Product News | October 11, 2021

In-advance DOOH transactions for buyers: Your questions answered

Automation is a huge part of the conversation in the out-of-home (OOH) advertising space right now. While automation in OOH is typically associated with programmatic buying, that’s really just one piece of the puzzle. The bigger picture is how automation can streamline the entire process, from the initial planning all the way to campaign delivery.

With the release of Broadsign’s new automated, in-advance digital OOH (DOOH) transaction capability, we sat down with John Dolan, Vice-President, Global Head of Media Sales at Broadsign, to discuss what this means for media buyers and how it can unlock a more seamless and modern buying experience.

Booking OOH should be as easy as booking a flight. How does Broadsign In-Advance help make that vision a reality?

When you look at how OOH campaigns are bought today, programmatic campaigns can arguably be booked as easily as a flight. You log into a DSP, set your targeting, pick the days, data, venue types, and geographics you wish to execute. But the reality is that programmatic represents only 5% of total OOH ad spend, meaning that 95% of all OOH transactions are still managed manually.

The real friction remains in direct out-of-home buys, which require a heavier lift due to the back-and-forth with media owners. If you’re managing a diverse campaign that needs to run on the inventory of six different media owners, that’s six different sales conversations, six negotiations, six separate contracts, six creative deliveries, and six reports you have to aggregate to track performance.

“Broadsign In-Advance helps bring this vision closer to reality by taking the speed and automation that everyone loves about programmatic and combining it with the guaranteed aspect of direct-booked DOOH campaigns.”
John Dolan, Vice President, Global Head of Media Sales at Broadsign

How does this save time for media planners and buyers? Can you walk us through a before-and-after scenario?

When you receive a campaign brief, you’re looking for media targeting and setups that best match the client’s objectives. In a direct OOH campaign, that means:

Reaching out to a media owner, or multiple depending on the geographic and campaign objectives, to start the brief by looking at flight dates and venue types.
Assuming the media owner has the inventory available for your desired dates, you begin negotiating on pricing, terms of the deal and the parameters for holding the inventory.
Once you’ve reached a consensus, additional paperwork needs to be pushed back and forth before the contract is signed.
Once the deal is secured, the agency then needs to provide the creatives directly to the media owner, and if you’re dealing with multiple media owners, that means meeting their respective aspect ratios.
Finally, proof-of-play procedures are different for each media owner. So, how fast you get the reporting, in what format, and how fast you’re able to audit the reports and consolidate them on your own becomes a heavily nuanced, time-consuming process.

With Broadsign In-Advance, you’re able to book direct OOH campaigns in a similar way you would a programmatic one:

Through Broadsign’s DSP OutMoove, or your DSP of choice, you identify the inventory that best fits your campaign objectives and request its availability. A response comes instantly from our ad server, providing a simple yes or no.
If it’s available, you’re presented with a price and a simple terms box to select that inventory. If approved, the inventory is officially booked – no holds, no negotiations needed on pricing or terms.
When it’s time to launch the campaign, you upload your creative directly into the DSP, just as you have done hundreds of times before.
While the campaign is in flight, you’ll have access to real-time proof-of-play reporting that’s standardized across all media owners in one centralized, auditable place.

“With Broadsign In-Advance, it’s a journey that you can take on your own. Of course, there will be collaboration with media owners on matters that add value to all parties, like what creative works best for what screen, but it does cut away the vast majority of the back-and-forth between media owners and buyers, allowing for a more seamless activation.”
John Dolan, Vice President, Global Head of Media Sales at Broadsign

Why would a media buyer choose to use Broadsign In-Advance if they’re already using programmatic DOOH?

Broadsign In-Advance wasn’t designed to replace programmatic DOOH, but rather to complement your existing buying strategy and address a critical gap between traditional direct deals and pure programmatic transactions. As more media buyers and owners adopt the solution, we’ll continue to find brilliant new use cases for it, but here are a few ways we see it being used:

Secure premium inventory during key seasonal periods

During the holiday season or key travel periods, retail-focused venues and other premium screens become limited, driving up competition and programmatic prices. We often hear from buyers that they avoid OOH altogether because it sells out during key trading periods. Broadsign In-Advance solves that problem by allowing you to reserve key inventory months ahead of time.

