Product News | October 11, 2021

Digital out-of-home strategies for travel and tourism marketing

Travel demand continues to grow, with air passenger volumes and hotel revenue per available room now exceeding 2019 levels. Despite broader economic uncertainty, spending on travel is projected to rise by 7% annually over the next decade, and 76% of travellers say they plan to spend the same or more on trips in 2025.

To seize the moment, travel and tourism brands need to get creative in how they connect with today’s travellers. Personalization and customized experiences are key, and that’s where digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising truly shines.

Why travel and tourism marketers are investing in digital OOH

In an era where digital fatigue and ad blindness plague many channels, DOOH offers unique advantages for travel campaigns:

  • Content that can’t be skipped: Unlike digital ads that can be easily bypassed, the medium commands attention in the physical world
  • Cost-effective reach: With CPMs ranging from $2-$9 USD, OOH delivers mass reach at a fraction of digital costs (Solomon Partners and WOO)
  • Action-oriented: 76% of consumers took action after seeing a DOOH ad

As travel surges, DOOH advertising has emerged as one of the most effective ways to reach travellers at the right moment. This isn’t just theory—Broadsign data reveals travel’s share of DOOH ad spend has increased dramatically from 3.8% in 2023 to 5.7% in 2024, reaching 8% in early 2025, making it the top-performing OOH vertical this year.

Major brands recognize this value—Hotels.com, Expedia, and VRBO ranked among the top OOH advertisers in 2024, leveraging the channel to capture attention as travel demand surged.

Boost impact with strategic ad placement

The most effective DOOH strategy begins with understanding the traveller’s physical journey and identifying high-value touchpoints:

1. Tap into captive audiences at travel hubs

Airports and travel terminals offer the perfect advertising environment:

  • Extended dwell time: Travellers have limited distractions and higher attention spans
  • Premium demographics: Airport audiences contain significantly higher proportions of high-earners
  • Purchase mindset: Travellers are actively making decisions about their experiences
  • Brand elevation: 63% of consumers associate airport ads with high-quality brands 
  • Action-oriented: 77% of viewers take action after exposure to airport advertising 

Pro tip: Maximize exposure by placing your ads in high-traffic areas within terminals where travellers naturally look for information—near gates, security checkpoints, and baggage claim areas.

2. Capture audience attention along the open road

Airport ads aren’t the only way to capture attention. With domestic travel on the rise, 2025 is shaping up to be the year of the road trip. The U.S. Travel Association is projecting a 3.9% growth in domestic leisure travel for 2025, which equates to over $1 trillion in spending. 

Memorial Day travel, for example, is expected to reach a 20-year high, with 45.1 million Americans planning to travel at least 50 miles from home—87% of them by car. 

With so many travellers hitting the road, it’s a prime opportunity to use OOH to get their attention and prompt them to take action. According to the OAAA, 51% of people who saw directional digital OOH (DOOH) ads later visited the business, and 93% of them made a purchase.

Here’s how you can make the most of their journey:

  • Billboards along key routes: Target major highways leading to popular destinations
  • Rest stops: Even the toughest road warriors need to recharge and refuel. Service stations and rest stops are the perfect opportunity to make your mark

Pro tip: Map your OOH placements to match travel patterns during peak seasons, focusing on routes with the highest tourism traffic. Consider high-traffic intersections where pedestrians are likely to be crossing and cars are forced to come to a stop. 

Air Transat advertises on a roadside billboard via Pattison.

3. Engage travellers at holiday hotspots

Once travellers arrive, strategically placed OOH ads continue to inform their experience:

  • Tourist attractions: Promote complementary experiences near major sites
  • Hotel lobbies and elevators: Guide guests toward local experiences
  • Shopping areas: Influence purchase decisions at retail locations

Segment by travel persona

To maximize impact, travel and tourism campaigns should align messaging and placements with the needs of specific audience segments. Here are a few high-value traveller profiles and where DOOH can most effectively reach them.

