Month: February 2023

Product News | October 11, 2021

In-store vs. online retail media: How each one impacts the consumer shopping experience

There’s been a lot of chatter about Amazon’s ad-heavy digital storefront in the past few months, some of it somewhat negative. While the e-commerce giant has historically been praised for being customer-centric, thanks in large part to its relevance and review-based product search rankings, things seem to be changing. If you try searching for a product on Amazon these days, the first page of search results will typically comprise nine sponsored listings, according to a study conducted by data firm Profitero – double the number of ads used by Walmart or Target. 

It appears that the company’s fanatical focus on advertising has come at the expense of the consumer’s online shopping experience; now, if you want to make a worthwhile purchase, you’ll have to invest extra time and energy to evaluate brands and avoid potential traps. But as online retail media is facing mounting backlash, many advertisers are realizing that in-store retail media offers similar data-backed benefits—in addition to unique advantages all its own—without negatively impacting the consumer shopping experience. 

The rise of retail media: How Amazon is reshaping the advertising industry

Following in the footsteps of search and social as digital advertising’s third big wave, retail media has already established itself as a force to be reckoned with. A recent report by GroupM found that retail media already represents 10.7% of global ad spend and forecasts that this figure will grow 60% by 2027. Built on a foundation of valuable first-party purchase data, contextually relevant ad experiences, and closed-loop reporting, retail media gives consumer brands powerful new ways to reach shoppers in the environments where their customers are buying. Amazon is at the forefront of this trend; since launching its retail media network in 2012, it’s become the US’s third-largest digital ad platform, trailing only Google and Facebook. Today, retailers like Walmart, Target, and Sephora are following Amazon’s lead by trying to build a marketing business on the back of their existing sales platform.

READ ALSO: Retail media networks 101: Definition, best practices, and tips for building out a rock-solid RMN

The rise of retail media has been particularly prominent  in the US, where eMarketer estimates advertisers are on track to spend more than $37 billion on retail media networks this year, an increase of about a fifth from 2021. The same report found that while social media currently attracts more ad dollars (forecasting an annual haul of $65 billion), retail media is set to grow more than five times faster in 2022. Part of this growth can be attributed to the fact that many brands are shifting ad dollars they’d previously been spending with Facebook and other online media platforms to retailers—likely due to the fact retail media advertising stands invulnerable against the demise of third-party cookies, as well as increased scepticism regarding the efficacy of digital ads. According to the Financial Times, advertisers added $9.5 billion to Amazon’s global revenue in the third quarter of 2022, while ad revenues at Meta fell 3.7% during the same period. 

The impact of putting advertisers ahead of users

While Amazon’s focus on ad tech has certainly been making its shareholders happy—in 2021, the company collected $31 billion from ad sales alone—some industry analysts contend that it has come at the expense of customer-focused recommendations, personalization, and discovery. Many of the sponsored posts showing up in search results are so subtle they look like organic search results. And even when the sponsored posts showing up in search results contain a tiny disclaimer label, these kinds of ads can be misleading because they fill up spaces people assume to contain trustworthy, independent information. Many other online marketplaces and retailer apps are following suit. The result is that retail media advertising is now, in many cases, more akin to dramatically altering shelf placement for specific people than a way to inform and delight consumers or prioritize their shopping experience.

It’s not just consumers who are starting to question online retail media’s resulting impact. Marketers are increasingly asking retailers to prove how much value is actually added by such advertising—especially since it’s not unusual for them to pay at least ten times more for slots on retail media networks than they would for programmatically-sold online ads. Although the returns can ultimately be higher, one limitation of online retail media compared to online ads on the open web is that it’s easy for consumers to shop around to different retailers; there’s little friction standing in the way of a person seeing an ad in one online store and immediately hopping elsewhere to make a purchase. This means that even though online retail media has the potential to generate in-depth performance metrics for advertisers, the ability to track which ads lead to purchases can, in practice, prove to be more difficult than initially thought. 

But the online space is only one of the arenas worthy of attention for retail media advertising; retailers are also finding ever more creative ways to turn their physical properties into space they can sell to marketers. Examples of digitized retail media placements inside brick-and-mortar stores include smart screens near the entrance, video displays on shopping carts, and digital retail end cap displays. By incorporating in-store digital media, retailers are able to give their partner brands access to customers close to the point of purchase, whether a customer is shopping on their website or inside one of their physical locations. 