“Think about major, fixed events like the 2026 World Cup. Those tentpole opportunities are going to sell out fast. Broadsign In-Advance allows a buyer to secure those specific screens and guarantees playout, providing a frictionless activation that traditional programmatic can’t promise.”
John Dolan, Vice President, Global Head of Media Sales at Broadsign

Mix and match your OOH buys to maximize reach

Broadsign In-Advance can also be used to strategically support your usual OOH buys. For instance, you might have a traditional static or programmatic digital OOH buy, but need a digital portion that needs to run at a specific time on specific screens. You can book a direct digital placement through In-Advance, guaranteeing your ad will be visible when you need it to, while complementing your other placements.

Leveraging consistent planning data

With the ability to plan your direct OOH campaigns and access the inventory of multiple media owners through one platform, Broadsign In-Advance would allow you to leverage a consistent data set when building your campaign. Rather than relying on audience data provided individually by each media owner, you can use a widespread data application for your planning, making your multi-network buys more coherent and easier to audit.

“Ultimately, it’s about giving buyers a guaranteed, automated pathway to securing high-value inventory. For media owners, it also means maximizing revenue from both direct and programmatic sales by allowing buyers to lock in demand early. It’s a win for certainty and speed on both sides.”
John Dolan, Vice President, Global Head of Media Sales at Broadsign

When should a media buyer choose this capability over a traditional or programmatic open exchange buy or a programmatic guaranteed buy?

It’s important to look at this against all the different types of buys because we are not asking buyers to simply swap one method for another. Broadsign In-Advance is the tool you choose when you need the speed of digital buying paired with the certainty of a direct OOH deal.

Today, Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) is largely set up on a priority basis. That priority is based on a programmatic slot that a media owner has made available. Broadsign In-Advance takes this concept a step further by allowing buyers to reserve inventory that is being booked into a direct slot of the media owner’s inventory. It also gives buyers access to additional buy types for their DOOH campaigns, including Share of Voice (SOV), Budget or Play Goal, and Takeovers.

“With Broadsign In-Advance, your DOOH campaign isn’t privy to any sort of priority. It won’t be bumped. It gives buyers the confidence that the delivery of their goals for their customers won’t be interrupted, and I think that is what differentiates it from Programmatic Guaranteed buys.”
John Dolan, Vice President, Global Head of Media Sales at Broadsign

Can a buyer still leverage data and targeting with an in-advance transaction, similar to how they do with programmatic buys?

The short answer is absolutely. The advantage of Broadsign In-Advance is that it combines the data-rich planning experience of programmatic with the guaranteed delivery of a direct buy. As soon as media owners have selected the inventory they want to make available for in-advance transactions, that inventory is surfaced in the platform the same way that programmatic inventory is.

The data that exists there is still indexed against those screens. This means that all the various data partners available in your DSP can still be selected, utilized, and executed for planning. This gives you a consistent planning framework time and time again, ensuring you’re reaching the same audience with the same methodology across a myriad of place-based and outdoor media types.

Does this integrate with the DSPs I already use?

Yes. It is currently available through Broadsign’s DSP OutMoove, and we are actively working with a host of demand partners today to make this technology available through their platforms. It’s not our goal to guard this capability from the market. We hope it’s a framework that’s adopted across the ecosystem, and we’re happy to explore and have those conversations with our global partners – many of which we’re already integrated with from a supply perspective today.

What level of flexibility do in-advance transactions offer? Can a campaign be adjusted or optimized after it has been booked?

In the vast majority of cases, when we think about flexibility, it typically involves cancellation periods or shifting budgets for optimization purposes. Any cancellation would have to fall under the existing contractual terms of the media owner with whom the transaction was agreed upon.

In an in-advance transaction, there shouldn’t be a need to adjust the campaign in-flight. If you’ve selected the correct allocation and the creatives have been uploaded properly, you can be assured that it will be delivered. Buyers do, however, have the ability to manage creatives dynamically. As long as the media owner approves the content, different creatives can be used for each play.

That being said, Broadsign In-Advance DOOH campaigns enjoy the same automated ad delivery optimizations as traditional direct DOOH campaigns. Since the inventory is booked as a direct slot in the media owner’s inventory, In-Advance campaigns benefit from our rebalancing tool, which automatically adjusts pacing to ensure that ad delivery stays on track throughout the campaign’s duration.

