Product News | October 11, 2021

The Broadsign Platform: Powering revenue, growth and performance

At our annual Broadsign Connect Summit in Barcelona, our VP of Product, Francois Hechme, and Senior Director of Product, Gavin Lee, presented this year’s roadmap for the Broadsign Platform. The presentation highlighted upcoming platform enhancements that aim to help media owners maximize revenue while making out-of-home (OOH) the easiest channel to buy. This year’s roadmap focuses on three strategic pillars: trading, monetization, and intelligence.

Connecting systems and automating workflows to trade faster

The acquisition of Place Exchange

Our journey in programmatic started a decade ago with the launch of our Broadsign supply-side platform (SSP), and we reached a pivotal milestone at the end of last year with the acquisition of Place Exchange. By joining forces with Place Exchange, Broadsign now has the largest aggregation of programmatic OOH supply in the world, with nearly 2 million screens connected and transacting.

We also now have the largest programmatic demand ecosystem, with over 55 connected demand-side platforms (DSPs). One of the key benefits Place Exchange brings to our clients is its strong partnership with omnichannel leaders that control some of the world’s largest advertising budgets, including The Trade Desk and DV360.

In addition to technology, we’ve also gained a strong media sales organization with extensive agency and brand relationships, as well as expertise in driving demand from other channels to digital OOH (DOOH), including cinema, programmatic audio, CTV, and retail media.

Looking ahead, our plan is to have a single SSP in-market that combines the best of Place Exchange and Broadsign’s technology. As we transition to a single SSP, our commitment remains to be transparent about the process and to make the migration as seamless as possible, ensuring no revenue loss for our clients. In the meantime, you can learn more about Place Exchange and what’s to come in this interview with our new Chief Strategy Officer, Ari Buchalter.

Automating the OOH campaign lifecycle

As highlighted in Talon’s Thinking Outside in 2026 report and McKinsey’s State of Marketing Europe 2026 report, advertisers are returning to brand building in 2026, creating a massive opportunity for OOH, a channel inherently designed to deliver long-term brand impact. However, while advertisers are revisiting marketing fundamentals, they are doing so with modern tools.

To remain competitive and continue growing OOH’s share, the evolution of Broadsign’s technology is focused on making OOH the easiest channel to buy, plan, and measure. Central to this vision is automating the entire OOH campaign lifecycle by leveraging widely adopted products and platforms to reduce barriers to entry and drive the required change forward.

While buyers could already leverage automated campaign execution and reporting through solutions like Programmatic Guaranteed (PG), the planning and buying of direct OOH deals still relied on a manual-heavy process. Last year, we closed this automation gap with Broadsign In-Advance, which allows buyers to discover inventory, plan a direct OOH campaign, and book it through a DSP. Here’s Gavin explaining how these two automated transactions complement each other and support the automation of the entire campaign lifecycle:

This year, our priority is to scale guaranteed demand by expanding its availability across all markets. To support this growth, we are collaborating with several DSP partners, including leading omnichannel platforms like DV360 and Yahoo, which have made PG a core focus, as well as The Trade Desk and StackAdapt, which have gone a step further by directly integrating Broadsign’s In-Advance capabilities.

Monetization: streamlining direct sales from proposal to booking

Integrated static

Last year, we resolved a major inefficiency of legacy OOH workflows, which traditionally separate static and digital bookings into distinct systems, by introducing our unified campaign planning workflow in the Broadsign Platform. Today, users can plan and book static and digital inventory in a single proposal, increasing efficiency and operational flexibility while enhancing the OOH buying experience.

We also launched the Static Operations module, enabling users to manage copy, work orders, and postings in one place. This is complemented by the Post app, which allows bill posters to receive, manage, and complete work orders directly in the field. These latest static enhancements have been rapidly adopted by media owners managing transit, roadside billboards, malls, and toll booth assets.