The advantages of in-store retail media vs. online retail media

To clarify, advertising, particularly retail media, isn’t necessarily bad. Done the right way, retail media can inform customers about new products and help new businesses get a foot in the door. In particular, in-store retail media has managed to avoid many of the drawbacks outlined above while offering the data- and placement-based benefits that attracted advertisers to retail media in the first place—including access to first-party shopper data, improved campaign targeting, and real-time reporting. 

READ ALSO: Why in-store signage advertising belongs in every brand’s retail media strategy

Aside from avoiding the negatives, in-store digital retail media offers some distinct advantages over online retail media for advertisers looking for new and effective ways to connect with their customers. Unlike online, the consumer is seeing the ad in a specific physical environment, and often the advertised product is already right in front of them. This enables brands to reach people who are ready to buy now and are in an environment that inherently introduces more friction to the price comparison process. Online, a different site is just a click away. In the real world, at best, consumers face a long walk to get to another store that may offer a slightly better price on whatever they want to buy.

In-store retail media also allows advertisers to connect with a larger audience since there are simply more people who shop in physical stores than online. While consumers relied more on e-commerce since the start of the pandemic, The NPD Group reported that 2022 was the first year since COVID that consumers expected to make more of their holiday purchases in-store (46%) than online (45%). And the return to brick-and-mortar stores is a trend that extends beyond holiday shopping; according to McKinsey, 20% of consumers say they are now doing all of their shopping in-store, while only 5% shop exclusively online.

And while online retail media ultimately winds up making the consumer experience worse—with online ad placements going to the highest bidder instead of delivering search results based on relevance—in-store retail media is still based on improving the in-person shopping experience. Retail media advertising in physical stores is ultimately only as disruptive as a consumer wants; the inventory displayed on the shelf is the same regardless of whether someone saw an ad or interacted with its corresponding QR code. At the same time, digital in-store signage opens up new storytelling possibilities through the use of dynamic content, offering brands unique opportunities to engage with customers and leave a lasting impression. 

READ ALSO: How to enhance the in-store retail experience with digital signage

In short, in-store retail media offers the best of both worlds: it’s a way for retailers to generate additional revenue from brands and a method of delivering a more information-rich and relevant in-store experience. 

Are you missing the most valuable piece of your retail media network marketing strategy?

Check out our eBook to learn key aspects every retailer should look for when adding in-store digital marketing to their retail media network.

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.

Product News | October 11, 2021

Why travel marketers are turning to OOH for scalable reach and ROI

Tourism is thriving once again, and brands are racing to capture the attention of today’s travellers. As the industry continues to rebound and evolve from its pandemic dip, marketers are rethinking how to connect with multiple generations at key moments in the travel journey. Out-of-home (OOH) advertising remains a powerful, performance-driven medium, valued not only for its visual impact but also for its ability to deliver cost efficiency and broad market penetration across both global and local campaigns. 

For travel marketers, OOH offers strategic ways to engage audiences in real time. From digital billboards near airports to transit ads and dynamic creative triggered by weather or location, the channel excels at reaching travellers on the move or those dreaming of their next escape.

With its focus on visual storytelling and contextual relevance, OOH is especially effective at sparking wanderlust, promoting destinations, and influencing travel decisions. High-dwell environments like airports, transit hubs, and city centres offer premium visibility where plans are being made, driving strong recall and engagement.

Travel marketers are doubling down on OOH: Here’s why

Out-of-home has become one of the fastest-growing channels for travel and tourism marketers. According to Broadsign data, travel’s share of OOH ad spend rose from 3.8% in 2023 to 5.7% in 2024, reaching 8% in early 2025—making it the top vertical for OOH spend so far this year.

According to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), major travel brands like Hotels.com, Expedia, and VRBO ranked among the top OOH advertisers in 2024. This surge in activity is being fueled by several key factors: growing demand for both domestic and international travel, renewed airline operations, and increased marketing investments from hotels, online travel agencies, and tourism boards eager to capture consumer attention.

Maximizing efficiency and reach: The dollar value of OOH

At a time when marketers are being asked to do more with less, OOH is proving to be one of the most efficient and effective channels for driving reach and results. For travel brands, it offers a rare mix of broad exposure, cost control, and message adaptability, making it a smart choice when performance and efficiency are under the microscope.