What’s next for Broadsign In-Advance?

The future for In-Advance is about two things: broadening its reach and deepening its utility. We’ve laid the foundation, and now we’re aggressively driving demand and developing new features that our partners need. The earliest enhancement will be to make static OOH available for in-advance transactions in 2026. Looking a bit further ahead, we’ll be focused on:

Driving global demand and adoption

We’re in constant discussions with agencies, media owners, and demand partners across the world to increase adoption. We see Broadsign In-Advance as a foundational buying framework for the entire ecosystem, and these discussions are critical to understanding how it fits into everyone’s workflows.

Evolving buying metrics

We’re focused on making sure the way you book In-Advance campaigns aligns with the way OOH is traditionally measured and planned. This means actively having discussions around different buying frameworks:

Does it need to work on an impression framework?
Can we look at Share of Voice or Share of Time?
How do we ensure we’re providing the critical metrics that standard OOH buyers are looking for, whether that’s reliable reach and frequency or other established measurements?

Expanding availability to the full ecosystem

It would be naive to think we can drive this fundamental change all on our own. So, we are currently building technology that allows media owners – regardless of their backend software or whether they are a full-stack Broadsign client – to be able to connect, activate, and execute in this manner. It’s about broadening our scope from a technology perspective and making this standard practice industry-wide.

“We are committed to being humble, listening to feedback, and taking direction to ensure media owners feel comfortable about this change and for buyers to truly understand where Broadsign In-Advance fits best into their overall media mix.”
John Dolan, Vice President, Global Head of Media Sales at Broadsign

Product News | October 11, 2021

Broadsign and Mirakl Ads Announce Strategic Partnership to Unify Online and In-Store Retail Media

Cannes, France – June 24, 2026 — At the 73rd Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Mirakl, the Operating System for Intelligent Commerce, and Broadsign, the leading global platform for managing and monetising out-of-home (OOH) media, today announced a strategic partnership that bridges the gap between digital retail media channels and in-store advertising. The collaboration will enable more retailers and brands to activate, manage, and measure campaigns across the entire shopper journey through a single platform.

As retail media continues to mature, advertisers are increasingly demanding omnichannel solutions that better reflect how consumers shop: researching online, then purchasing in-store. However, executing retail media campaigns across online, offline, and in-store channels today typically involves separate vendor management, fragmented planning processes, and siloed reporting. This partnership sets out to change that by integrating Mirakl Ads’ retail media solution for eCommerce and digital marketplaces with Broadsign’s in-store media platform.

For Mirakl’s Retail customers, leveraging the integration will ensure a unified buying experience for their advertisers: one campaign brief and one point of contact, covering both e-commerce placements and in-store digital screens. The partnership opens a new path to monetizing physical in-store assets alongside existing online inventory. It unlocks incremental revenue while giving advertisers omnichannel reach.

As the two companies build the integration, retailer control will be central: Mirakl Ads will power the retail media network, while the Broadsign Platform manages the technical delivery of in-store content. Retailers retain full ownership of their data, shopper experience, inventory, and pricing decisions, while maintaining the flexibility to build on existing technology investments. Advertisers benefit from a consolidated view of campaign performance across online and in-store channels, so every dollar spent can be measured, compared, and optimized across the full shopper journey.

“Retail media has evolved rapidly, but online, offline, and in-store are often still treated as separate channels, leading to missed opportunities and revenue,” said Mats Klevjer, Director of Partnerships for Retail Media, Broadsign. “Our work with Mirakl Ads on this integration breaks down those barriers, helping retailers give advertisers the ability to transact on in-store screens with the same ease and performance metrics they expect of digital campaigns.”

“Retailers are asking for solutions that maximize the value of every customer touchpoint, both digital and physical,” said Octavie Gosselin, Vice President of Mirakl Ads. “By partnering with Broadsign, we are setting out to build a truly unified omnichannel retail media platform. Brands will be able to benefit from a single campaign brief covering both their online and in-store presence, and the opportunity ahead, for retailers, advertisers, and the broader ecosystem, is significant.”

Both companies are actively bringing this omnichannel vision to life, with phased capabilities expected to expand. The integration is anticipated to launch in Q3, with beta testing already underway.

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.

About Mirakl

Founded in 2012, Mirakl has been at the forefront of marketplace innovation, empowering every business to compete in the platform economy.

