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

Broadsign’s Sell-Side AI Agent Joins With Global Netherlands and Draft Digital to Deliver First-Ever End-to-End Agentic AI-Powered OOH Campaign

Collaboration paves the way to faster, more automated, and data-driven OOH buys

MONTREAL (May 27, 2026) – Broadsign, the leading global platform for managing and monetizing out-of-home (OOH) media, today announced that its sell-side AI agent and digital marketing agency Draft Digital’s buy-side agent, planned, booked, and executed the first-ever fully agentic AI OOH ad campaign. The agentic AI solutions enabled the end-to-end media buy for Lot of Happiness on premium OOH inventory in collaboration with media owner Global Netherlands.

Agentic AI powered the buy from beginning to end, using the brand’s campaign goals to inform audience and venue targeting, media selection, campaign setup, creative workflow and approvals, and execution. The AI agentic solutions used the AdCP protocol and Broadsign’s industry-leading OOH sell-side technology and data infrastructure. Moving beyond chatbots layered over existing tools, the collaboration proved the power of agentic AI in enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of OOH campaigns from start to finish. Together, the buy and sell-side agents rapidly coordinated complex tasks across parties, with human oversight and guardrails.

With the largest global OOH media supply – including the largest aggregation of video-enabled displays, in-store media, and on-screen cinema inventory – Broadsign’s goal with this campaign is to unlock the power of agentic trading for OOH. The company is committed to bringing greater scale, data, and efficiency to buyers and opening up more demand for sellers.

“Agentic AI allows us to double down on our value proposition of leveraging technology to support media owners in achieving their business goals,” explained Bryan Mongeau, CTO, Broadsign. “Overlaying AI atop our global static and digital OOH supply, in concert with advanced data and execution capabilities, such as screen-level audience indexes, dynamic creative, guaranteed in-advance buying, and more, sets the stage for a paradigm shift that will transform the OOH business. This innovative collaboration is only the beginning.”

“A number of us at Draft Digital were early adopters of programmatic DOOH years ago, so being first to move on this next leap, fully agentic OOH, is genuinely exciting. Agentic advertising lets us build true multichannel experiences for our clients, backed by first-party performance data and a much cleaner ecosystem,” shared Aliks Röling, Digital Marketing Consultant, Draft Digital. “It pushes us into tighter collaboration with quality publishers and partners and ultimately delivers sharper strategic impact for brands like Lot of Happiness.”

As a growing charity lottery with around 100,000 participants and over €50 million donated to good causes, Lot of Happiness is always looking for smarter ways to expand its reach. Without the media budgets of larger lottery players, the organization relies on creativity and innovation to fuel its growth. “As a growing organization, we have to be creative and find efficiencies that larger players simply take for granted. Agentic DOOH is one of those opportunities where we want to be at the forefront, and we’re excited to see where it takes us.” Leo Nijs, Online Marketer, Lot of Happiness

“In today’s competitive media landscape, digital out-of-home must be as easy to discover, plan, buy, and measure as any other channel, and this collaboration proves it’s possible,” said Mink Zwolsman, Business Development Director, Global Netherlands. “What excites us most is that 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 that outdoor can be planned, bought, and activated with the same speed and data-driven precision as any digital channel. For Global Netherlands, this is a meaningful step toward making our inventory more accessible to buyers who want seamless, omnichannel campaigns and we’ve only just begun to uncover the advantages.”

Marketers and media owners looking to learn more about Broadsign’s sell-side agentic solution can get in touch with the company.

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. https://broadsign.com

About Draft Digital

At Draft Digital, we are setting the new standard in marketing and media. We believe that standing still is falling behind; an organization that isn’t growing is already losing. Built on a foundation of relevance and trust, we guide clients through a digital journey that never ends. We are leading the transition to Agentic Advertising, where intelligent Agents handle the operational burden of media buying. This shifts our focus from execution to pure strategy and innovation. By merging classic marketing theory with AI, we deliver scalable creativity and perfected measurement. We are not just service providers; we are the architects of digital growth.

About Global Netherlands

Global is a media operator and market leader in the (Digital) Out-of-Home sector, offering advertisers the opportunity to advertise in high streets, supermarkets, shopping centres, at railway stations, petrol stations and along motorways. With a nationwide digital network, Global meets advertisers’ needs to reach their target audience at precise times and locations. Thanks to these exclusive concessions across these diverse networks, advertisers can reach the masses or, conversely, target specific audiences very precisely in a wide variety of locations.

About Lot of Happiness

We believe in a better world for everyone. Charities, both big and small, drive this mission, they all deserve our support. By playing in our lottery, we together contribute to their missions. Playing = impact. You choose which charity receives half of your contribution. We are flexible: you decide how often you play and with what amount. This makes Lot of Happiness the lottery where your voice counts and your impact is big. And you can win fantastic prizes, from €1 million in the bank to a brand-new electric cargo bike. A true win-win.

