Product News | October 11, 2021

How Elevision enhanced its sales strategy and media operations with the Broadsign Platform

With the ability to easily reach large audiences in unique and impactful ways, out-of-home (OOH) advertising has been widely adopted in the United Arab Emirates. Regularly included in major media plans, ad spending for OOH in the region is projected to reach AED 1.6 billion (USD 435 million) in 2024.

Static out-of-home advertising remains the dominant format, providing unparalleled visibility in cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, characterized by active highways, high-traffic streets, and vibrant commercial zones. That said, digital out-of-home (DOOH) is rapidly gaining traction in the region. This shift is fuelled by technological advancements that meet advertisers’ demands for more dynamic and eye-catching formats and the increased use of data and analytics to deliver more targeted and contextually relevant ads to intended audiences.

With DOOH ad spending expected to grow annually at a rate of 9.5% by 2028, media owners who digitize their networks early stand to gain a competitive edge. One company leading the digitization of OOH in the UAE is Elevision. Founded in 2011, the DOOH native media owner’s network includes both elevator and large-format screens, totalling 1920 screens across 575 locations. Its combined network provides advertisers with over 850,000 daily viewers, totalling 14.5 million daily impressions.

Advertisers choose Elevision for their premium audiences and locations

Initially, Elevision’s network consisted of elevator screens in high-end residential and commercial buildings in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Over the last four years, large-format DOOH screens have been added to its network and expanded into premium business districts, including the Dubai International Financial Centre and the Dubai World Trade Centre.

Having built its network across premium areas, Elevision provides advertisers access to affluent demographics, audience segments and profiles. Moreover, the elevator environment offers meaningful targeting at scale. In addition to easily reaching over 500,000 people daily, DOOH elevator screens are a high dwell-time and high-frequency format, efficiently providing high ad recall rates. The ability to combine precise audience targeting with extensive reach has made Elevision the go-to network for connecting with audiences.

Another significant benefit of working with Elevision is the detailed reporting of DOOH campaigns through its custom reporting platform. Launched last year, the platform gives clients access to real-time data to monitor their campaigns’ performance, including ad plays, reach, and impression volume. These real-time insights enable advertisers to remain agile by adjusting their strategies while campaigns are in flight, ensuring business objectives are met.

How Broadsign Guaranteed Campaigns helped optimize their sales strategy and media operations

Before partnering with Broadsign, Elevision had worked with two other digital signage software providers. However, as its network expanded and its content strategy became more complex to meet advertisers’ needs, its existing solution struggled to scale with its growing business. Having found that Broadsign offered a more robust technology stack with advanced features, the company decided to onboard its network onto the Broadsign Platform.

With Broadsign’s CMS, which follows a rule-based approach rather than a playlist-based one, Elevision only requires two administrators to keep its network of over 1,900 screens up and running. One feature it particularly relies on is Broadsign Live, which allows administrators to take real-time action at a distance. With on-demand player polling, they no longer need to wait for the poll period for changes to take effect. The administrators can also capture what’s displayed on their screens in real-time through the player monitoring centre, allowing them to verify that updates or dynamic content are rendered properly.

Elevision also chose Broadsign for its campaign planning and management capabilities, accessible through the Guaranteed Campaigns module, as it’s the only solution on the market to offer real-time inventory visibility, flexible campaign types and an optimization engine all in one platform. With Broadsign’s Enterprise plan, Elevision’s sales team can now view real-time inventory availability and fill rates, as well as projected impressions and CPMs simultaneously when selecting screens. Previously, when the sales team needed to schedule upcoming campaigns, the media operations team would have to manually search screen availability for specific locations within a given timeframe through a spreadsheet.

“The ability to see inventory availability in real-time through Broadsign Guaranteed Campaigns has reshaped the sales team’s pricing activities,” said Eamon Sallam, Chief Operating Officer at Elevision. “They can now see when screens are at 90% fill rate versus 30%, giving them more confidence in how they apply their pricing and discounts. Scheduling features within Guaranteed Campaigns have also provided the sales team with valuable tools to build more tactical proposals to better meet the needs of clients.”

Furthermore, access to flexible campaign types, including share of voice and goal-based (impression, plays, budget) campaigns, has opened inventory to a new set of buyers: programmatic advertisers looking to buy guaranteed impression-based OOH campaigns. With the impression goal campaign type, advertisers can decide how many people they’d like to see their ad. Broadsign’s optimization engine enables campaigns to be dynamically reallocated across the selected inventory, ensuring delivery goals are met despite inventory availability or demand changes.

The Guaranteed Campaigns module has also helped Elevision automate much of its manual campaign management process. Using one platform for campaign planning and management has made the handoff of campaigns between sales and media operations seamless. Once the sales team has booked the campaign, the media operations team can make any necessary changes to the campaigns directly in the platform, like locations, flight dates, and creatives.

Another capability that Elevision relies on is Broadsign’s APIs to feed its custom reporting platform. Broadsign has over 100 active API integrations and is considered the most open platform in the industry, with just about every feature accessible. Using the API integrations from Broadsign’s CMS and Guaranteed Campaigns, Elevision is able to provide advertisers with comprehensive data on campaign performance.

More recently, Elevision worked on enhancing its reporting capabilities for programmatic OOH campaigns as that subset of advertisers had much higher expectations of reporting coming from online environments. Now, the media owner’s reporting dashboard not only shows ad plays, impressions and gross spend for programmatic campaigns but also audience reach and demographic segmentations, providing the same granular reporting as its directly sold campaigns.

