With Competitive Separation for programmatic campaigns, that’s no longer the case. The system will make every effort to prevent these two campaigns from playing one after another, regardless of channel: directly sold or programmatic. However, It’s important to note that competitive separation is only available for other SSP creatives if you are running Header Bidder Pro.

The combined benefits of Broadsign’s AI Assistant with competitive separation

With Broadsign’s AI Assistant, creatives can be categorized at a more granular level, identifying not just the brand but also its competitors and associated categories. The AI Assistant will also be learning directly from your existing categories and can apply your custom taxonomy onto your creatives, saving you time when approving creatives and automating the competitive separation process from programmatic back into your player. 

It can also adapt and learn over time, recognizing nuanced relationships between brands and subcategories, such as differentiating between an “energy drink” and a “soft drink.” Moreover, as the AI creative assistant can enforce these competitive separation rules more effectively, advertisers will perceive your network as the more reliable option when it comes to protecting brand visibility and exclusivity.

How these enhancements will help you stay ahead in the rapidly evolving programmatic landscape

While these features were designed to solve a specific pain point at different steps of the pDOOH workflow, the real value comes from having these features work hand-in-hand for more efficient programmatic workflows, reduced errors, and to future-proof your programmatic revenue. 

Broadsign’s AI assistant helps automate time-consuming tasks like categorizing creatives and identifying competing ads, allowing for faster decision-making within header bidding frameworks. Combine that with competitive separation, and you can guarantee strategic and compliant ad placements to advertisers. 

Furthermore, failure to ensure competitive separation or effective creative categorization can lead to possible compliance violations, rejected bids, or damaged buyer relationships. Having all three features work together simultaneously can help minimize errors, ensuring a smooth and compliant workflow. 

Finally, integrating these features into how you sell and manage pDOOH campaigns ensures that you stay ahead of the competition in today’s rapidly evolving programmatic landscape. Combining AI-powered categorization, header bidding, and competitive separation creates a robust ecosystem that drives revenue, enhances buyer trust, and delivers a superior user experience – all while operating at scale and with greater efficiency. 

Learn more about Broadsign Programmatic SSP here.