Month: July 2025

Product News | October 11, 2021

Digital out-of-home strategies for healthcare and pharmaceutical advertising

Advertising in the healthcare and pharmaceutical space can be challenging. Privacy regulations, skeptical consumers, and the personal nature of medical decisions make it difficult to reach patients through digital channels without crossing ethical lines.

By combining privacy-compliant targeting with contextual, location-based messaging, digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising delivers relevant healthcare messages when and where they matter most, building the trust needed for medical decision-making.

How to reach health and pharma consumers with DOOH

Healthcare brands are doubling down on marketing—spending over $2.9B in 2024 alone among the top 10 pharma companies—to better connect with professionals and patients. But in a crowded, cautious market, relevance and credibility are key. Success depends on delivering transparent, contextually relevant messaging.

Many still face challenges: creating cohesive cross-channel experiences, breaking down data silos, and accessing real-time insights to reach audiences at the right moment. That’s where DOOH excels. It enables measurable, privacy-conscious campaigns powered by contextual signals and location behaviour—instead of cookies—helping healthcare brands reach the right audience, in the right place, at the right time.

Build awareness and drive consideration across the patient journey

Healthcare and pharma ads can face skepticism—but the right context can make all the difference. In fact, 45% of patients trust healthcare messaging more when it includes OOH, and over half are more likely to act on ads seen in a doctor’s office.

To position your brand as a credible health resource, focus on delivering accurate, relevant content in high-traffic, health-conscious environments. From early research to treatment consideration, OOH meets patients at every stage:

  • Audience-driven screens: Reach your ideal audience across retail, wellness, and community spaces that over-index for health-conscious consumers.
  • Place-based environments: Hospitals, pharmacies, and doctor’s offices provide built-in credibility and keep health messaging contextually grounded.
  • Outdoor placements: Billboards, urban panels, and transit shelters near care centers keep your brand visible during key decision-making moments.

When patients begin evaluating care options, they’re especially receptive to messaging that informs rather than sells. In fact, 36% of consumers pay attention to OOH ads that introduce new healthcare products and programs in a timely, educational way.

OOH can also guide patients at critical decision points—like choosing where to get care. Location-based targeting is especially effective, with 37% of consumers interested in ads for local care facilities. Point-of-care placements further boost impact: 59% of patients notice brand ads in medical settings, and 84% are more likely to discuss them with their doctor.

For added relevance, tailor creative to real-time conditions—like flu season or allergy alerts—to ensure your messaging stays timely and helpful.

See how Tonic Media Network powers wellness-focused content across Australia’s largest health and well-being screen network.

Target the right audience in everyday moments

Out-of-home advertising gives healthcare and pharma brands a unique opportunity to connect with high-intent, health-conscious audiences throughout their daily routines.

  • Parents are often on the go, navigating busy schedules with kids in tow. OOH placements near schools, family attractions, or retail centers can help reach this group when they’re outside the home and in decision-making mode.
  • Family caretakers frequently engage with local pharmacies, discount retailers, and community clinics, making targeted signage in these locations especially effective.
  • Pharmacy patrons, especially those 55+, regularly visit retail locations where in-store displays and nearby screens can drive awareness at the point of care and purchase.
  • Health & fitness enthusiasts tend to engage with wellness-related messaging in environments that align with their lifestyles, like gym screens, fitness studio lobbies, and urban walking routes.
  • Healthcare professionals attending industry conferences or commuting to and from medical hubs can be reached through airport DOOH, hotel screens, and venue signage. Tailor creative to match conference themes or specialty topics for added impact.

Promote telehealth and drive omnichannel engagement

As telehealth adoption increases, 17% of consumers are most interested in OOH ads that promote virtual offerings or provide information on mobile apps. Use DOOH to drive traffic to your digital platforms. Include clear calls-to-action that encourage app downloads or website visits, then retarget these audiences across mobile and digital channels, delivering branded impressions at each audience touchpoint.

