Month: October 2022

Product News | October 11, 2021

Four tips for handling changing energy restrictions with Broadsign

Surging energy prices are hitting global markets hard—and it’s not just households that are feeling the pain. As the present international energy supply crisis intensifies, many European countries are implementing usage restrictions alongside temporary regulatory measures to help mitigate the impact. These new regulations have caused great uncertainty in the digital signage and DOOH spaces, as network owners struggle to adapt to changing rules and limitations on non-essential digital signage operation. 

To help ensure that your DOOH network continues to run smoothly, we’ve put together a list of Broadsign features and automation tools that can help you easily adapt to new energy-saving measures, and are also useful if you simply want to reduce your energy usage in general. 

Read on to learn how Broadsign can help!

Europe’s energy crisis hits DOOH industry

The origins of the current global energy crisis can be traced back to the economic slowdown that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic; power plants that had been shut down could not ramp up in time to meet the renewed and rebounding demand. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of last year significantly worsened the situation, with Russian retaliation to European sanctions crimping supplies of Russian natural gas. In an effort to reduce both the risks and costs for Europe in case of further disruption, EU member states have agreed to voluntarily reduce their natural gas demand by 15% this winter, and several EU member countries have already effected a series of energy-saving measures designed to help them meet this reduction target. 

While necessary, the energy restrictions that have been put in place in Germany and some other EU countries have caused great uncertainty in the digital signage and DOOH industry. In addition to limiting the use of indoor heating in public buildings, these new measures also prohibit the operation of digital signage for non-essential purposes during certain hours. Spanish shops and government offices must turn off digital signage displays and lighting after 10 p.m. And Germany’s Energy Saving Ordinance is even more restrictive; it prohibits the operation of any DOOH and digital signage screens between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. This means that displays, LED screens, and projections used as advertising systems can only be operated for six hours a day. Digital signage consultancy Invidis predicts that similar measures are likely to be adopted more widely across Europe.

Broadsign’s energy-saving features and tools

Although the current circumstances may present some uncertainty for our clients in EU countries, we at Broadsign want to ensure that running your network remains as painless as possible. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list highlighting a few of the automation tools we offer that might help relieve some of the pressure.

1. Dayparting

Define a site’s/display unit’s “opening hours” to adjust bookable airtime and control when content plays on your screens. This means you can easily set up a schedule that respects new regulations—and change it at a moment’s notice.

  • Automatically halts content playback during mandated “off” hours
  • Adjusts available airtime for campaign bookings
  • Note: Doesn’t actually turn off/de-power screens

Broadsign’s Day Parts feature lets you assign a defined set of playback characteristics to your digital signage display(s) during set hours. In addition to controlling things like frame layout, day parts can be also used to define a display’s “opening hours”—i.e., the available airtime when scheduled content will play. Essentially, the start and end times of a day part make up the maximum bookable airtime for any displays it has been assigned to. 

You can assign multiple day parts to a single display unit to have different frame layouts at various times of the day or to associate different criteria values with each day part. However, while it’s possible to define a site’s opening hours by using multiple day parts with different start and end times, we’ve come up with an even easier way to set opening hours that adhere to your area’s new energy saving regulations: a dedicated Opening Hours tab in the Day Parts editor.

Defining a site’s opening hours by creating a single all-day day part in the Opening Hours tab is simpler, and it ensures that a site will be automatically excluded (or included, as the case may be) if its opening hours change over the course of a campaign. So you can easily set up a schedule that adheres to your area’s new energy saving regulations, and effortlessly make changes if you need to.

For more details, and to learn how to set up Opening Hours in Broadsign Control, check out our Day Parts technical documentation.

2. Remote device management

Suspend/resume screen(s) according to a display unit’s predefined opening hours. That way, your players will automatically send your screens into standby mode in addition to halting content playback.

