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

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 the Broadsign 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.

Product News | October 11, 2021

DOOH specs guide: What media buyers and planners need to know before launching a campaign

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) specs follow different rules from other digital formats — and buyers who don’t know where those differences lie tend to find out the hard way, through rejected files, stalled approvals, and delayed campaign delivery.

Whether you’re setting up a digital OOH campaign for the first time or a seasoned pro troubleshooting an approval issue, this guide covers the key creative specs you need to know to create a DOOH campaign that gets results: common display and video dimensions, accepted file types and technical requirements, and other digital OOH specs best practices and considerations before trafficking.

Working closely with our global network of media owners and publisher partners, we’ve gained first-hand insight into what they actually require from incoming DOOH creative — and the specs and requirements in this guide reflect those real-world standards. Consider this your cheat sheet for getting your campaign approved for launch the first time.

Jump to:

Why DOOH specs differ from other digital ad formats
Common DOOH creative dimensions and screen formats
Digital OOH media specs: File types and other technical requirements

Why DOOH specs differ from other digital ad formats

Digital OOH operates within a closed-screen ecosystem, where media owners approve every creative before it runs on their screens. As a result, DOOH has technical requirements that don’t exist in web-based environments.

Unlike web or social advertising, DOOH doesn’t rely on open exchanges where compliant creatives run automatically without publisher review. Even when digital OOH campaigns are bought programmatically through oRTB (Open Real-Time Bidding), every creative still requires publisher approval. That process ultimately dictates accepted file types, restricted tags, and how creative rotation is managed.

The practical implication: getting DOOH specs wrong isn’t just a technical inconvenience. It triggers a revision-and-resubmission loop that stalls the approval process and delays campaign delivery. Understanding why each requirement exists makes it easier to build a compliant creative workflow from the start, rather than reverse-engineering the rules after something breaks.

Common DOOH creative dimensions and screen formats

DOOH inventory spans a wide range of placements and screen types — from large-format digital billboards to transit venue displays to in-store retail screens — and each environment comes with its own standard dimensions. Across digital OOH inventory, landscape (1920×1080 px) and portrait (1080×1920 px) are among the most widely supported formats. Building creative for both orientations is recommended wherever possible, since limiting to one orientation limits access to available inventory.

The key creative specs below represent some of the most frequently used creative sizes. While there may be notable exceptions for certain inventory types, these formats provide broad compatibility across venue categories, including Entertainment, Health and Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, Billboards, Taxi Tops, and more.

Use these dimensions as a practical baseline. They cover some of the most common aspect ratios and give your team a clear starting point for placement-specific adjustments.

Static (display) creative: Common formats

Format	Aspect ratio	Dimensions	Common venue categories
Landscape (widescreen)	16:9	1920 × 1080 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Portrait	9:16	1080 × 1920 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Horizontal banner	7:2 or 21:10	1400 × 400 px or 840 × 400 px	Billboards, Taxi Tops, Transit

Video creative: Common formats

Format	Aspect ratio	Dimensions	Common venue categories
Landscape (widescreen)	16:9	1920 × 1080 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Portrait	9:16	1080 × 1920 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Horizontal frame	4:3	1280 × 960 px	Entertainment, Point of Care, Retail, Transit, and more

Per the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) creative guidelines, common DOOH video lengths include 8, 10, 15, or 30 seconds — making 15 seconds a safe, widely supported default for broad inventory compatibility.

Build with the final screen placement in mind. Creative that isn’t sized to the screen’s native resolution may appear cropped, letterboxed, or distorted — all of which can trigger rejection during the publisher approval process.

Creative and inventory exceptions

If your campaign includes any of the following, confirm whether additional requirements apply before building your creative:

Spectaculars: Specs vary by screen
Airport media: Select airport screens require non-standard creative sizes. Video durations are also typically 10 seconds rather than 15 seconds
Sensitive content categories: Creatives featuring alcohol, cannabis, or political messaging may be subject to additional restrictions that vary by market, venue type, and media owner

For more creative build guidelines and campaign-building tips to simplify the entire DOOH process, check out our Best Practices Guide: How to create DOOH campaigns that get results.