Today, Mirakl’s operating system combines an enterprise marketplace solution (Mirakl Platform) that enables retailers and B2B organizations to launch, scale, and operate marketplaces and dropship, AI-powered multichannel selling (Mirakl Connect), retail media (Mirakl Ads) and an agentic commerce infrastructure (Mirakl Nexus).

With dual headquarters in Boston and Paris, Mirakl helps a global ecosystem of 450+ marketplaces (B2C and B2B) and a network of over 100k third-party marketplace sellers. Brands like Macy’s, Decathlon, Carrefour, Asos, and Airbus Helicopters use Mirakl to grow their businesses in new and remarkable ways. Contact: press@mirakl.com

Product News | October 11, 2021

From brief to activation: Inside the first fully agentic AI-powered OOH campaign

Out-of-home advertising has long been one of the strongest value propositions in the media mix. While programmatic has completely transformed how digital OOH inventory is bought and sold — bringing it on par with other digital channels — direct sales of OOH inventory still require significant manual effort. From developing media plans and evaluating inventory options to negotiating pricing, trafficking creatives, executing buys, and managing reporting and invoicing, the process can be very time-consuming, especially when campaigns involve multiple venue categories, inventory types, and publishers across the highly fragmented OOH landscape.

But that process just got a lot faster.

Broadsign’s sell-side AI agent and digital marketing agency Draft Digital’s buy-side agent recently enabled the first end-to-end OOH media buy, transforming what would otherwise have been a complex operational effort into a seamless, rapid, and efficient experience. The campaign was for Lot of Happiness and ran on Global Netherlands premium inventory. It marked the first time an OOH media buy has been powered by agentic AI from beginning to end, using the brand’s campaign goals to inform audience and venue targeting, media selection, campaign setup, and execution. Together, the buy-side and sell-side agents coordinated complex tasks across parties, with human oversight and guardrails in place to ensure alignment with campaign objectives and compliance with local regulations and restrictions.

Read on to learn more about how the process unfolded — and what it means for the future of OOH.

Meet the campaign that made history

Lot of Happiness is a purpose-driven lottery based in the Netherlands with a straightforward premise: every ticket purchase benefits a cause chosen by the buyer, with roughly 50% of every sale going directly to charities like Make-A-Wish Nederland and the ALS Foundation Netherlands. As a growing organization without the deep media budgets of commercial lottery players, Lot of Happiness has built its growth strategy around operational creativity and innovation rather than outspending competitors. That orientation made them a natural early mover on this kind of experiment.

The campaign ran with a “Win-Win” message — rooted in the idea that every ticket purchase supports a charitable cause while giving participants the chance to win prizes. — delivering more than 830,000 impressions across screens inside supermarkets, shopping malls, gas stations, and on city streets throughout the Netherlands.

But as compelling as their social mission is, it’s not the creative that made this execution notable. It’s how the buy happened.

What typically required days to weeks of email-based coordination moved from brief to booked plan — with human approval — in less than 15 minutes. To understand how this came about, it’s worth taking a closer look at the agentic solutions involved and what they did.

A media plan built in minutes

On our end, we built a new sell-side AI agent layer on top of the existing infrastructure for Broadsign In-Advance — an automated booking capability that allows advertisers to reserve guaranteed DOOH ad space months in advance. The sell-side agent acted as an automated query and negotiation layer: when Draft Digital submitted the Lot of Happiness campaign brief through their buy-side agent, our agent returned available inventory from our In-Advance-enabled ecosystem of media owners that matched the campaign’s targeting criteria.

On the buy side, Draft Digital used Claude.ai to build the campaign brief and drive the planning process, translating campaign goals into targeting criteria, querying Broadsign’s available inventory, and generating a media plan for the buyer to review and approve.

Once the buyer reviewed and approved the plan, the booking was activated through Broadsign’s Place Exchange SSP and delivered programmatically on Global Netherlands’ screens.

The Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) — an emerging open standard for enabling AI agents to communicate across the advertising supply chain — served as the connective tissue, providing a standardized way for the two agents to communicate across organizational boundaries.