Product News | October 11, 2021

How Osmow’s achieved a 33.9% lift in restaurant visits with programmatic DOOH

To support its next phase of national growth, Osmow’s, a leader in the Canadian quick-service restaurant (QSR) space, launched a high-impact programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) campaign to reach its target audience at scale. Specializing in modern Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine, the brand sought to strengthen its position as a category leader and drive measurable foot traffic to restaurant locations across the country.

Objective

The campaign aimed to increase brand awareness and category share for Osmow’s, leveraging three tailored executions to support its diverse product offering. A core objective was to drive in-restaurant visits across urban, suburban, and rural markets, while positioning the brand as a value leader during the competitive post-holiday period.

Strategy

Osmow’s partnered with Involved Media and Broadsign to launch a data-driven programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) campaign, activating premium inventory across 4,912 screens. The campaign leveraged a diverse mix of placements, including large-format billboards, transit shelters, and campus screens, to deliver broad reach and sustained frequency.

Using the OutMoove DSP, the campaign employed programmatic triggers to engage consumers at high-intent moments throughout their daily routines. To maximize relevance and efficiency, ads were programmatically dayparted to peak during lunch (11 am–2 pm) and dinner (5 pm–7 pm) consideration windows. By utilizing proximity targeting near restaurant locations across Canada, the campaign ensured that tailored messaging reached audiences at the moment of choice.

Results

Foot Traffic Lift: Achieved a 33.9% lift in visits across 30 restaurant locations compared to the non-exposed control group

Sales Impact: Delivered a 5% contribution to total sales throughout the campaign period

“With over 240 locations, we are always looking for ways Osmow’s can stay top-of-mind while driving traffic to restaurants. Programmatic DOOH gave us the flexibility to do both at once. We were able to maintain a massive presence across the country, but with the additional layer of dayparting and proximity tools needed to reach the right people during the key lunch and dinner windows. It’s been a very effective way to bridge our digital strategy with the physical restaurant locations,” says Effie Ambida, Director Strategy & Planning at Involved Media.

Want the campaign highlights? Check out the infographic below.

Product News | October 11, 2021

Best practices for high-impact out-of-home creative

The out-of-home (OOH) ads that stop people in their tracks, spark awareness, and drive action all share a common thread: they’re built on proven creative principles shaped by real-world testing and what works in today’s evolving OOH landscape.

Effective OOH creative relies on bold design, minimal text, and clear branding. But what works on a static highway billboard may not have the same impact on a digital out-of-home (DOOH) screen or a crowded subway platform at rush hour.

That’s what makes OOH unique. It reaches audiences as they move through real-world environments like airports, malls, roadways, and city centres across both static formats and dynamic, data-driven digital displays, offering far more creative flexibility than the medium often gets credit for.

This guide explores the OOH and DOOH creative strategies that consistently deliver results before you plan your next campaign.

OOH creative fundamentals

When developing the creative for an OOH ad, there are core principles to keep in mind.

Define your goals: What does the ad wish to accomplish? Is the aim to drive in-store traffic? Stand out from competitors? Remind existing customers of an ongoing promotion? A firm strategy narrows the focus and clarifies the message.
Be bold: Most out-of-home ads have only seconds to reach audiences. When producing OOH or DOOH creative, employ boldness to stand out.
Keep it simple: A less-is-more approach is typically most effective. Messaging should be clear, direct, and to the point.
Let brand personality shine: Use humour, surprise, intrigue, even edginess to amplify your message.
Context is key: think about how your creative fits into its surroundings. Incorporating messaging that speaks to current events or relates to live data can boost performance and turn your ad from informative to innovative.

Think Design

Great OOH design is built for how people experience it. In fast-moving environments, you have seconds to make an impression, so clarity and visibility matter more than complexity.

At its core, effective design comes down to a few essentials:

High-contrast colours that cut through busy surroundings
Simple, focused layouts that are easy to process at a glance
Bold, recognizable imagery paired with clean, legible type

KFC’s bold, recognizable imagery makes this billboard instantly identifiable

Context matters just as much as design. What works on a roadside billboard viewed at speed won’t translate the same way to a street-level or place-based screen where dwell time is longer. Simpler creative performs better at a distance, while closer environments allow for more detail, as long as clarity isn’t compromised.

And while best practices exist for a reason, they are not rules. Intentionally breaking them can be just as effective when done with purpose.

Get the Specs Right

Even the strongest creative can fall flat if it is not built for the screen. OOH and DOOH formats vary widely across billboards, transit shelters, retail environments, and place-based networks, each with different dimensions, orientations, and file requirements.

A few fundamentals to keep in mind:

Design for both vertical and horizontal formats so layouts translate cleanly across environments
Stick to supported file types like JPG or PNG for static, and MP4 or HTML for digital placements
Keep file sizes within recommended limits to ensure smooth delivery and playback
Always build with the final screen size and placement in mind to avoid cropping or distortion

Below are some of the most common specs for digital and video displays in the US.

Most Common Display Sizes:

1920 x 1080
1080 x 1920
1400 x 400
840 x 400

Most Common Video Sizes (15-Second):

1920 x 1080
1080 x 1920
1400 x 400
1280 x 960

For more guidelines on proper format sizes, read our Best Practices Guide: How to create DOOH campaigns that get results.