To make campaigns even more actionable, incorporate interactive elements like QR codes, social prompts, or touch-enabled displays. A quick scan can direct viewers to a microsite, product page, or mobile wallet offer—bridging the gap between physical exposure and digital engagement. These saved offers can trigger timely reminders based on location or expiration, keeping your brand top of mind and driving follow-through.

Case study: Boehringer Ingelheim’s DOOH success story

Global pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim turned to programmatic DOOH to increase brand awareness and sales of its pet antiparasitic product. 

With Broadsign’s help, Boehringer Ingelheim launched a programmatic DOOH campaign targeting dog lovers with static and dynamic creative featuring QR codes placed at malls and outdoor screens near pet stores. The DOOH campaign worked in tandem with TV, radio, digital, and CTV ads for omnichannel reach.

The Results:

  • 105% boost in purchase consideration (39% vs. 19% for non-exposed audiences)
  • 254% increase in positive brand image (46% of ad recallers had positive impressions)
  • Strong ad recall (53% remembered seeing ads multiple times)
Ready to maximize your digital out-of-home investment? Explore curated audiences in our Healthcare & Pharma package here!

Product News | October 11, 2021

Digital out-of-home for holiday marketing: How to win high-intent shopping moments

A busy two-level shopping mall atrium with shoppers gathered along the upper-floor railing. A large digital billboard dominates the center, displaying a SportChek holiday advertisement beneath a glass skylight.

If your holiday marketing strategy is still built around the same playbook from a few years ago, you’re already behind. 

In 2026, consumer trends point to a more deliberate, hybrid holiday shopper: one who starts deal hunting months before decorations go up, takes more time to research and compare options, and routinely moves between mobile devices, AI tools, and physical stores before making a purchase. As a result, the path to purchase is becoming longer and more fragmented, creating dozens of high-intent micro-moments where brands have an opportunity to inform or influence what shoppers do next.

As agencies and marketers seek ways to connect digital discovery with brick-and-mortar purchasing behaviour, digital out-of-home (DOOH) inventory offers them a unique opportunity to reach consumers at key moments throughout their IRL holiday shopping journey. And with programmatic making campaigns faster and easier to launch and adjust, DOOH can play a vital role in an omnichannel holiday strategy — with the flexibility to meet campaign needs as they evolve.

Why holiday shopping micro-moments matter in 2026 — and how DOOH can help

Major sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday remain at the centre of the holiday shopping calendar, but they represent just a few moments in a purchase journey that now starts earlier and moves fluidly between digital and physical touchpoints. According to new Microsoft research, the average holiday conversion journey now takes 52 days, with 63% of U.S. shoppers starting before Halloween. That journey is also increasingly hybrid: per Salesforce, 42% of shoppers visit stores to buy products they previously researched online, while 79% use smartphones while shopping in-store. 

It’s within this extended, omnichannel journey that holiday shopping micro-moments occur: reflexive, high-intent windows when consumers turn to a device or their surroundings to act on an immediate need, like:

  • Comparing gift ideas or researching products
  • Looking for a nearby store or point of sale
  • Seeking inspiration for holiday hosting, decorating, or gifting
  • Checking local product availability, promotions, or seasonal offers
  • Making a last-minute purchase

For advertisers, these moments create opportunities to reach shoppers with messages that reflect what they need in that moment. And because DOOH combines broad reach and repeated exposure with the ability to deliver relevant messaging in real-world contexts — often close to the point of purchase — it’s particularly well suited to making those moments count.

Chanel campaign displayed on Simon Media’s DOOH inventory at The Galleria in Houston, Texas

Strategy #1: Leverage advanced targeting to reach holiday shoppers at high-intent moments

Use advanced DOOH targeting to activate screens in and around the physical locations where your target customers are most likely to be — particularly when proximity to a store, venue, or other destination signals stronger purchase intent.