Business travellers and frequent flyers

  • Demographic profile: Predominantly 25-54 years old with average household income of $75k+
  • Behavioural insight: Often dining out with clients and partners, often on the road
  • DOOH placement: Airports, office buildings, transit hubs, lounges
  • Message focus: Convenience, airline and loyalty rewards, productivity amenities

Family vacationers

  • Demographic profile: Diverse age range with household incomes typically $60k+
  • Behavioural insight: Working professionals seeking escape from routine
  • DOOH placement: Malls, entertainment complexes, quick-service restaurants
  • Message focus: Value, experiences for all ages, convenience

Leisure travellers

  • Demographic profile: Predominantly 25-54 years old, varied income levels
  • Behavioural insight: Cost-conscious and experience-focused
  • DOOH placement: Gyms, universities, casual dining, bars
  • Message focus: Unique experiences, authenticity, memory-making
WeRoad travel brand promotes its once-in-a-lifetime adventures across Manchester (via Marketing Report).

Drive contextual relevance

Timing and relevance are critical in travel advertising, and DOOH offers powerful tools for both. Strategic timing is one of the most underleveraged aspects of travel campaigns, even though planning behaviours follow predictable patterns:

  • Early planning phase: Many consumers begin researching destinations 2–3 months in advance
  • Booking windows: Peak booking periods often align with post-holiday seasons and tax refund cycles
  • Seasonal inflection points: School breaks, long weekends, and major events create natural surges in travel interest

At the same time, the shift to digital out-of-home (DOOH) and programmatic buying has opened the door to smarter, more responsive targeting strategies:

  • Real-time targeting: Adapt messaging based on factors like weather, flight delays, and local events
  • Dynamic content: Swap creative assets by time of day, audience composition, or commute patterns
  • Location-specific messaging: Deliver tailored creative across airports, transit hubs, and destination points

Together, these capabilities help brands engage travellers at precisely the right moment, with messages that match their intent, environment, and journey stage.

Aruba Tourism Authority runs dynamic DOOH ads on Intersection screens to remind audiences that sunny skies are just a flight away.

Understand the ROI of digital OOH campaigns

With DOOH advertising, travel marketers can move beyond standard metrics to track key actions like flight bookings, hotel reservations, and app downloads, offering a clearer view of how OOH influences the travel journey from planning to purchase. Attribution helps connect these insights to broader media performance, revealing how OOH works with other channels to drive conversions, foot traffic, and brand impact.

Modern OOH in the travel sector comes equipped with powerful tools, like:

  • Mobile location data: Track how travellers engage with OOH ads and follow their movements to your destination or website.
  • Sales lift studies: Measure the increase in revenue driven by targeted OOH campaigns.
  • Brand lift studies: Gauge the impact of OOH ads on travellers’ decision-making process and recall of your travel brand or destination.

For example, a hotel chain aiming to drive bookings during peak travel season might set KPIs such as increased website traffic and higher booking conversion rates and implement attribution methods like foot traffic analysis and web/app lift to measure the impact of the OOH campaign.

By connecting with travellers at the right moment with the right message, advertisers can transform OOH from a simple awareness channel into a powerful driver of consideration and conversion.

Ready to maximize your digital out-of-home investment? Explore curated audiences in our Travel & Tourism package here!

Product News | October 11, 2021

What’s new in the Broadsign Platform: Sophisticated targeting, creative management and UI improvements

Spring has finally sprung, which means fresh air, greenery, and, most importantly, fresh updates to the Broadsign Platform. This season, we are bringing you sophisticated targeting tools, streamlined creative management, and major UI improvements to make the campaign planning and management process for directly-sold campaigns as seamless as possible for campaign planners. 

Why does this matter? While the activation process for digital out-of-home (DOOH) may only require a couple of minutes, the campaign planning and management process often requires much more time. Discovering available and relevant inventory, collecting data to prove the medium’s effectiveness in meeting campaign goals, and managing campaign creatives are all time-consuming tasks.