Digital OOH media specs: File types and other technical requirements

DOOH supports three creative types — static display (JPG/PNG), video (MP4), and dynamic/DCO creative (HTML5, where publisher support is available).

Accepted creative file formats

Static Display: Accepted formats include JPG and PNG. Technical requirements include 72 ppi standard resolution and RGB colour mode
Video: Accepted format includes MP4. Technical requirements include an even-numbered pixel resolution, a bit rate below 5,000 kbps, and a standard frame rate of 30 fps
Dynamic/DCO: Accepted format includes HTML5. Technical requirements vary by publisher and should be confirmed before trafficking. Additional pre-approval from the media owner is typically required

Build all files in RGB and keep file sizes within the network’s recommended limits. Oversized files are a common cause of playback issues on bandwidth-limited screens — and unlike web ads, DOOH playback failures are visible to everyone nearby. File size requirements vary by publisher, so confirm specifications with your representative.

HTML5 and dynamic creative (DCO)

HTML5 is the standard format for dynamic DOOH creative — enabling real-time data feeds, weather-triggered messaging, countdown timers, and dynamic creative optimization (DCO). If the goal is creative that updates based on external conditions rather than looping a fixed file, HTML5 is how that’s built and trafficked in DOOH.

Ready to launch a high-impact, creative out-of-home campaign that delivers results? Browse our inventory catalog to see the complete network of high-impact digital screens available.

Product News | October 11, 2021

Digital transformation in out-of-home with Broadsign’s Burr Smith

The out-of-home industry is in the middle of a major transformation. As automation, programmatic buying, audience data, and more reshape how campaigns are planned and transacted, the industry is moving toward a more connected and scalable future.

Few people have had a front-row seat to that evolution quite like Burr Smith, Chairman, President, and CEO of Broadsign. Under his leadership, Broadsign has evolved from a digital signage CMS provider into one of the industry’s leading global OOH advertising platforms, helping unify the buy and sell sides of the market through automation, programmatic technology, and strategic acquisitions.

That impact was recently recognized by the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), which honoured Burr with its inaugural Digital Transformation Award at the 2026 OAAA Honors Circle Awards. The award celebrates leaders driving the modernization of OOH through innovation, automation, and technological advancement.

We sat down with Burr to discuss how OOH has evolved, why unification matters, and what needs to happen next to keep the industry growing.

You’ve been focused on modernizing out-of-home for years. What did digital transformation in OOH look like when you first started, and how has that vision evolved over time?

When I became CEO, Broadsign was primarily a content management system (CMS) company. At the time, there was an internal discussion about whether we should remain focused solely on CMS technology, but it became clear to me that it wasn’t a sustainable long-term strategy. So we decided to evolve beyond content management and move closer to where the advertising dollars were actually originating: the demand side.

That meant building products across the ecosystem to better connect buyers, sellers, and media owners and, ultimately, reduce friction across the industry. That shift marked the beginning of Broadsign’s broader transformation and shaped the vision we continue to build toward today.

You’ve led Broadsign through multiple waves of transformation. How do you prioritize where to invest as the industry continues to evolve?

We invest in two ways: through products and through acquisitions. When we see an opportunity to acquire and integrate a company that can accelerate progress faster than building organically, we’ll often take that approach. It allows us to move more quickly and bring capabilities to market sooner.

Traditionally, we’ve focused our investments on technologies and capabilities that help connect different parts of the ecosystem more effectively over time. Sometimes, the fastest way to move the industry forward isn’t always the most obvious or direct one. It can mean building complementary products or investing in areas that help create a more connected and scalable market overall. Ultimately, the goal has always been the same: reducing friction across the industry and making it easier for advertising dollars to flow into out-of-home.

Where do you see the biggest disconnect between how OOH is perceived and what the medium is actually capable of?