Depending on the campaign objective, advertisers can narrow their inventory using:

  • Location targeting: Go broad with nationwide or city-level campaigns, or get more granular with zip codes, POIs, custom geofences, and individual screens. A retailer promoting a Black Friday sale, for example, could prioritize screens within walking or driving distance of its stores.
  • Audience targeting: Use first-party data and third-party audience segments to identify screen locations where target customers are most likely to be present — whether that’s parents shopping for toys, beauty buyers looking for gifts, or travellers heading home for the holidays.
  • Venue and asset targeting: Match placements to the activity happening around them, from gift shopping at malls and stocking up at grocery stores to dining, celebrating, and travelling over the holidays.
  • Dayparting: Adjust when ads appear to align with relevant shopping and travel behaviours throughout the day.
  • Layered targeting: Combine multiple signals to get more precise. For example, target mall-adjacent inventory within a specific New York City geofence during peak afternoon and evening shopping hours.

De’Longhi recently put this kind of high-intent targeting into practice with a programmatic DOOH campaign promoting its Eletta Explore coffee machine during the competitive holiday shopping season in Poland. By activating inventory in high-traffic shopping malls, reaching gift-seekers close to the point of purchase, and using dayparting to align ad delivery with peak shopping hours, the campaign ultimately drove a 121% lift in brand preference and a 190% lift in intent to interact with the brand or visit its website.

For holiday campaigns focused on purchase-ready micro-moments, targeting can extend all the way into the store. According to Salesforce, 77% of consumers plan to shop in physical stores this holiday season, making in-store advertising a particularly valuable way to reach shoppers when they’re most likely to make a purchase. The same targeting principles still apply: advertisers can prioritize the stores, audiences, locations, and times most relevant to what they’re selling rather than treating all retail foot traffic equally.

Cineplex Media DOOH screen at CF Carrefour Laval in Quebec, Canada, directs shoppers to nearby Bell stores

Strategy #2: Use dynamic creative and contextual triggers to match DOOH messaging to the moment

Targeting can help put a holiday ad in the right place at the right time. Dynamic creative in DOOH takes that relevance a step further by adapting the ad itself based on what’s happening in that moment. Using signals like time, weather, location, proximity, product availability, or other live data, advertisers can automatically serve the creative variation that best fits the current context. 

For holiday campaigns, that opens up practical ways to make creative more useful and timely:

  • React to the weather: Promote coats, hot drinks, delivery, or indoor activities when temperatures drop, then switch creative as conditions change.
  • Make proximity useful: On screens near a store, dynamically show the closest location, distance, or a directional call to action.
  • Adapt as shipping deadlines approach: Shift from standard delivery messaging to expedited shipping, pickup, immediate availability, or digital gift cards as Christmas gets closer.
  • Build urgency around key sales moments: Use live countdowns to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, promotional deadlines, or other limited-time offers.
  • Respond to inventory levels: Feature products or offers based on what’s currently available at nearby locations rather than promoting something shoppers can’t buy. 

The most effective dynamic DOOH creative strategies are built around signals that meaningfully change what’s useful or relevant to the shopper, allowing advertisers to adapt messaging at scale without manually building and trafficking every possible variation. 

READ ALSO: What marketers need to know before launching their first dynamic DOOH campaign

Strategy #3: Pair physical DOOH exposure with mobile activity to extend reach and drive action

Mobile plays a major role in holiday commerce, with eMarketer projecting that nearly 60% of online holiday purchases will happen on mobile devices in 2026. That makes mobile and DOOH a natural pairing, with each channel reinforcing the other across the shopping journey. OAAA research also found that combining DOOH and mobile can increase engagement by up to 30%, while an Ocean Neuroscience study found consumers are 48% more likely to engage with a mobile ad after seeing the same campaign on a DOOH screen.

For holiday campaigns, advertisers can use that relationship in several practical ways:

  • Location-based retargeting: Extend a DOOH campaign with follow-up mobile ads served to audiences who were near campaign screens. A shopper who encounters a holiday campaign while out shopping, for example, could later see a mobile ad featuring the same product or promotion. 
  • Mobile push notifications: For opted-in app users, use location signals like geofencing or beacons to deliver relevant notifications when they’re near a store or campaign location — for example, alerting loyalty members to an offer nearby.
  • Interactive QR codes: Give shoppers a direct path from a DOOH ad to an offer, coupon, product page, store locator, or other mobile experience. Dynamic QR codes are particularly useful on screens where consumers are close enough — and have enough dwell time — to scan.
  • In-app AR experiences: Use DOOH creative as an entry point to augmented reality experiences on a shopper’s phone, like virtual product try-ons, interactive holiday experiences, or content designed for social sharing.