  • Further reduces energy use by sending screens into standby mode
  • Automatically suspends screen activity according to opening hours

Dayparting is a great way to ensure your digital screens aren’t running (or booking/selling) content during mandated off hours. However, the Opening Hours feature won’t actually turn off the display(s) it’s been assigned to. To go the extra kilowatt when it comes to reducing your energy consumption, you should suspend screen activity in addition to halting content playback. Don’t worry, Broadsign has a built-in solution for that, too!

In combination with Opening Hours, it’s also possible to suspend and resume screen activity remotely. This feature can be activated from within the Day Parts editor by selecting Suspend/Resume screen(s) according to opening hours. When outside of opening hours, your player(s) will automatically send a “no signal” message that will put your screens in standby mode. Conversely, the players can also send “wake-up” messages, turning your screens back on at the start of your site’s designated opening hours. 

Powering down your screens in accordance with your opening hours will help you further reduce your DOOH-related energy use—and it will also save you time and effort by automating the entire process!

For more details, scroll down to the “Opening Hours” section of our Day Parts technical documentation for Broadsign Control.

3. RS-232 screen controls

Remotely control RS-232-attached screens at a granular level with settings that allow you to do things like lowering the brightness of your screens to consume less energy.

  • Makes granular adjustments to your device settings to help save energy
  • Remotely executes any device operation that’s defined in Broadsign Control Administrator

Device control operations in Broadsign give you finer-grained control over a screen’s device settings; they’re commands sent to a display by the Broadsign Control Player to verify its status or perform an action. Crucially, they can be used to do things like lowering screen brightness to consume less energy and powering the display completely off (or back on). If your screens have a RS-232 connection to the player, ​​you can use the RS-232 action (via the Broadsign Control Player API) to remotely execute any device operation that you have defined within Broadsign Control Administrator. This means you can make granular adjustments to screen settings that have an impact on energy consumption, from anywhere. 

RS-232 commands can also be sent automatically based on the display unit’s pre-defined opening hours. For example, you could schedule an operation to set the screen brightness back to 10% every five minutes in case someone happens to adjust it. You can do this by configuring the RS-232 commands on a player’s assigned configuration profile and setting up the rules on the configuration’s Device Control tab to execute on opening and closing hours. This way, the commands will continue to be sent at the correct time even if you adjust the opening hours on your networks as the situation evolves. 

For more details, and to learn how to set up device control operations in Broadsign Control, check out our Device Control technical documentation. 

4. System-on-chip player

Power down your network’s smart display screens remotely with our System-on-Chip player.

  • Makes it easy to power down ALL of your network’s display screens by bringing smart screens into the Broadsign fold.

Additionally, if you’re operating smart displays, you can also turn screens on and off remotely with Broadsign for System-on-Chip, our digital signage player made specifically for smart screens. 

Our system-on-chip solution lets you centrally manage all of the screens in your network and saves you time by streamlining your DOOH management tasks. In particular, it can be used to turn your smart display screens on and off remotely—making it easy for you to power down all of your network’s digital displays in accordance with new energy-saving regulations.

For more details, and to learn how to set up our System-on-Chip player, check out our Broadsign Control for System-on-Chip technical documentation.

To learn more about these features, reach out to us at services@broadsign.com

Product News | October 11, 2021

Insights from CSP’s At Your Convenience Podcast: Building a retail media network that actually performs

Promotional graphic showing the Broadsign logo over a blurred convenience store interior with snack aisles, coffee, and hot foods signage. A blue-to-purple gradient overlay covers the image, and a white speech bubble on the right contains the text "At Your Convenience" with a convenience store icon and an ellipsis.

Retail media networks are expanding rapidly, with retailers investing in in-store digital infrastructure to create new revenue opportunities and influence shopper decisions closer to the point of purchase. However, deploying screens is only the first step. As the industry matures, retailers face a larger challenge: building networks designed for monetization, measurement, and long-term scalability.