I’d say the biggest challenge is that OOH still hasn’t reached the point where it’s as easy to buy as some other advertising channels. The industry has evolved quickly, and many companies are bringing new ideas and technologies to market, creating a wide range of workflows and solutions across the ecosystem.

Over the years, Broadsign has focused on building technology that helps create more seamless connections between the demand side and supply side. Publishers, agencies, and technology partners will always have their own approaches, and innovation is important, but the industry also needs more standardized and connected transaction paths that can scale efficiently.

The industry talks a lot about collaboration and growth. What does real collaboration actually look like across OOH?

OOH represents roughly 5% of the overall advertising market, and the focus is on how to continue growing that share. But the way to grow the industry isn’t by competing for incremental share within the existing programmatic market. Rather than competing for share within OOH or pDOOH, the bigger opportunity is growing the broader OOH market across both digital and static.

As the industry becomes more connected and standardized, OOH increasingly operates like other major media channels, making it easier for larger advertising investments to flow into the space. That’s one of the reasons we acquired Place Exchange. We’re committed to long-term industry growth, and over time, industries naturally consolidate as it becomes less practical for multiple companies to keep building the same technologies in parallel.

The acquisition strengthened our ability to help unify the ecosystem and create a more connected path between the demand side and supply side of the industry. We’re already seeing stronger momentum toward that kind of unification through greater consolidation and integration across the ecosystem, which is naturally attracting more investment and attention from the broader advertising industry.

What does the next phase of digital transformation in OOH look like over the next few years, and how do you hope it ultimately shapes the future of the industry?

The next phase of digital transformation really comes back to unification. A lot of people focus on growing the industry incrementally, but the most important thing is building a more connected market. That’s been a major focus for Broadsign for a long time, and it’s why we continue investing across different parts of the ecosystem, including static.

AI will also play an important role, particularly in improving operational efficiency. It can help streamline workflows, campaign planning, and many day-to-day processes. But at this stage, there’s a significant role for technology providers to support the end-to-end transaction infrastructure and the broader flow of ad dollars. Beyond that, any technology, trend, or opportunity that broadens the market ultimately accelerates industry growth. That’s part of the reason we’re also interested in areas like retail media and audience analytics.

Audience measurement will be especially important moving forward. OOH already has unique strengths as a medium because it exists so close to the point of purchase, but the industry still needs stronger audience analytics and measurement capabilities to fully demonstrate that value to advertisers.

You’ve emphasized culture as a core part of transformation. What role has it played in enabling meaningful change across the business?

Culture has been a huge part of Broadsign’s success. A lot of that comes back to our values and the fact that people genuinely believe in them. We try to make decisions based on doing the right thing for the business, our customers, and the industry overall. There’s very little internal politics because the focus has always been on building something better together.

That mindset becomes especially important during acquisitions and periods of transformation. When new teams come in, we don’t approach it from a place of protecting turf. If another company is doing something better, we want to learn from it and embrace it. That’s one of the reasons the Place Exchange acquisition worked so well. The two companies had very complementary strengths with very little overlap, so it wasn’t about duplicating efforts; it was about bringing together capabilities that made the combined business stronger.

What does the Digital Transformation recognition mean to you personally, and what impact are you most proud of?

I’m proud of what Broadsign has become and the role it’s played in moving the industry forward. Over the years, we’ve continued investing in products and acquisitions we believed would improve the industry, even when it sometimes took time for the market to fully adopt them.

We may not always move as quickly as some other industries, but we’ve always had a relentless focus on getting better and helping push the industry forward along the way. I think Broadsign has earned its position in the industry because our motivations have always been rooted in building something meaningful and creating long-term value for the ecosystem. I’m grateful to the OAAA for the honour because it reflects the collective effort behind everything we’ve built. We’re committed to this industry for the long term, and we’ll keep working to help it evolve, grow, and improve.

Product News | October 11, 2021

The next chapter of OOH: Insights from Broadsign’s Burr Smith and Ari Buchalter

At this year’s Independent Billboard Operators (IBO) panel discussion, one theme emerged consistently throughout the conversation: the next phase of OOH growth will depend on making the medium easier to buy, sell, and measure for operators of all sizes.