The best approach depends on what you want the shopper to do next. QR codes, push notifications, and AR can encourage action while a shopper is still nearby, while mobile retargeting can reinforce the message later in the purchase journey. 

Read more: 3 reasons why you should combine digital OOH and mobile advertising for maximum impact

Ready to make the most of this year’s holiday shopping micro-moments? Explore our inventory catalog to discover premium digital screens in high-impact locations.

Product News | October 11, 2021

How VAST Billboards is redefining out-of-home in New Zealand

VAST digital billboard beside a busy roadway in Christchurch, New Zealand, displaying the VAST Billboards logo.

In a market long shaped by a handful of dominant players, VAST Billboards has carved out a distinct identity as New Zealand’s independent, Kiwi-owned out-of-home (OOH) network. Headquartered in Christchurch, VAST has built its growth story not by trying to out-scale the biggest networks, but by complementing the broader OOH landscape with a strong presence across regional cities, suburban corridors, and strategically important locations.

We sat down with Gary Rosewarne, Head of Growth Strategy at VAST, to talk about the company’s rapid growth, its programmatic ambitions, and why Broadsign has become a core part of how VAST runs its media operations.

A network built on purposeful growth

VAST’s strategy is built on a simple but deliberate idea: the network doesn’t need to be the whole plan — it needs to be the right complement to it. “We don’t believe VAST needs to be the whole plan,” Rosewarne explains. “In Auckland, for example, we can provide a complementary layer around established networks; in Christchurch, we have significant strength across suburban and arterial environments; and regionally, we give brands access to audiences across a growing number of markets.”

That positioning shapes where VAST builds inventory and how it prices and packages it, with a focus on keeping the network competitively priced and easy to buy. Its predominantly digital, large-format footprint extends beyond New Zealand’s largest cities into regional markets including Tauranga, Hamilton, Napier, Hastings, Taupo, Nelson, Blenheim, Timaru, and Invercargill, across both landscape and portrait formats.

“The objective isn’t simply to accumulate screens, but to add locations that create useful geographic spread, strengthen coverage and give advertisers access to audiences they may not be reaching elsewhere,” says Rosewarne. “That combination of metro, suburban and regional inventory is really what defines the VAST network.”

VAST digital billboard on Ferry Road in Christchurch, New Zealand

Serving national brands and local businesses alike

The company’s advertiser base spans national agency clients, major brands, and local direct advertisers. In 2025, its network saw strong growth across these segments, becoming an increasingly important part of national campaign plans while maintaining its strong connection to businesses looking to reach audiences in their local communities.

VAST has also used its own network to experiment with new ways of engaging audiences and demonstrating the potential of OOH. One example is Bill Is Bored, a campaign that used curiosity-driven billboard creative to capture attention and encourage people to continue the experience online. More recently, the Win A Grand – Your Region, Your Voice campaign invited New Zealanders to share what matters most in their local communities. The responses helped inform Beyond the Big Three, a research study examining the scale, value, and audience opportunity of regional New Zealand beyond the country’s three largest cities.

Together, these campaigns have given VAST a way to test ideas, gather audience insights, and demonstrate what OOH can achieve beyond simply delivering impressions. “These projects let us test ideas on our own network, learn from the response and build evidence that can ultimately help advertisers use OOH more creatively and effectively,” Rosewarne says.

That combination of clarity of purpose and consistent execution earned VAST recognition as Beacon’s 2026 Sales Team of the Year—one of New Zealand media’s leading industry awards, and a notable achievement for a relatively small team competing against some of the most established names in OOH.

“In 2025, VAST grew revenue at 5x the pace of the broader market, but the story was bigger than the numbers,” Rosewarne says. “We stopped thinking about ourselves as simply selling billboards and became much more focused on solving planning problems.”