Human review remained part of the process at key stages. On the agency side, that review followed what Jasmijn Kruis, Digital Marketing Consultant at Draft Digital, calls the “four-eye principle”: the buyer checks the plan, and then a second person checks the buyer’s work. “You don’t want an extra zero showing up where it’s not supposed to,” she explains. Creative was submitted through the standard approval workflow, ensuring compliance requirements remained fully intact throughout.

Crucially, agentic AI in media buying isn’t about removing human judgment; it’s about drastically reducing the manual labour surrounding it.

Why OOH is a natural fit for agentic AI

The case for agentic AI in OOH is, in many ways, even stronger than in other channels. As a context-driven medium, OOH is rich in data that goes beyond the audience, the creative, and the screen. Success depends on understanding how a brand’s message connects to a particular audience in a particular place at a particular time. With hundreds of thousands of campaigns to learn from, AI can help surface those patterns and apply them at scale.

“Overlaying AI atop our global static and digital OOH supply, together with advanced data and execution capabilities — such as screen-level audience indexes, dynamic creative, and guaranteed in-advance buying — opens the door to new possibilities for OOH planning and activation,” explains Broadsign CTO Bryan Mongeau. “This innovative collaboration is only the beginning.”

For Global Netherlands, what stood out about the collaboration was the sum of its parts: 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 how AI-driven planning can enhance the speed, precision, and flexibility of direct buys, mirroring the benefits of programmatic OOH,” says Mink Zwolsman, Business Development Director at Global Netherlands. “For us, this is a meaningful step toward making our inventory even more accessible to buyers who want seamless, omnichannel campaigns.”

The Lot of Happiness buy illustrates what that looks like in practice. Because the campaign ran alongside the client’s first television buy, Draft Digital designed the OOH targeting to synchronize with TV viewership patterns and reinforce the messaging — placing ads in areas with high concentrations of TV-viewing audiences, timed to appear before broadcast slots so viewers would see the OOH ads before seeing them on the living room screen. “We tested different types of pacing to see how the system would react,” explains Kruis, “and because we were also running on TV, we wanted the OOH ads to appear in areas with high concentrations of TV-watching audiences — at times before they would watch — so there would be a connection.”

That kind of multi-variable precision — layering viewership patterns, proximity patterns, and time-based targeting across an entire country — is exactly the kind of planning at which agentic AI excels. What would take a human planner days of data aggregation and analysis was built into the brief and surfaced instantaneously.

Getting ahead of the shift

This campaign was a first, but it won’t be the last. Whether you’re on the buy side or the sell side, agentic AI is going to transform OOH — here’s what to expect and how to embrace that shift.

If you’re an agency or media buyer

Follow the audience. OOH is traditionally bought by selecting locations, but locations are really just proxies for the audiences that advertisers want to reach. AI-driven plans can select the inventory that indexes highest against a target audience, choosing from all available options — including niche placements and underutilized formats that humans may miss when trying to limit the buy to a few networks to reduce complexity. AI can handle the complexity and surface the best options to reach any desired audience.
Embrace contextual targeting. Whether it’s a billboard during the morning commute, a screen at the grocery checkout, an office building elevator screen during lunchtime, or a TV behind the bar on gameday, the power of OOH lies in context: delivering a message in a particular place at a particular time. Connecting audiences to locations and times can be a labour-intensive process, but with the right data inputs, AI can make those connections quickly and help ensure the right context for every impression.
Elevate from task execution to strategic orchestration. AI agents can absorb the burden of low-level tasks, freeing up humans to focus on the end-to-end process — ensuring brief quality, defining campaign objectives, directing creative, designing learning agendas, and gleaning campaign insights.

If you’re a media owner or publisher

Expect a broader pool of buyers. AI will expose your inventory to a larger pool of demand, creating opportunities for more revenue — but it also means publishers will need to meet that demand with intelligent inventory allocation and yield optimization, as well as capabilities like competitive separation and timely advertiser and creative approvals. AI tools can help with all of the above.
Improve discoverability. Buy-side agents evaluate inventory against a wide variety of criteria — including location, screen characteristics, supported ad formats, venue type, and screen-level audience indexing. The more comprehensive and accurate your screen-level data, the more likely your inventory is to be surfaced as a potential match when those criteria align.
Maintain human oversight and control. AI will make buying and selling media smarter, faster, and more effective, but publishers remain in control. Identify the key decision points in your sales engine — pricing, approvals, restrictions — and define the processes, guardrails, monitoring, and reporting that ensure everything operates within your business parameters.