In the latest episode of CSP’s “At Your Convenience” podcast, Drew Walls, Sales Director of Retail Media at Broadsign, joins CSP Vice President of Content Strategy Abby Lewis to discuss what it takes to move beyond infrastructure and build retail media networks that deliver measurable value for retailers, advertisers, and shoppers.

From monetization strategy and ecosystem flexibility to the importance of in-store relevance, Drew shares the operational realities behind building retail media networks that can scale successfully.

Let’s dive in.

Moving beyond screens: Selling the shopper moment

One of the biggest opportunities for in-store retail media is changing how inventory is valued and packaged. Many networks continue to treat screens as standardized placements, applying consistent pricing regardless of shopper context. 

However, in-store environments are dynamic. Drew highlighted that the industry needs to move beyond pricing the screen itself and focus on understanding the value of the shopper moment behind it.

“We are still pricing the screen and not necessarily the moment. My 7 a.m. coffee run looks very different from a cold vault visit after I get off work at 5:30. Those media units are very different because my mission is different.”- Drew Walls, Sales Director of Retail Media at Broadsign

These moments reflect different shopper behaviours, purchase intent, and advertiser opportunities. To capture their value, retailers need the right technology foundation to package and activate inventory based on real-time signals such as location, time of day, and shopper context. By turning these moments into measurable media opportunities, retailers can move beyond generic screen placements and deliver more relevant value to advertisers.

Building the right foundation: Control, flexibility, and monetization

As retailers build their media networks, one of the biggest strategic decisions is determining what they should own versus where they should leverage specialized partners.

The conversation is often framed as a choice between closed ecosystems and fully open models. However, Drew explained that the right approach depends on the retailer’s goals, maturity, and ability to scale over time. Fully closed systems can limit flexibility by tying retailers to a single vendor roadmap, while fully in-house approaches require significant resources, expertise, and operational investment. A hybrid approach allows retailers to maintain control over critical assets while leveraging specialized partners across areas such as technology, infrastructure, and demand access.

For retailers looking to build a true media business, the technology foundation matters. Hardware and content management systems may enable screen deployment, but they are not designed to manage the complexities of monetizing media inventory. An ad server provides the capabilities needed to manage campaign delivery, pacing, advertiser commitments, and multiple demand sources, helping retailers turn available inventory into measurable revenue opportunities.

When evaluating partners, Drew noted that retailers should consider whether their technology ecosystem can grow alongside the business. “The real question for a retailer is: will my partner grow with me, or am I eventually going to outgrow my partner?”

A regional retailer launching its first network will have different needs than a national retailer managing thousands of locations. The right architecture should provide flexibility as the business evolves without creating unnecessary constraints.

Defining control: What retailers must own

As retail media networks scale, maintaining control over critical components becomes essential to long-term success.

Three areas, in particular, should remain firmly within the retailer’s control:

  1. Audience data forms the foundation of targeting, personalization, and performance insights. Retaining ownership ensures that retailers can fully leverage their unique customer relationships.
  2. Direct advertiser relationships are central to revenue growth and margin expansion. These relationships enable retailers to build demand strategically and sustain long-term investment from brand partners.
  3. Measurement methodology plays a decisive role in establishing credibility. Whether through closed-loop attribution, lift studies, or control-store testing, the ability to define and validate performance metrics is critical. Retailers must ensure that measurement frameworks are transparent, trusted, and not solely controlled by platform vendors.

Other components, including hardware, content management systems, and ad tech infrastructure, can be effectively managed through external partners, provided they are integrated in a way that preserves flexibility and interoperability.

Designing for monetization from the start

One of the biggest misconceptions in retail media is that monetization can be addressed after a network is deployed. In reality, the foundations for revenue generation are established much earlier.

Many retailers begin with infrastructure because screens are the most visible first step. However, building a successful retail media business requires investment beyond hardware, including sales capabilities, advertiser relationships, measurement frameworks, and operating models.