Central to that shift was the “complete, not compete” philosophy, helping agencies see where regional and suburban audiences could add incremental value. Being a smaller, independent player also gave VAST room to move quickly. “Being small probably helped as well: we could be nimble, authentic, try things, have some fun and respond quickly when an opportunity emerged.”

VAST roadside screen in Ashburton, New Zealand

Why VAST chose Broadsign

As both the network and ambitions have grown, so has the need for technology that can scale alongside them. That search led VAST to the Broadsign Platform.

“For us, Broadsign came down to trust, reliability and fit,” Rosewarne says. “We wanted an established platform with deep expertise in OOH, rather than something we would potentially outgrow. As we scale, the technology sitting underneath the network has to be dependable, but it also has to give us the flexibility to keep evolving how we package, manage and monetise inventory.”

Broadsign’s position within the programmatic DOOH ecosystem and its established relationships with major trading platforms and partners were other deciding factors, particularly as programmatic became a larger part of VAST’s business. “Broadsign brings experience, expertise and an established ecosystem that we can grow alongside.”

Programmatic as a new route to market

Programmatic buying has shifted how the media owner thinks about its inventory, moving the conversation beyond locations and weeks toward a more dynamic view of audiences, availability, and demand. “It creates another route into the VAST network and makes it easier for advertisers who may already be buying other digital media programmatically to include OOH within that ecosystem,” Rosewarne explains. “For a challenger network like ours, reducing that friction is particularly valuable.”

That shift has also prompted VAST to rethink how it values and packages inventory for programmatic buyers, treating it as a distinct buying pathway with its own use cases rather than a variation of direct bookings. Just as importantly, programmatic expertise has been embedded across the sales team, helping ensure the right buying approach is recommended for each campaign.

Looking ahead

VAST’s long-term vision centers on purposeful growth, not expansion for its own sake. Rosewarne describes the goal as building “a highly useful independent OOH network that has a clear role within the New Zealand market”, one that continues to strengthen its regional footprint, protect its position in Christchurch, and selectively add metropolitan inventory that creates genuine new audience opportunity.

Looking at the broader industry, Rosewarne sees OOH becoming increasingly measurable, connected, and flexible, with programmatic adoption and audience measurement both continuing to mature. “Our job is to combine those capabilities with the things that still make OOH powerful: great locations, simple creative, local relevance and real-world visibility,” he says. “If we can keep doing that while remaining independent, nimble and easy to work with, we think there is a very exciting future for VAST.”

Ready to scale your network without scaling your workload? Learn more about the Broadsign Platform here.

Product News | October 11, 2021

How Canadian Tire achieved a 64% lift in store visits with programmatic DOOH

Canadian Tire Canada’s Garage and Triangle Rewards digital billboard displayed in a busy downtown office building.

To support its next phase of service-led growth, Canadian Tire, a staple in the Canadian retail landscape, launched a high-impact programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) campaign to reach its target audience at scale. Specializing in essential mechanical care and seasonal maintenance, the brand sought to strengthen its position as a premier automotive service provider and drive measurable foot traffic to its stores across the country.

Objective

The campaign aimed to drive measurable foot traffic to Canadian Tire Auto Service Centres nationwide. To achieve this, the campaign targeted Canadian car owners, with an emphasis on growth segments including Gen Z, Millennials, and Newcomers to Canada, by highlighting that consumers can both earn and redeem Canadian Tire Money on automotive mechanical services.

Strategy

Partnering with Broadsign, Talon and Touche, the campaign deployed programmatic DOOH alongside Canadian Tire’s national TV, digital, and social media channels. Ads were activated programmatically on digital screens near Canadian Tire Auto Service Centres to reach drivers when vehicle maintenance was a priority.

The campaign ran across multiple placement types, including billboards, transit shelters, shopping malls, fitness centres, and campus environments, to remain highly visible throughout the day. Layering these location and venue parameters with contextual triggers and Canadian Tire’s first-party audience data maximized efficiency, ensuring the messaging reached high-intent drivers in real time.

Results

The campaign delivered a 64% net lift in store visits compared to the unexposed lookalike control group, achieving a 100% confidence level.

Want the campaign highlights? Check out the infographic below.