The new spring updates introduce a new level of automation that not only reduces the time and complexities of getting DOOH campaigns out the door but also helps make out-of-home (OOH) a competitive and attractive medium for buyers. Let’s dive in!

Sophisticated targeting tools that find the best inventory 

Granular targeting shouldn’t be exclusive to programmatic. That’s why last year, we introduced targeting tools for directly sold campaigns executed through the Broadsign Platform, giving campaign planners the same flexibility and comprehensive targeting capabilities as online and programmatic media buyers. 

The targeting tools included the ability to filter your inventory by location and key points of interest (POIs), enabling campaign planners to find the most relevant inventory for each campaign at the click of a button. An intuitive map view was also introduced, allowing you to better visualize your inventory with quick filtering options by area, support for bulk location uploads, and setting radius parameters. 

This year, we’re introducing two powerful targeting upgrades for directly sold campaigns: demographics and criteria targeting. With demographics targeting, you can filter inventory by attributes like age, gender, or occupation to find the screens that will maximize campaign impact. We’ve also enhanced criteria targeting, giving you more granular control over inclusion and exclusion rules. For example, when building a proposal for an alcohol brand, you can now quickly exclude screens that don’t allow alcohol ads from your inventory search in just a few clicks. 

These new additions to the Broadsign Platform not only reduce the manual work required for inventory discovery but also give your team the opportunity to be a more strategic partner to buyers. We’re also excited to share that these enhanced targeting capabilities are now available to Broadsign customers worldwide! 

Simplified creative management and centralized campaign planning

Media owners juggle multiple campaigns and creatives at the same time, and without the right tools, the creative management process can become complex and stressful for your teams. Last year, we released our in-platform creative management tools, which allowed you to create, edit, manage, and assign campaign creatives with ease. On top of that, we also made it possible for you to push your campaigns live through the Broadsign Platform, eliminating the need to go through Broadsign’s desktop tools. 

In this latest update to the Broadsign Platform, we’re introducing creative scheduling. You’ll now be able to apply multiple scheduling options to your creatives, making it easier than ever to deliver the right message at the right time. You can also target your content by time of day or event, making it easier than ever to adapt your messaging to dayparts or changing campaign goals. Finally, you can update your creatives in real-time, allowing you to plan and deliver up to 55% of your campaigns in one unified workflow directly in-platform. 

Additional management tools for an improved user experience

Along with comprehensive creative management and targeting tools for directly-sold campaigns, additional tools and UI enhancements have been added to improve the usability and user experience of the Broadsign Platform:

Inventory package accessibility

Access inventory packages effortlessly through the platform’s updated navigation bar, enhancing efficiency and ease of use.

Centralized settings management

Administrators can now adjust and manage all necessary settings for digital and static inventory, user management, and more directly within the platform’s web-based UI through a centralized hub for control and configuration.

Campaign monitoring enhancements

With the newly implemented progress indicator, real-time monitoring of campaign pacing is now possible, giving immediate insight into campaign performance. This allows for quick adjustments to be made, as needed, to meet campaign goals effectively.

Search functionality and filters

An improved search mechanism, complemented by additional filters like campaign, client or contract names, enables quicker and more accurate campaign retrieval, saving time and improving workflow.

Line item list

You can now access a list of all line items directly through the navigation bar. Operations teams now have a more precise and comprehensive view of all bookings made on your network.

Dashboard customization

Tailor the platform’s dashboard to meet individual needs, ensuring that the most relevant and important information is always front and center.

Interested in testing out these new features? Book a demo today

Product News | October 11, 2021

How to integrate in-store digital signage into your retail media network

If your retail media network (RMN) is thriving online but underutilized in-store, you’re not alone, and there’s untapped value waiting on the sales floor. While many retailers have monetized their websites and apps, in-store signage often remains overlooked and disconnected from broader retail media efforts.

