| October 11, 2021
Why the programmatic DOOH buying process feels complex – and how to simplify it
In today’s complex media world, getting started with programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) can feel overwhelming. Media buyers are often left asking, ‘How do I reach the right audience, measure effectiveness, and do it all efficiently?’ With so many moving parts, from requests for proposals (RFPs) and inventory selection to data and measurement, the pDOOH buying process can feel more complicated than it should.
Rethinking how the medium is planned and executed helps enable campaigns that launch faster, run more efficiently, and drive greater impact.
Common challenges to buying programmatic DOOH
Buying programmatic DOOH can unlock scale and flexibility, but the process isn’t always straightforward. Traditional workflows still involve buyers or advertisers sending RFPs to multiple media owners and consolidating the responses into a plan. While effective, this manual process is time-consuming and leaves little room for flexibility, much of which could be streamlined with the right tools.
Measurement and attribution have historically been challenging in pDOOH. Without strong attribution, the channel’s impact within the broader media mix is often undervalued, and reporting that stays at a high level without impression or screen-level detail makes it difficult to fully connect campaigns to outcomes.
While pDOOH is designed for agility, creative approvals, varying file specs, or limitations with dynamic creatives can slow things down. Coordinating creative updates across multiple networks can add extra friction. Finally, because pDOOH is still relatively new compared to traditional OOH or other digital channels, many buyers lack the knowledge or confidence to fully embrace it, often underutilizing the channel.
How to simplify pDOOH transacting
Programmatic DOOH doesn’t have to be complicated. With streamlined setup, greater transparency, and real-time optimization, transactions become easier to manage, campaigns activate faster, and teams can focus less on logistics and more on results.
Find a DSP with access to global inventory
Strong inventory access is the foundation of any successful pDOOH campaign. Instead of relying on multiple DSPs, focus on partners that are connected to supply-side platforms (SSPs) with broad, premium coverage. SSPs aggregate inventory from publishers and make it available to DSPs, ensuring campaigns can scale seamlessly across markets and geographies. The wider and higher-quality the access, the greater the opportunities for reach, engagement, and precise targeting.
Understand where budget is going
Clarity on costs and fees is essential when running a pDOOH campaign via any DSP. Full disclosure of fees and margins upfront helps avoid hidden markups, inflated costs, or spend being funneled toward preferred media owners instead of being optimized for performance. Equally important is the ability to control spend at a granular level, whether by environment, point of interest (POI), or screen type, so campaigns align with strategy rather than platform preferences.
Streamline setup, data integration, and optimization
Simplifying pDOOH starts with making campaign setup intuitive and efficient. Inventory selection should be seamless, with the ability to upload targeting criteria like geographic shapes or audience segments and automatically match them to available screens, reducing manual work and minimizing errors.
Data integration is another important consideration. A strong DSP will enable you to leverage first-party data, whether from loyalty programs, CRM systems, or other sources, and combine it with third-party demographic, behavioural, or location-based segments.
Optimization is one of the biggest advantages of programmatic DOOH, and the right tools make it possible to fine-tune campaigns throughout their lifecycle. Instead of relying on static, “set-it-and-forget-it” structures, advertisers can take a more agile approach that improves real-time performance.
With the right platform, optimization strategies can include:
- Making in-flight adjustments to targeting, flight schedules, and budget allocation as results come in, so spend is always directed toward the most effective placements.
- Refining bidding strategies by monitoring impression-level data, bid outcomes, and cost breakdowns to reallocate budget where it drives the most value.
- Optimizing creative dynamically (DCO) to adapt messaging based different audiences, environments, or real-time data triggers like weather, ensuring ads remain relevant in different contexts.
Prove ROI with detailed measurement and reporting
Robust measurement turns DOOH from a reach-driven channel into a performance-driven one. Effective reporting should deliver impression-level data, screen-level analytics, and spend breakdowns that show exactly how budgets are used and how ads perform.
Many DOOH data providers can enable attribution studies, from brand lift to foot traffic and web activity studies. Cross-channel insights, like device ID passback, extend this further by linking DOOH ads to online engagement, enabling retargeting and measuring impact across physical and digital touchpoints.
With the right approach to inventory access, transparency, streamlined setup, optimization, and measurement, advertisers can simplify the buying process and unlock stronger results. By focusing less on logistics and more on strategy, pDOOH becomes not just easier to manage, but one of the most impactful channels in the media mix.