Drew highlighted that monetization should be considered before deployment, not added later as a layer on top of an existing network. Retailers that design their networks around demand generation and measurable outcomes from the beginning will be better positioned to build sustainable revenue streams.

Unlocking demand through relevance and access

Inventory alone does not create a successful retail media network. Retailers must also build accessible pathways for advertisers and ensure their inventory is valuable, measurable, and easy to buy.

Direct sales remain an important foundation, allowing retailers to build relationships with endemic advertisers and demonstrate value. At the same time, programmatic access should be considered early to support future scalability. Drew encouraged retailers to build direct relationships today while ensuring their networks are positioned for future demand opportunities.

Beyond demand access, retailers must also consider how they create relevance inside the store. Unlike onsite or offsite media, in-store media reaches shoppers at a unique point in the journey: when decisions are actively being made.

The unique value of in-store relevance

In-store media offers a different type of value than onsite or offsite channels because it operates at the intersection of shopper mission, physical context, and purchase intent.

Drew explained that in-store relevance is not simply about better measurement. It is about reaching shoppers closer to the decision point. “Someone is three feet from a shelf, not three clicks and a day away from making that decision.” This proximity creates a powerful opportunity for retailers and advertisers, but unlocking that value requires stronger measurement, more thoughtful inventory packaging, and a better understanding of shopper behaviour.

What does this mean for retailers?

Building a retail media network that performs requires more than deploying infrastructure. It demands a deliberate approach to monetization, control, and relevance, supported by an architecture that can evolve over time.

As the industry continues to mature, the distinction between networks that scale and those that plateau will become increasingly clear. The most successful retailers will be those that design for performance from the outset, align their operating models with demand, and fully leverage the unique advantages of the in-store environment.

Screens create the opportunity. Strategy, data, and technology turn that opportunity into revenue. Retailers building in-store media networks need more than digital displays. They need the right tech foundation to manage inventory, unlock demand, and deliver measurable value for advertisers.

Ready to move beyond screens? Connect with our team to see how Broadsign helps retailers transform in-store media into scalable revenue-generating networks.



Product News | October 11, 2021

How Exterior Plus is driving Spain’s programmatic DOOH growth with Broadsign

While some advertising channels have seen slower growth in recent years, out-of-home (OOH) has emerged as one of the key drivers of growth in the Spanish advertising market. This is because OOH combines elements that few other channels offer: massive reach, immediate visibility, and a physical presence in the real world. 

Moreover, the expansion of digital OOH (DOOH) in Spain has ushered in a transformative period for the medium, introducing data, contextualization, flexibility, and new measurement capabilities that have strengthened its strategic role in the media mix. One media owner at the forefront of this transformation is Exterior Plus, having recently launched programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) buying at Spain’s two main airports, Madrid-Barajas (MAD) and Barcelona-El Prat (BCN), via Broadsign’s supply-side platform (SSP). 

A premium network built for the digital age

Exterior Plus’ network reaches about 95% of the Spanish audience, with over 30,000 static faces and 2,000 DOOH screens in airports, shopping malls, parking garages, and street furniture environments. In recent years, they have focused on digitizing their network to make pDOOH buying more widely available. 

Media buyers choose to advertise with Exterior Plus’ network because it combines the high visibility of OOH with the precision of modern technology to deliver data-driven campaigns. With audience and mobility data integrated, their network makes it easy to leverage dynamic creative optimization (DCO) and contextual triggers to ensure brands reach their desired audiences at the most impactful moment. 

Exclusive pDOOH inventory at MAD and BCN airports via Broadsign

One standout feature of Exterior Plus’ network is its new programmatic inventory at Spain’s two busiest airports, Madrid-Barajas (MAD) and Barcelona-El Prat (BCN), which cumulatively served over 125 million passengers in 2025. This inventory is now available for programmatic buying through Broadsign, giving advertisers access to an exclusive, diverse audience with significant purchasing power, including business travellers and international and domestic tourists. 