Whether you’re on the buy side or the sell side, success will depend on choosing the right partners who understand your goals and can help design and implement solutions that fit your needs.

What comes next

Broadsign powers close to three million static and digital signs globally — including the largest single source of programmatically enabled OOH supply in the world. While this pilot focused on Broadsign In-Advance-enabled inventory, the next phase will extend to all programmatically enabled screens. Our mission is to bring innovative technology to media owners to help them power their business — and agentic AI is the next chapter in that story.

Global OOH ad spend reached $37.18 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $56.1 billion by 2030, driven in large part by digitization, programmatic maturation, and a growing appetite for real-world presence amid continued screen fatigue. As buying workflows continue to evolve, AI will give OOH media owners the opportunity to ensure their inventory is positioned for the next evolution of media planning and activation.

The question is no longer whether agentic workflows will play a role in media buying, but how quickly the industry will adapt to capitalize on the opportunity. Here at Broadsign, we’re already working with OOH media owners to help them prepare for what comes next.

Media owners interested in making their inventory discoverable to agentic buyers can reach out to Broadsign to explore what’s possible.

Product News | October 11, 2021

DOOH specs guide: What media buyers and planners need to know before launching a campaign

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) specs follow different rules from other digital formats — and buyers who don’t know where those differences lie tend to find out the hard way, through rejected files, stalled approvals, and delayed campaign delivery.

Whether you’re setting up a digital OOH campaign for the first time or a seasoned pro troubleshooting an approval issue, this guide covers the key creative specs you need to know to create a DOOH campaign that gets results: common display and video dimensions, accepted file types and technical requirements, and other digital OOH specs best practices and considerations before trafficking.

Working closely with our global network of media owners and publisher partners, we’ve gained first-hand insight into what they actually require from incoming DOOH creative — and the specs and requirements in this guide reflect those real-world standards. Consider this your cheat sheet for getting your campaign approved for launch the first time.

Jump to:

Why DOOH specs differ from other digital ad formats
Common DOOH creative dimensions and screen formats
Digital OOH media specs: File types and other technical requirements

Why DOOH specs differ from other digital ad formats

Digital OOH operates within a closed-screen ecosystem, where media owners approve every creative before it runs on their screens. As a result, DOOH has technical requirements that don’t exist in web-based environments.

Unlike web or social advertising, DOOH doesn’t rely on open exchanges where compliant creatives run automatically without publisher review. Even when digital OOH campaigns are bought programmatically through oRTB (Open Real-Time Bidding), every creative still requires publisher approval. That process ultimately dictates accepted file types, restricted tags, and how creative rotation is managed.

The practical implication: getting DOOH specs wrong isn’t just a technical inconvenience. It triggers a revision-and-resubmission loop that stalls the approval process and delays campaign delivery. Understanding why each requirement exists makes it easier to build a compliant creative workflow from the start, rather than reverse-engineering the rules after something breaks.

Common DOOH creative dimensions and screen formats

DOOH inventory spans a wide range of placements and screen types — from large-format digital billboards to transit venue displays to in-store retail screens — and each environment comes with its own standard dimensions. Across digital OOH inventory, landscape (1920×1080 px) and portrait (1080×1920 px) are among the most widely supported formats. Building creative for both orientations is recommended wherever possible, since limiting to one orientation limits access to available inventory.

The key creative specs below represent some of the most frequently used creative sizes. While there may be notable exceptions for certain inventory types, these formats provide broad compatibility across venue categories, including Entertainment, Health and Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, Billboards, Taxi Tops, and more.

Use these dimensions as a practical baseline. They cover some of the most common aspect ratios and give your team a clear starting point for placement-specific adjustments.

Static (display) creative: Common formats

Format	Aspect ratio	Dimensions	Common venue categories
Landscape (widescreen)	16:9	1920 × 1080 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Portrait	9:16	1080 × 1920 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Horizontal banner	7:2 or 21:10	1400 × 400 px or 840 × 400 px	Billboards, Taxi Tops, Transit

Video creative: Common formats

Format	Aspect ratio	Dimensions	Common venue categories
Landscape (widescreen)	16:9	1920 × 1080 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Portrait	9:16	1080 × 1920 px	Entertainment, Health & Beauty, Movie Theatres, Office Buildings, Point of Care, Residential, Retail, Transit, Urban Panels, and more
Horizontal frame	4:3	1280 × 960 px	Entertainment, Point of Care, Retail, Transit, and more

Per the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) creative guidelines, common DOOH video lengths include 8, 10, 15, or 30 seconds — making 15 seconds a safe, widely supported default for broad inventory compatibility.