What we can expect from Elevision in the coming years

What’s next for Elevision? The company intends to double its network in the next three years. In the UAE, it plans to add more large-format and elevator DOOH screens in another premium business district. It also plans to continue global expansion, having already installed over 100 elevator DOOH screens in a newly built luxury residential community in London.

While still ahead of the curve with real-time reporting, Elevision’s next goal is to close the gap of attribution in OOH. In collaboration with some of its advertisers, the company has begun running case studies to demonstrate how the results from OOH campaigns contribute to campaign objectives.

Want to grow your out-of-home network? Schedule a live demo to see how we can help make that happen!

Product News | October 11, 2021

Meet Arno Buskop, Broadsign’s new Senior Director of Data Strategy

We’re excited to welcome Arno Buskop to the Broadsign team as our new Senior Director of Data Strategy. Arno joins us from GroupM’s Kinetic, where he spent nearly 15 years at the intersection of data, technology, and research in out-of-home (OOH) media. With deep experience in data-driven planning, measurement, and software development, Arno has helped shape how modern OOH campaigns are executed and evaluated.

As he steps into this new role at Broadsign, Arno brings with him a sharp perspective on the future of OOH and how data can drive smarter decisions, stronger outcomes, and greater accountability across the ecosystem.

We sat down with Arno to hear more about his vision for the industry, what excites him about the medium, and why now is a pivotal moment for data strategy.

What excites you most about working in out-of-home advertising today?

What excites me is that, even after two decades of working in OOH measurement, research, and technology, the puzzle still feels unsolved. That ongoing challenge, bringing all the moving parts together, is what keeps me motivated. At the same time, the pace of change is accelerating. Data and technology are evolving rapidly, and the art (expertise) and science (data) of OOH are converging more than ever. As the art increasingly integrates into platforms, it’s critical that we stay focused on doing the right thing and delivering real value for advertisers.

That creates a powerful moment of opportunity. Broadsign holds a unique position in the market—widely adopted and deeply embedded in the core of digital ad delivery and optimization. We now have the chance to build on that foundation, in collaboration with clients and partners, to help shape what’s next for the entire OOH industry.

In your opinion, what defines a strong data strategy in OOH, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for growth?

A strong OOH data strategy aligns planning, activation, and measurement throughout the entire ecosystem. It begins with trustworthy audience data, both deterministic and modelled, and layers in contextual signals unique to the physical nature of the OOH environment. But it’s not just about collecting data; the real value comes from connecting it in meaningful ways that drive better outcomes.

The biggest growth opportunities lie in predictive capabilities, more intelligent targeting, and real-time creative optimization. AI has a major role to play in making these complex scenarios more understandable. In the near future, AI will begin to reshape how we forecast audiences, validate delivery, and dynamically adjust campaigns.

What are some of the key challenges brands face when leveraging data in OOH, and how can the industry address them?

The biggest challenges stem from fragmentation across methods, data standards, and practices. Many markets, and therefore brands, still face inconsistent audience definitions, limited transparency, and unreliable impression validation. There’s also a clear gap between the desire for seamless omnichannel execution and the current realities of how OOH fits into that broader landscape.

To move forward, we need shared benchmarks, improved data interoperability, and stronger collaboration across the value chain. As programmatic investment continues to grow, fraud prevention, brand safety, and data accuracy must become industry-wide priorities.

Where does measurement stand today, and how should it evolve moving forward?

Measurement in OOH has come a long way, but it still varies by market, vendor, and methodology. We’ve moved beyond basic reach proxies and are beginning to validate impressions and connect exposure to outcomes. Still, accountability remains inconsistent.

There’s a clear need for transparent, shared metrics and standards that both buyers and sellers can align on. We also need to be honest about what’s modelled, what’s observed, and what’s assumed. That level of clarity becomes especially important when combining data sources or building attribution models.

Ultimately, measurement should help OOH close the loop from planning to delivery to performance. It’s not about finding one perfect number; it’s about developing frameworks that build confidence, reduce friction, and enable brands to invest with trust.

At the same time, OOH can take inspiration from digital channels by adopting a smarter, more agile mindset—planning more effectively, optimizing in real time, and consistently proving value. This includes using better segmentation, dynamic delivery strategies, and real-time adjustments.

However, the goal isn’t to replicate digital. OOH’s strength lies in its physical presence, contextual relevance, and brand-safe, emotionally resonant environments. The real opportunity is in combining those unique qualities with digital intelligence.

How do you see the medium integrating more seamlessly with omnichannel media strategies?

The market is demanding it. Agencies are consolidating planning and driving toward true omnichannel execution. For OOH to thrive in this environment, it must integrate with all major buying platforms, align on metrics, and communicate in the same terms as other media channels.

At the same time, we need to proactively assert our influence and show that we’re equipped to navigate complexity, especially as other channels continue to introduce new priorities that can easily shift attention elsewhere.

With the continued shift toward digitization and programmatic buying, which trends or technologies are you most eager to see evolve?

I’m excited about AI and automation, not just for optimization but for their potential to reduce manual effort across the entire ecosystem. We need to use the industry’s expertise to build better plans and execute more effectively, not waste it on repetitive tasks. I’m also closely watching how mobility and location data can deepen our understanding of audiences and improve delivery. In addition, I see creative and media planning beginning to converge, which presents a major opportunity for platforms like Broadsign that sit at the heart of ad delivery.