Forward-thinking retailers are closing the gap by deploying in-store screens or connecting existing ones to their broader retail media ecosystem using specialized digital signage software. From investing in new displays to syncing with data systems, workflows, and programmatic platforms, they’re transforming stores into dynamic, measurable environments that complete the omnichannel shopper journey.

The benefits go far beyond operational efficiency. As of 2025, more than 200 RMNs operate globally, each with its own formats, technologies, and measurement frameworks. This fragmentation has become a major challenge, with marketers calling for more standardization to unlock the next wave of retail media investment. Integrating in-store signage into a cohesive strategy helps retailers close the loop—connecting the full shopper journey, enabling comprehensive measurement, and driving long-term growth for both themselves and their brand partners.

Whether your goal is to enhance in-store advertising, maximize ROI on existing hardware, or deliver smarter, data-driven shopper experiences, this roadmap will help you turn screens into a strategic cornerstone of your retail media network.

Why digital signage is critical to your retail media strategy

Despite the rise of e-commerce, 80% of purchases still happen in-store, making the physical store a high-impact, yet often underutilized, media environment. Still, many RMNs prioritize digital channels like websites, apps, and email, overlooking the opportunity to bring that same power to the sales floor.

Digital signage bridges the gap between digital media and in-person purchase moments. It turns your store into a full-funnel, monetizable channel that enhances, not competes with, your broader retail media strategy. Here’s how:

  • Connects online precision to in-store decisions: Bring the targeting and flexibility of digital media into the physical store, where buying decisions are made, with dynamic, contextually relevant content—brand campaigns, personalized promos, seasonal messaging—delivered right where buying decisions happen.
  • Monetizes real-world traffic: Turn foot traffic into a scalable revenue stream by offering brand partners premium placements on high-visibility screens, targeted by location, time, or context—especially impactful during add-to-cart moments.
  • Delivers measurable, flexible performance:  Modern digital signage platforms integrate with your data and ad tech stack, enabling real-time scheduling, updates, and reporting. Track key metrics—product engagement, sales lift, dwell time—and connect in-store exposure to online behaviour.
  • Enhances the shopper experience: Effective signage supports the customer journey, not disrupts it. From back-in-stock alerts to curated promotions, digital displays make in-person shopping more engaging, relevant, and responsive.
  • Powers your omnichannel strategy: Signage closes the loop between discovery and conversion, syncing messaging across email, mobile, online ads, and in-store screens so shoppers experience a consistent, connected journey.

READ ALSO: Why in-store media is essential for forward-thinking retail media strategies

Integrating digital signage into a unified retail media strategy

Whether you’re building from scratch or integrating existing screens into your retail media stack, you need to lay the right foundation. That means designing a signage strategy built for scale, content relevance, and future monetization — and then connecting it to the data, workflows, and systems that power your RMN.

As Jonathan Franco, Broadsign’s Global Head of Retail Media, notes in a recent piece on bridging lessons from digital out-of-home (DOOH) to in-store media: “The OOH market has taught us that success isn’t just about having screens in impactful locations; it’s about playing the right content in the right place at the right time.”

In other words, a successful signage strategy goes beyond high-traffic ad placements or hardware specs. It’s about creating strategic touchpoints that support the full shopper journey and integrate seamlessly with your broader digital media operations.

Here’s how to bring it all together:

1. Plan your screen zones with both placement and content in mind

Think like a media planner, not just a merchandiser. Whether you’re starting from scratch or expanding an existing setup, begin by aligning screen placement with key shopper moments:

  • Entrances: High-impact campaigns and branded takeovers
  • Main aisles: Seasonal themes or product spotlights
  • Promo zones & end caps: Shoppable content, limited-time offers
  • Checkout areas: Loyalty messaging, app signups, basket-building prompts
  • Specialty departments (e.g., pharmacy, bakery, butcher): Context-specific content like curated product picks, pairing suggestions, or department-specific promos 

Once placement is mapped, define content zones and use cases that bring structure and scalability to your network:

  • Utility-first content like wayfinding, back-in-stock updates, and localized promos
  • Retailer-owned storytelling through seasonal campaigns or private label features
  • Brand-sponsored media with paid placements, co-branded messages, and monetizable ad space

Pro tip: Map screen zones based on foot traffic, dwell time, and product affinity to guide content planning and ad pricing. This helps ensure a coherent in-store experience while maximizing the media value of each screen.