Build with the final screen placement in mind. Creative that isn’t sized to the screen’s native resolution may appear cropped, letterboxed, or distorted — all of which can trigger rejection during the publisher approval process.

Creative and inventory exceptions

If your campaign includes any of the following, confirm whether additional requirements apply before building your creative:

Spectaculars: Specs vary by screen
Airport media: Select airport screens require non-standard creative sizes. Video durations are also typically 10 seconds rather than 15 seconds
Sensitive content categories: Creatives featuring alcohol, cannabis, or political messaging may be subject to additional restrictions that vary by market, venue type, and media owner

For more creative build guidelines and campaign-building tips to simplify the entire DOOH process, check out our Best Practices Guide: How to create DOOH campaigns that get results.

Digital OOH media specs: File types and other technical requirements

DOOH supports three creative types — static display (JPG/PNG), video (MP4), and dynamic/DCO creative (HTML5, where publisher support is available).

Accepted creative file formats

Static Display: Accepted formats include JPG and PNG. Technical requirements include 72 ppi standard resolution and RGB colour mode
Video: Accepted format includes MP4. Technical requirements include an even-numbered pixel resolution, a bit rate below 5,000 kbps, and a standard frame rate of 30 fps
Dynamic/DCO: Accepted format includes HTML5. Technical requirements vary by publisher and should be confirmed before trafficking. Additional pre-approval from the media owner is typically required

Build all files in RGB and keep file sizes within the network’s recommended limits. Oversized files are a common cause of playback issues on bandwidth-limited screens — and unlike web ads, DOOH playback failures are visible to everyone nearby. File size requirements vary by publisher, so confirm specifications with your representative.

HTML5 and dynamic creative (DCO)

HTML5 is the standard format for dynamic DOOH creative — enabling real-time data feeds, weather-triggered messaging, countdown timers, and dynamic creative optimization (DCO). If the goal is creative that updates based on external conditions rather than looping a fixed file, HTML5 is how that’s built and trafficked in DOOH.

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

Digital transformation in out-of-home with Broadsign’s Burr Smith

The out-of-home industry is in the middle of a major transformation. As automation, programmatic buying, audience data, and more reshape how campaigns are planned and transacted, the industry is moving toward a more connected and scalable future.

Few people have had a front-row seat to that evolution quite like Burr Smith, Chairman, President, and CEO of Broadsign. Under his leadership, Broadsign has evolved from a digital signage CMS provider into one of the industry’s leading global OOH advertising platforms, helping unify the buy and sell sides of the market through automation, programmatic technology, and strategic acquisitions.

That impact was recently recognized by the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), which honoured Burr with its inaugural Digital Transformation Award at the 2026 OAAA Honors Circle Awards. The award celebrates leaders driving the modernization of OOH through innovation, automation, and technological advancement.

We sat down with Burr to discuss how OOH has evolved, why unification matters, and what needs to happen next to keep the industry growing.

You’ve been focused on modernizing out-of-home for years. What did digital transformation in OOH look like when you first started, and how has that vision evolved over time?

When I became CEO, Broadsign was primarily a content management system (CMS) company. At the time, there was an internal discussion about whether we should remain focused solely on CMS technology, but it became clear to me that it wasn’t a sustainable long-term strategy. So we decided to evolve beyond content management and move closer to where the advertising dollars were actually originating: the demand side.

That meant building products across the ecosystem to better connect buyers, sellers, and media owners and, ultimately, reduce friction across the industry. That shift marked the beginning of Broadsign’s broader transformation and shaped the vision we continue to build toward today.

You’ve led Broadsign through multiple waves of transformation. How do you prioritize where to invest as the industry continues to evolve?

We invest in two ways: through products and through acquisitions. When we see an opportunity to acquire and integrate a company that can accelerate progress faster than building organically, we’ll often take that approach. It allows us to move more quickly and bring capabilities to market sooner.