Airports offer a unique advertising opportunity due to their long dwell times, allowing brands to engage the same audience across multiple touchpoints throughout their journey in the airport. For instance, a brand could use a high-impact large-format display in the check-in hall to build awareness, display targeted messaging on gate screens where passengers wait to board to drive consideration, and finally leverage screens near shops to drive action. 

Why the Broadsign Platform was the right fit for Exterior Plus

An out-of-home platform capable of keeping up with their ambitions

Exterior Plus needed an OOH platform that could keep up with its fast-paced network digitization growth. Broadsign was the clear choice due to the platform’s recognized reliability when it comes to seamless network operations and management at scale. With a platform that runs on rules rather than playlists, Exterior Plus can maximize operational efficiency through automated workflows tailored to its network. 

Broadsign’s Place Exchange SSP also provides Exterior Plus with the necessary capabilities to expand its pDOOH offering to more environments. They now have access to the largest programmatic demand ecosystem in OOH with over 55 connected demand-side platforms (DSPs), and header bidding technology to consolidate demand from multiple supply partners, ensuring seamless access to inventory for all demand sources.

“Broadsign enables us to work with the standards required by modern DOOH: automation, operational efficiency, flexibility and integration with the leading DSPs on the market.” – Juan Luis Jiménez, Head of Programmatic, Exterior Plus. 

Programmatic revenue that doesn’t compete with direct sales

To date, Exterior Plus has integrated 99% of its main digital displays onto Broadsign’s Place Exchange SSP. Since making their DOOH inventory programmatically available, Exterior Plus has attracted new buyers to advertise on their network, including those who previously did not purchase OOH, as well as purely digital players that have entered OOH through programmatic buying. 

To ensure that its pDOOH sales do not compete with its direct sales, Exterior Plus leverages a hybrid sales strategy. Directly sold DOOH campaigns are used when advertisers want a guaranteed strategic and creative presence, while programmatic DOOH campaigns are used when advertisers are looking for flexibility, data and the ability to activate campaigns in real-time. 

What’s next for Exterior Plus

As programmatic DOOH will continue to be a primary driver of OOH growth in Spain, the focus will be on greater automation, more dynamic creative content, improved measurement capabilities, and increasingly seamless integrations with mobile, retail media, and CTV. To stay ahead of these trends, Exterior Plus is focusing on further digitizing its network, with an emphasis on expanding its digital street furniture and increasing its programmatic reach across more environments. 

Ready to scale your network without scaling your workload?

Learn more about the Broadsign Platform here.

Product News | October 11, 2021

Broadsign and Mirakl Ads Announce Strategic Partnership to Unify Online and In-Store Retail Media

Cannes, France – June 24, 2026 — At the 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Mirakl, the Operating System for Intelligent Commerce, and Broadsign, the leading global platform for managing and monetising out-of-home (OOH) media, today announced a strategic partnership that bridges the gap between digital retail media channels and in-store advertising. The collaboration will enable more retailers and brands to activate, manage, and measure campaigns across the entire shopper journey through a single platform.

As retail media continues to mature, advertisers are increasingly demanding omnichannel solutions that better reflect how consumers shop: researching online, then purchasing in-store. However, executing retail media campaigns across online, offline, and in-store channels today typically involves separate vendor management, fragmented planning processes, and siloed reporting. This partnership sets out to change that by integrating Mirakl Ads’ retail media solution for eCommerce and digital marketplaces with Broadsign’s in-store media platform.

For Mirakl’s Retail customers, leveraging the integration will ensure a unified buying experience for their advertisers: one campaign brief and one point of contact, covering both e-commerce placements and in-store digital screens. The partnership opens a new path to monetizing physical in-store assets alongside existing online inventory. It unlocks incremental revenue while giving advertisers omnichannel reach. 