2. Keep it flexible and connected

Retail moves fast — and so should your signage. Choose a retail digital signage platform that’s not just flexible but also built to integrate with your broader retail media stack. In particular, look for solutions that support:

The more your signage tools sync with your RMN systems, the easier it is to deliver value to brand partners and internal stakeholders alike.

READ ALSO: How to choose the best digital signage software for your business

3. Align signage with your cross-channel media strategy

The same shopper might see your ad on social media, browse your website, and visit your store—all in a single day. To keep pace, your content and media offerings should reflect a cohesive journey. When deployed strategically, in-store screens become physical extensions of your digital media plan — not standalone inventory.

For marketers, that means:

  • Repurposing assets from other RMN channels (e.g. email banners, social creative, seasonal campaigns)
  • Reinforcing digital campaigns or driving app engagement via in-store screens
  • Ensuring messaging is consistent across in-store and online touchpoints
  • Bundling signage with other digital placements in your media kits
  • Offering tiered packages with omnichannel reach or localized activations
  • Providing turnkey creative support to streamline advertiser onboarding

When thoughtfully integrated, digital signage becomes a powerful part of your go-to-market strategy, helping brands reach shoppers with the right message at the right time, both online and offline. Integration isn’t just about technology; it’s about alignment across content, channels, and teams.

4. Centralize measurement and reporting

One of the biggest hurdles in building or scaling digital signage within your retail media strategy is measurement. Without a clear plan, in-store signage can quickly become disconnected from your broader performance story—making it harder to justify spend or demonstrate value to advertisers.

To avoid that, build signage into your reporting framework from day one. Start by tracking foundational metrics:

  • Screen-level impressions and play counts to understand exposure volume
  • Dwell time to assess attention and engagement
  • Content playback logs to validate ad delivery and campaign pacing

Then, go deeper by connecting signage exposure to in-store outcomes, like product interaction, add-to-cart moments, or sales lift. These insights help prove that your in-store media is driving real business results, not just awareness.

By applying consistent measurement frameworks across both online and offline channels, you can tell a unified, full-funnel story. Mirroring key OOH and digital metrics—like reach, frequency, and lift—helps demonstrate how in-store signage works in tandem with campaigns on email, mobile, and paid social.

Modern digital signage platforms provide unified in-store reporting, making it easier to analyze performance, share results with brand partners, and refine campaigns in real time—turning in-store media into a measurable, scalable revenue channel within your retail media network.

READ ALSO: Discover how the OOH industry is leveraging technology to achieve more measurable campaign outcomes in our guide to out-of-home measurement, attribution and audience extension.

Ready to make your in-store signage a seamless part of your RMN?

Whether you’re planning your first deployment or optimizing existing screens, Broadsign’s industry-leading platform makes it easy to connect your in-store signage with the rest of your retail media ecosystem. With over two decades of experience in digital out-of-home, we help retailers build, manage, and monetize scalable signage networks that align with your broader media strategy.

Get in touch to see how we can help you unlock the full value of your in-store presence.

Product News | October 11, 2021

Broadsign Unveils Automated In-Advance DOOH Transactions

New platform capability to extend and simplify traditional DOOH and OOH buys through automated trading platforms; early adopter WPP Media Netherlands, formerly GroupM Netherlands, one of the first to deliver DOOH campaign with the technology

MONTREAL, June 3, 2025Broadsign today announced Broadsign In-Advance. Breaking down longstanding accessibility barriers to out-of-home (OOH) advertising, the new Broadsign Platform capability unlocks automated in-advance Digital OOH (DOOH) transactions, with support for static OOH transactions anticipated via a future update. Programmatic media buyers can now leverage Broadsign In-Advance to secure guaranteed DOOH campaigns months ahead of delivery using technology built on top of familiar automated trading tools. It also allows direct DOOH buyers to streamline historically lengthy buying cycles, saving hours spent manually discovering, curating, and reserving inventory. 