Broadsign CEO Burr Smith and Chief Strategy Officer Ari Buchalter shared their perspectives on the forces reshaping OOH advertising, from automation and programmatic transactions to audience-driven buying and measurement, while also discussing what those shifts mean for independent operators navigating an increasingly digital and data-driven landscape.

Out-of-home is entering its next evolution

The global advertising market is now roughly $1 trillion, with OOH accounting for approximately $50 billion worldwide and programmatic transactions representing a fast-growing portion of that spend. Throughout the panel, Ari emphasized that the industry may be approaching a tipping point, as improvements in automation, measurement, and accessibility continue attracting greater interest from major omnichannel buying platforms and advertisers.

That opportunity is driven by many of the qualities that have long made OOH valuable: strong real-world audience connection, proximity to the point of purchase, high visibility, and immunity from the bot fraud that plagues many digital channels. At the same time, advances in data, automation, and audience-based measurement are making the medium more flexible, measurable, and accessible to advertisers.

As campaigns become more dynamic, data-driven, and omnichannel, many OOH transactions still rely on fragmented planning, buying, and operational workflows that create friction across the campaign lifecycle. Simplifying those processes is becoming increasingly important as advertisers expect the same speed, flexibility, and interoperability they experience across other digital channels. For independent operators, that evolution could help reduce operational complexity and make it easier to participate in audience-based and programmatic buying environments.

Programmatic DOOH is accelerating that shift. While still early in its maturity compared to broader digital advertising, adoption continues to grow as more transactions move through DSPs and programmatic platforms. As a result, OOH has an opportunity to capture a larger share of media budgets while giving independent billboard operators greater visibility within national and regional media buys alongside larger networks.

“Our objective at Broadsign is to try and unify, automate, and simplify that entire $50 billion slice of the market, because if we make OOH as simple to buy as other media channels, with the same efficiency, transparency, and visibility into audiences, we should be able to grow that $50 billion market to capture more share,” says Burr. “There are certain aspects of OOH that are much better: it’s closer to purchase, there’s less fraud, and there are inherent strengths in the medium if we do what we need to do.”

Building a more connected ecosystem with Broadsign and Place Exchange

A recurring theme throughout the IBO panel was that OOH’s continued growth will depend on stronger collaboration across the ecosystem. As advertisers increasingly expect unified workflows, audience-based buying, and easier access to inventory, operators, platforms, and buyers all play a role in modernizing OOH transactions.

That broader industry shift is reflected in the combination of Broadsign and Place Exchange. While Broadsign has long focused on the infrastructure and operational side of OOH, including content management, ad serving, and campaign management tools, Place Exchange brings expertise in programmatic transactions, SSP capabilities, and established buy-side relationships, particularly in the US market. Together, the companies support a more connected workflow spanning inventory management, campaign delivery, programmatic monetization, and audience-based activation.

For independent operators, that broader ecosystem creates new opportunities to participate in programmatic DOOH and access regional and national demand flowing through programmatic platforms. While larger operators may integrate directly with SSPs and buying platforms, smaller media owners can work through aggregators such as Screenverse, Vengo, Adkom, and Billboard Planet, to collectively expand their reach and make inventory more accessible to buyers.

The discussion also reinforced that independent operators remain a critical part of OOH’s broader ecosystem. Their local market expertise, unique inventory, and community presence continue to offer meaningful value to advertisers seeking more contextual and geographically diverse ways to reach audiences.

“I got into out-of-home because I was excited not just by the power of the channel as an advertising medium, but by its growth potential and its ability to leverage data and technologies like programmatic to grow beyond the relatively small share of advertising spend it represents today, roughly 5% globally and only 2% in the US,” says Ari. “That remains our North Star. We’re focused on OOH at a time when many competitors are shifting toward areas like CTV and search. That focus on OOH defines who we are.”