Let’s talk about text

It’s not just about what you’re saying, but how you’re saying it: typeface and formatting contribute to how the ad, and its messaging, are received.

Large, bold typeface is easier for people to read, especially from a distance
Avoid thin or serif typefaces, which can be harder to read
Proper spacing between letters, words, and lines will help improve readability and visibility
Keep the copy short and sweet, and limit messaging to five to seven words
Stick to one simple, direct message and call-to-action

Viewing Distance	Minimum Readable Text Height
5’ – 50’	1” – 2” (72px – 144px @ 72dpi)
50’ – 100’	2” – 4” (144px – 288px @ 72dpi)
100’ – 200’	4” – 8” (288px – 576px @ 72dpi)

Virgin Active’s OOH display delivers big impact with minimal text

Video creatives

A recent study found that full-motion video OOH ads drive a 65% increase in “intent to learn more” compared to static creative, along with a 41% lift in perceived relevance, clear indicators of stronger audience consideration.

That’s why incorporating motion into your digital content is such a powerful way to capture attention. In most environments, videos should run no longer than 10-15 seconds; however, longer videos can be impactful for audiences in specific venue types with longer dwell times, like gyms, doctors’ offices, or bars.

Note: Place Exchange by Broadsign can seamlessly adapt social media and in-app vertical video creatives for portrait-mode screens, so you can get maximum value from a single video.

Creating personalized and dynamic content

When vying for a consumer’s attention, optimizing a digital out-of-home campaign with Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) can be the x-factor in reaching target audiences.

DCO means adjusting and optimizing DOOH ads for real-world contexts and environments, pulling data to deliver ads in response to current events or trends, such as the weather, sports scores, financial markets, audience profiles, or other nearby events or relevant information.

With DCO, ads can deliver more personalized experiences and stronger audience relevance. In fact, according to the OAAA and The Harris Poll, 81% of respondents exposed to weather-triggered ads featuring relevant product offers found them valuable. Thinking about where your ad will live along the consumer’s journey, and in what context, is an opportunity to create a high-impact ad that resonates with your target audience.

To create a high-impact ad, thread in creative that responds to live signals like time of day, weather, audience demographics or current events for a more targeted activation that reaches audiences at key moments.

Some ideas include:

Modify messaging based on relevant data inputs (e.g., weather, sports scores, etc.): Entice customers on rainy days to pop by for a warm cup of coffee, or advertise air conditioning units on extremely hot days, display sports scores during high-ticket events.
Schedule time-sensitive or product-specific promotions
Incorporate daily countdowns for popular movies or big events with universal appeal

McDonald’s weather-triggered OOH campaign in Qatar

Tracking and measurement

Knowing how your current campaign performs is crucial for planning the next. Use ID markers like QR codes, SMS messages, short-link URLs, hashtags, emails, or phone numbers to track and measure your ad’s performance. Adding a Call to Action (CTA) to your creatives can enable you to directly track “click-through” response to your OOH creative.

The winning formula for an out-of-home ad that gets noticed and delivers on ROI is to combine brand-safe creativity, outside-the-box thinking, and contextual relevance. With these OOH creative best practices in your toolkit, you can successfully create an ad that stands out.

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

De’Longhi drives 121% lift in brand preference with programmatic DOOH

To strengthen its position as a leader in premium home coffee experiences, De’Longhi partnered with Broadsign to launch a programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) campaign across Poland during the competitive holiday shopping season.

Objective

The campaign aimed to move audiences from brand awareness to purchase intent, positioning the Eletta Explore as the preferred choice for holiday gifting in a competitive retail landscape.

Strategy

In collaboration with agency partner Salestube PL, the campaign used the OutMoove DSP to activate premium pDOOH inventory across major Polish markets, focusing placements exclusively within high-traffic shopping mall environments.

Indoor screens in major shopping malls reached consumers in high-intent environments close to the point of purchase. By concentrating on mall inventory, including spectaculars, concourse screens, and food court displays, the campaign captured the attention of gift-seekers while they were actively browsing and shopping.

Dayparting aligned ad playouts with peak shopping hours, ensuring strong visibility during periods of elevated foot traffic throughout the holiday retail season.

Creative

The campaign featured cinematic video creative starring global brand ambassador Brad Pitt, accompanied by the localized copy: “To nie tylko idealny prezent. To Perfetto” (“It’s not just the perfect gift. It’s Perfetto.”).

By combining a recognizable ambassador with motion-driven creative across high-traffic placements, De’Longhi established a memorable presence during the year’s busiest retail window.

Results

121% Lift in Brand Preference: The campaign achieved a significant increase in brand preference, successfully strengthening De’Longhi’s positioning against key competitors in the premium coffee category.

190% Lift in Intent: The campaign effectively influenced consumer behaviour, delivering nearly a 3X lift in consumer intent to interact with the brand or visit the De’Longhi website.