With most OOH and DOOH media purchases still taking place manually, Broadsign In-Advance is designed to enable programmatic and traditional buyers to use automated, dynamic processes for guaranteed in-advance buys. It improves planning flexibility, significantly reduces back-and-forth communications between media buyers and owners to confirm the availability of and secure inventory, and simplifies campaign adjustments. The advancement further unlocks the data-driven targeting available via programmatic buying platforms for more traditional DOOH buys, so media buying teams can make more informed decisions to maximize the performance of their reserved campaigns.

DOOH media owners who make their inventory available for in-advance buys via the new capability similarly benefit from more efficient transactional processes and enhanced revenue potential through access to new buyers. They can choose the inventory they want to make available, and Broadsign In-Advance will automate bookings based on their defined business rules. Demand partners who activate the new capability via their Broadsign Supply-Side Platform (SSP) integration will be able to unlock previously unavailable inventory to support new campaign types and maximize profitability. 

WPP Media Netherlands (formerly known as GroupM Netherlands) has already tested the new capability to secure DOOH ads across the Netherlands via OutMoove, the inaugural DSP to integrate with Broadsign In-Advance. As Broadsign evolves the technology, it will continue to enlist new demand and both digital and static OOH media owner partners worldwide. Representing one of the first agencies to execute a transaction supported by Broadsign In-Advance, WPP Media Netherlands Practice Lead OOH Noella Klein Ikkink said, “We see the potential of Broadsign In-Advance to increase efficiency for media buyers for standalone direct buys or in the mix with programmatic activation. It could also facilitate more streamlined, packaged buys alongside current buying methods and open up more opportunities to determine the best path forward, depending upon our planning strategy and budget.”

“OOH is one of the most enduring ad mediums today, yet it’s one of the most complex to transact outside of programmatic, which only accounts for less than ten percent of global digital buys, a figure that excludes static buys. Booking OOH and DOOH ads today should be as easy as securing a hotel or flight, and automation is the key to making this possible,” explained John Dolan, Vice President, Global Head of Media Sales, Broadsign. “Broadsign In-Advance is the next step in facilitating an industry-wide transition to more automated transactions. It introduces tech-driven advancements that will make the channel more accessible and elevate the quality of campaigns, helping to usher in a new era of growth for OOH.”

Broadsign’s new in-advance DOOH transaction capabilities are accessible to Broadsign SSP customers and demand partners for early adoption today via the latest platform update. Get in touch with a Broadsign representative to learn more or check out this blog post to better understand how automation can transform both OOH and DOOH. Broadsign encourages media buyers to consult with their preferred demand partner to confirm present or future plans to support Broadsign In-Advance. 

About Broadsign

Broadsign empowers media owners, agencies, and brands to harness the power and reach of out-of-home to connect with audiences in ways unlike any other advertising channel. More than 1.5 million static and digital signs along roadways and in airports, shopping malls, retailers, health clinics, transit systems, electric vehicle charging stations, and more run on Broadsign, reaching audiences at multiple touchpoints throughout the consumer journey. The Broadsign Platform helps media owners such as Outfront, Pattison Outdoor, Global, and Intersection streamline business operations and maximize revenue opportunities while enabling marketers and agencies to more easily plan and execute dynamic OOH campaigns that resonate with audiences. Brands spanning AB InBev, Disney, FanDuel, H&M, Honda, HP, Johnson & Johnson, KLM, Uber Eats, Sea-Doo, Samsonite, and many more have run successful programmatic DOOH campaigns enabled by Broadsign technology. https://broadsign.com