Traditionally, we’ve focused our investments on technologies and capabilities that help connect different parts of the ecosystem more effectively over time. Sometimes, the fastest way to move the industry forward isn’t always the most obvious or direct one. It can mean building complementary products or investing in areas that help create a more connected and scalable market overall. Ultimately, the goal has always been the same: reducing friction across the industry and making it easier for advertising dollars to flow into out-of-home.

Where do you see the biggest disconnect between how OOH is perceived and what the medium is actually capable of?

I’d say the biggest challenge is that OOH still hasn’t reached the point where it’s as easy to buy as some other advertising channels. The industry has evolved quickly, and many companies are bringing new ideas and technologies to market, creating a wide range of workflows and solutions across the ecosystem.

Over the years, Broadsign has focused on building technology that helps create more seamless connections between the demand side and supply side. Publishers, agencies, and technology partners will always have their own approaches, and innovation is important, but the industry also needs more standardized and connected transaction paths that can scale efficiently.

The industry talks a lot about collaboration and growth. What does real collaboration actually look like across OOH?

OOH represents roughly 5% of the overall advertising market, and the focus is on how to continue growing that share. But the way to grow the industry isn’t by competing for incremental share within the existing programmatic market. Rather than competing for share within OOH or pDOOH, the bigger opportunity is growing the broader OOH market across both digital and static.

As the industry becomes more connected and standardized, OOH increasingly operates like other major media channels, making it easier for larger advertising investments to flow into the space. That’s one of the reasons we acquired Place Exchange. We’re committed to long-term industry growth, and over time, industries naturally consolidate as it becomes less practical for multiple companies to keep building the same technologies in parallel.

The acquisition strengthened our ability to help unify the ecosystem and create a more connected path between the demand side and supply side of the industry. We’re already seeing stronger momentum toward that kind of unification through greater consolidation and integration across the ecosystem, which is naturally attracting more investment and attention from the broader advertising industry.

What does the next phase of digital transformation in OOH look like over the next few years, and how do you hope it ultimately shapes the future of the industry?

The next phase of digital transformation really comes back to unification. A lot of people focus on growing the industry incrementally, but the most important thing is building a more connected market. That’s been a major focus for Broadsign for a long time, and it’s why we continue investing across different parts of the ecosystem, including static.

AI will also play an important role, particularly in improving operational efficiency. It can help streamline workflows, campaign planning, and many day-to-day processes. But at this stage, there’s a significant role for technology providers to support the end-to-end transaction infrastructure and the broader flow of ad dollars. Beyond that, any technology, trend, or opportunity that broadens the market ultimately accelerates industry growth. That’s part of the reason we’re also interested in areas like retail media and audience analytics.

Audience measurement will be especially important moving forward. OOH already has unique strengths as a medium because it exists so close to the point of purchase, but the industry still needs stronger audience analytics and measurement capabilities to fully demonstrate that value to advertisers.

You’ve emphasized culture as a core part of transformation. What role has it played in enabling meaningful change across the business?

Culture has been a huge part of Broadsign’s success. A lot of that comes back to our values and the fact that people genuinely believe in them. We try to make decisions based on doing the right thing for the business, our customers, and the industry overall. There’s very little internal politics because the focus has always been on building something better together.

That mindset becomes especially important during acquisitions and periods of transformation. When new teams come in, we don’t approach it from a place of protecting turf. If another company is doing something better, we want to learn from it and embrace it. That’s one of the reasons the Place Exchange acquisition worked so well. The two companies had very complementary strengths with very little overlap, so it wasn’t about duplicating efforts; it was about bringing together capabilities that made the combined business stronger.

What does the Digital Transformation recognition mean to you personally, and what impact are you most proud of?

I’m proud of what Broadsign has become and the role it’s played in moving the industry forward. Over the years, we’ve continued investing in products and acquisitions we believed would improve the industry, even when it sometimes took time for the market to fully adopt them.

We may not always move as quickly as some other industries, but we’ve always had a relentless focus on getting better and helping push the industry forward along the way. I think Broadsign has earned its position in the industry because our motivations have always been rooted in building something meaningful and creating long-term value for the ecosystem. I’m grateful to the OAAA for the honour because it reflects the collective effort behind everything we’ve built. We’re committed to this industry for the long term, and we’ll keep working to help it evolve, grow, and improve.