As the two companies build the integration, retailer control will be central: Mirakl Ads will power the retail media network, while the Broadsign Platform manages the technical delivery of in-store content. Retailers retain full ownership of their data, shopper experience, inventory, and pricing decisions, while maintaining the flexibility to build on existing technology investments. Advertisers benefit from a consolidated view of campaign performance across online and in-store channels, so every dollar spent can be measured, compared, and optimized across the full shopper journey. 

“Retail media has evolved rapidly, but online, offline, and in-store are often still treated as separate channels, leading to missed opportunities and revenue,” said Mats Klevjer, Director of Partnerships for Retail Media, Broadsign. “Our work with Mirakl Ads on this integration breaks down those barriers, helping retailers give advertisers the ability to transact on in-store screens with the same ease and performance metrics they expect of digital campaigns.”

“Retailers are asking for solutions that maximize the value of every customer touchpoint, both digital and physical,” said Octavie Gosselin, Vice President of Mirakl Ads. “By partnering with Broadsign, we are setting out to build a truly unified omnichannel retail media platform. Brands will be able to benefit from a single campaign brief covering both their online and in-store presence, and the opportunity ahead, for retailers, advertisers, and the broader ecosystem, is significant.”

Both companies are actively bringing this omnichannel vision to life, with phased capabilities expected to expand. The integration is anticipated to launch in Q3, with beta testing already underway. 

About Broadsign

Broadsign develops the leading global platform for managing and monetizing out-of-home (OOH) media. The company, which also operates Place Exchange by Broadsign, the largest independent SSP for Digital OOH, empowers media owners, media buyers, and retailers to harness the power and reach of out-of-home to connect with audiences in ways unlike any other advertising channel. More than 2.8 million static and digital signs along roadways and in airports, shopping malls, grocery and convenience stores, health clinics, transit systems, and more run on Broadsign.

About Mirakl

Founded in 2012, Mirakl has been at the forefront of marketplace innovation, empowering every business to compete in the platform economy.

Today, Mirakl’s operating system combines an enterprise marketplace solution (Mirakl Platform) that enables retailers and B2B organizations to launch, scale, and operate marketplaces and dropship, AI-powered multichannel selling (Mirakl Connect), retail media (Mirakl Ads) and an agentic commerce infrastructure (Mirakl Nexus).

With dual headquarters in Boston and Paris, Mirakl helps a global ecosystem of 450+ marketplaces (B2C and B2B) and a network of over 100k third-party marketplace sellers. Brands like Macy’s, Decathlon, Carrefour, Asos, and Airbus Helicopters use Mirakl to grow their businesses in new and remarkable ways. Contact: press@mirakl.com 

Product News | October 11, 2021

From brief to activation: Inside the first fully agentic AI-powered OOH campaign

Out-of-home advertising has long been one of the strongest value propositions in the media mix. While programmatic has completely transformed how digital OOH inventory is bought and sold — bringing it on par with other digital channels — direct sales of OOH inventory still require significant manual effort. From developing media plans and evaluating inventory options to negotiating pricing, trafficking creatives, executing buys, and managing reporting and invoicing, the process can be very time-consuming, especially when campaigns involve multiple venue categories, inventory types, and publishers across the highly fragmented OOH landscape.   

But that process just got a lot faster.

Broadsign’s sell-side AI agent and digital marketing agency Draft Digital’s buy-side agent recently enabled the first end-to-end OOH media buy, transforming what would otherwise have been a complex operational effort into a seamless, rapid, and efficient experience. The campaign was for Lot of Happiness and ran on Global Netherlands premium inventory. It marked the first time an OOH media buy has been powered by agentic AI from beginning to end, using the brand’s campaign goals to inform audience and venue targeting, media selection, campaign setup, and execution. Together, the buy-side and sell-side agents coordinated complex tasks across parties, with human oversight and guardrails in place to ensure alignment with campaign objectives and compliance with local regulations and restrictions. 

Read on to learn more about how the process unfolded — and what it means for the future of OOH.