This efficiency is especially evident when comparing OOH to other media channels. The medium delivers high-impact visibility at a significantly lower cost per thousand impressions (CPM) than connected TV (CTV), paid social, or display. According to Solomon Partners and the World Out of Home Organization (WOO), OOH consistently offers a lower cost per impression, with average CPMs ranging from $2 to $9 USD, well below most digital formats. That makes it one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve mass reach, particularly in high-traffic, high-dwell time environments like airports, transit hubs, and city centres. 

But cost efficiency doesn’t mean sacrificing performance. In fact, research from the OAAA and Comscore found that OOH drives online activation rates 5 to 6 times higher than expected, outperforming channels like TV, video, radio, banner ads, and print when it comes to driving digital engagement. 

Even in a softening economy, travel marketers are maintaining or increasing their OOH investment, driven by sustained consumer demand for experiences and exploration. Domestic travel is gaining particular momentum—U.S. hotels and resorts ranked among the top 10 OOH product categories in 2024, accounting for 3% of total year-end spend. Tourism boards and airlines are also increasingly anchoring their media strategies in OOH, using it as the lead channel in integrated campaigns that blend broad awareness with measurable results.

At the same time, multi-city and international campaigns are scaling efficiently, allowing brands to build awareness across key markets while tailoring creative to specific audiences. Marketers can keep messaging consistent across regions while adapting visuals or calls to action for different cities or traveller segments—an essential advantage when engaging both global tourists and local visitors. 

Finally, timing remains critical. Launching OOH campaigns ahead of peak travel windows or booking periods allows brands to influence decisions early in the planning journey. Many consumers start researching destinations weeks or months in advance, so a strong OOH presence during this window keeps your brand top of mind. Aligning campaigns with seasonal trends, long weekends, school breaks, or major events can further maximize reach and impact.

Measuring OOH’s real-world impact

For years, one of the biggest challenges in out-of-home advertising was proving its value beyond brand awareness. But that’s changing quickly. With the rise of advanced measurement tools and location intelligence platforms, travel marketers now have access to real-world insights that directly connect ad exposure to consumer behaviour.

Platforms like Arrivalist are leading this shift, offering new visibility into traveller movement and enabling marketers to understand how OOH influences actions like visits, overnight stays, and the path to purchase. By matching mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) to campaign exposure, tourism boards can measure visitation uplift and identify which audiences are most likely to act after seeing an OOH ad.

These insights go far beyond impressions, helping quantify tangible outcomes, like increased foot traffic to cities, attractions, hotels, or short-term rentals following a campaign. Marketers can also layer campaign data with flight, hotel, or rental trends to better understand travel intent and booking behaviour.

This level of attribution is especially valuable for tourism boards, which often need to justify public or partner funding by demonstrating a clear return on investment. As DOOH adoption grows, more campaigns are integrating measurement from the outset, enabling smarter optimizations and more transparent performance benchmarks throughout the campaign lifecycle.

Scaling smart with programmatic DOOH

Many of today’s travel campaigns span multiple markets, and programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) is helping power that growth. It gives brands the speed, agility, and precision needed to launch quickly, adapt mid-flight, and respond in real time to performance data. Unlike traditional media, programmatic buying eliminates long lead times, allowing marketers to shift budgets, swap creative, or refine targeting based on changing market conditions or traveller behaviour—all while retaining the bold, visual impact OOH is known for.

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) adds another layer of relevance by tailoring content in real time based on data like location, weather, language, or time of day. For travel marketers, this enables region-specific offers, weather-based messaging, and event tie-ins that drive stronger engagement.

Programmatic tools also streamline cross-market execution, enabling consistent messaging across regions while customizing creative for local audiences. This makes them especially valuable for multi-city and global tourism campaigns.

Out-of-home is no longer just a top-of-funnel awareness tool—it’s a performance-driven, scalable, and data-rich channel built for modern travel marketing. Whether you’re launching a global tourism campaign or targeting specific markets with dynamic, real-time creative, OOH delivers the reach, efficiency, and impact needed to move travellers from inspiration to action.

Ready to maximize your OOH investment? Contact us today to start building high-impact travel campaigns that drive real-world results.