Meet the campaign that made history

Lot of Happiness is a purpose-driven lottery based in the Netherlands with a straightforward premise: every ticket purchase benefits a cause chosen by the buyer, with roughly 50% of every sale going directly to charities like Make-A-Wish Nederland and the ALS Foundation Netherlands. As a growing organization without the deep media budgets of commercial lottery players, Lot of Happiness has built its growth strategy around operational creativity and innovation rather than outspending competitors. That orientation made them a natural early mover on this kind of experiment.

The campaign ran with a “Win-Win” message — rooted in the idea that every ticket purchase supports a charitable cause while giving participants the chance to win prizes. — delivering more than 830,000 impressions across screens inside supermarkets, shopping malls, gas stations, and on city streets throughout the Netherlands. 

But as compelling as their social mission is, it’s not the creative that made this execution notable. It’s how the buy happened. 

What typically required days to weeks of email-based coordination moved from brief to booked plan — with human approval — in less than 15 minutes. To understand how this came about, it’s worth taking a closer look at the agentic solutions involved and what they did. 

A media plan built in minutes

On our end, we built a new sell-side AI agent layer on top of the existing infrastructure for Broadsign In-Advance — an automated booking capability that allows advertisers to reserve guaranteed DOOH ad space months in advance. The sell-side agent acted as an automated query and negotiation layer: when Draft Digital submitted the Lot of Happiness campaign brief through their buy-side agent, our agent returned available inventory from our In-Advance-enabled ecosystem of media owners that matched the campaign’s targeting criteria. 

On the buy side, Draft Digital used Claude.ai to build the campaign brief and drive the planning process, translating campaign goals into targeting criteria, querying Broadsign’s available inventory, and generating a media plan for the buyer to review and approve.

Once the buyer reviewed and approved the plan, the booking was activated through Broadsign’s Place Exchange SSP and delivered programmatically on Global Netherlands’ screens.

The Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) — an emerging open standard for enabling AI agents to communicate across the advertising supply chain — served as the connective tissue, providing a standardized way for the two agents to communicate across organizational boundaries. 

Human review remained part of the process at key stages. On the agency side, that review followed what Jasmijn Kruis, Digital Marketing Consultant at Draft Digital, calls the “four-eye principle”: the buyer checks the plan, and then a second person checks the buyer’s work. “You don’t want an extra zero showing up where it’s not supposed to,” she explains. Creative was submitted through the standard approval workflow, ensuring compliance requirements remained fully intact throughout. 

Crucially, agentic AI in media buying isn’t about removing human judgment; it’s about drastically reducing the manual labour surrounding it.

Why OOH is a natural fit for agentic AI

The case for agentic AI in OOH is, in many ways, even stronger than in other channels. As a context-driven medium, OOH is rich in data that goes beyond the audience, the creative, and the screen. Success depends on understanding how a brand’s message connects to a particular audience in a particular place at a particular time. With hundreds of thousands of campaigns to learn from, AI can help surface those patterns and apply them at scale. 

“Overlaying AI atop our global static and digital OOH supply, together with advanced data and execution capabilities — such as screen-level audience indexes, dynamic creative, and guaranteed in-advance buying — opens the door to new possibilities for OOH planning and activation,” explains Broadsign CTO Bryan Mongeau. “This innovative collaboration is only the beginning.”

For Global Netherlands, what stood out about the collaboration was the sum of its parts: no single party could have done this alone. “By combining Broadsign’s infrastructure with buy-side intelligence, Draft Digital’s ambition, and our diverse digital out-of-home offering, we’ve shown how AI-driven planning can enhance the speed, precision, and flexibility of direct buys, mirroring the benefits of programmatic OOH,” says Mink Zwolsman, Business Development Director at Global Netherlands. “For us, this is a meaningful step toward making our inventory even more accessible to buyers who want seamless, omnichannel campaigns.”

The Lot of Happiness buy illustrates what that looks like in practice. Because the campaign ran alongside the client’s first television buy, Draft Digital designed the OOH targeting to synchronize with TV viewership patterns and reinforce the messaging — placing ads in areas with high concentrations of TV-viewing audiences, timed to appear before broadcast slots so viewers would see the OOH ads before seeing them on the living room screen. “We tested different types of pacing to see how the system would react,” explains Kruis, “and because we were also running on TV, we wanted the OOH ads to appear in areas with high concentrations of TV-watching audiences — at times before they would watch — so there would be a connection.” 

That kind of multi-variable precision — layering viewership patterns, proximity patterns, and time-based targeting across an entire country — is exactly the kind of planning at which agentic AI excels. What would take a human planner days of data aggregation and analysis was built into the brief and surfaced instantaneously.

Getting ahead of the shift

This campaign was a first, but it won’t be the last. Whether you’re on the buy side or the sell side, agentic AI is going to transform OOH — here’s what to expect and how to embrace that shift.

If you’re an agency or media buyer

  • Follow the audience. OOH is traditionally bought by selecting locations, but locations are really just proxies for the audiences that advertisers want to reach. AI-driven plans can select the inventory that indexes highest against a target audience, choosing from all available options — including niche placements and underutilized formats that humans may miss when trying to limit the buy to a few networks to reduce complexity. AI can handle the complexity and surface the best options to reach any desired audience.
  • Embrace contextual targeting. Whether it’s a billboard during the morning commute, a screen at the grocery checkout, an office building elevator screen during lunchtime, or a TV behind the bar on gameday, the power of OOH lies in context: delivering a message in a particular place at a particular time. Connecting audiences to locations and times can be a labour-intensive process, but with the right data inputs, AI can make those connections quickly and help ensure the right context for every impression. 
  • Elevate from task execution to strategic orchestration. AI agents can absorb the burden of low-level tasks, freeing up humans to focus on the end-to-end process — ensuring brief quality, defining campaign objectives, directing creative, designing learning agendas, and gleaning campaign insights.

If you’re a media owner or publisher

  • Expect a broader pool of buyers. AI will expose your inventory to a larger pool of demand, creating opportunities for more revenue — but it also means publishers will need to meet that demand with intelligent inventory allocation and yield optimization, as well as capabilities like competitive separation and timely advertiser and creative approvals. AI tools can help with all of the above.
  • Improve discoverability. Buy-side agents evaluate inventory against a wide variety of criteria — including location, screen characteristics, supported ad formats, venue type, and screen-level audience indexing. The more comprehensive and accurate your screen-level data, the more likely your inventory is to be surfaced as a potential match when those criteria align.
  • Maintain human oversight and control. AI will make buying and selling media smarter, faster, and more effective, but publishers remain in control. Identify the key decision points in your sales engine — pricing, approvals, restrictions — and define the processes, guardrails, monitoring, and reporting that ensure everything operates within your business parameters.

Whether you’re on the buy side or the sell side, success will depend on choosing the right partners who understand your goals and can help design and implement solutions that fit your needs.

What comes next

Broadsign powers close to three million static and digital signs globally — including the largest single source of programmatically enabled OOH supply in the world. While this pilot focused on Broadsign In-Advance-enabled inventory, the next phase will extend to all programmatically enabled screens. Our mission is to bring innovative technology to media owners to help them power their business — and agentic AI is the next chapter in that story. 

Global OOH ad spend reached $37.18 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $56.1 billion by 2030, driven in large part by digitization, programmatic maturation, and a growing appetite for real-world presence amid continued screen fatigue. As buying workflows continue to evolve, AI will give OOH media owners the opportunity to ensure their inventory is positioned for the next evolution of media planning and activation.

The question is no longer whether agentic workflows will play a role in media buying, but how quickly the industry will adapt to capitalize on the opportunity. Here at Broadsign, we’re already working with OOH media owners to help them prepare for what comes next.

Media owners interested in making their inventory discoverable to agentic buyers can reach out to Broadsign to explore what’s possible.