This year’s roadmap for our static OOH capabilities will include support for transit operators by allowing them to sell bus faces in groups and further operational enhancements to our static operations module. We’re also looking to bring advanced digital campaign functionalities previously unavailable to static, including flexible, goal-based campaign types, our optimization engine, and API connections to external pricing engines.

Modernizing the campaign planning workflow in the Broadsign Ad Server

Another update we’re excited to announce is the complete redesign of our campaign planning window – the most frequently used workflow in the Broadsign Ad Server. The latest enhancements provide greater visibility into your inventory availability, allow you to tailor campaigns without leaving unsold inventory gaps, and make it much easier to onboard new employees.

While the modernization of the campaign planning workflow includes over 50 new features, here are some of our favourites:

Match inventory to RFPs instantly – The new campaign planning window dynamically surfaces the most relevant inventory as you adjust campaign settings, helping you quickly build proposals aligned with client requirements. For users who prefer building out their campaign proposal visually, a map view of the inventory is also available.
Improved attribution to campaign goals – With real-time campaign metrics and a goal tracker indicating how selected inventory directly impacts campaign objectives, you can confidently build tailored plans that deliver measurable results.
Easier access to key targeting tools – Commonly used targeting criteria, like geotargeting, points of interest (POIs) and environments, are now natively integrated into the campaign planning window, making it easier for you to use your favourite targeting criteria without manually maintaining and updating the criteria tags.

What’s next for the Broadsign Ad Server

In terms of enhancements coming in 2026 for the Broadsign Ad Server, we intend to further close the gap on creative management in the platform, reducing the need for you to jump between Broadsign web workflows and desktop tools and allowing you to manage the campaign lifecycle in one place.

We plan on evolving our optimization engine to support campaign delivery when changes are implemented mid-flight. Currently, if you change audience schedules or store hours for a particular screen while campaigns are running, you would need to manually re-adjust every affected campaign. The latest update to the optimization engine would automatically rebalance campaign delivery, ensuring you always hit your targets even when plans change.

We’re also bringing you more flexibility and customization to how you sell your inventory. Our upcoming UI updates will include packaged workflows, allowing you to group specific screens and sell them as a package. This not only gives you more control over how your inventory is presented and sold to advertisers, but also allows you to optimize your pricing and sales strategy to maximize fill rates and revenue.

One of the biggest changes to the Broadsign Ad Server and how you monetize your screens will arrive in the second half of the year with our advanced planning capability. We’re adding a massive audience data layer to the platform, allowing you to index and score screens against specific demographic segments using either your own first-party data or partner data. This new capability will not only allow you to align campaigns perfectly with agency briefs, but also concretely demonstrate how your network is the best way to reach a brand’s target audience.

Intelligence: See performance, forecast revenue and optimize yield

We’re continuing to advance with our plans for a unified reporting module in the Broadsign Platform, which aims to consolidate visibility of forecasts, yield performance, and channel allocation into a single view. Our dashboard will be fully customizable, ensuring each user sees only what matters for their role. For instance, a campaign manager can focus on pacing and creative status, while leadership can track high-level trend analyses.

The reporting module will also include a yield management view that focuses on revenue forecasting rather than screen occupancy. Using AI pattern recognition and trend analysis, the system analyzes your historical and projected bookings to predict future yield opportunities and recommend changes.

One of the most common questions in yield optimization is how much inventory to allocate across sales channels and how that allocation would impact revenue. Our new channel allocation simulator makes that easy to answer and removes the guesswork by allowing you to run “what if” scenarios in a risk-free environment. You can test different strategies, like allocating more of your screens and effort to direct versus programmatic, and see the potential impact it has on your revenue before you commit.

Finally, our reporting module will include AI insights. Acting as your personalized data analysts, it monitors your data around the clock to alert you of potential issues and provide recommendations, minimizing the impact on your network operations and advertisers’ experience.

This latest series of updates is another step forward in Broadsign’s mission to transform how brands, agencies and media owners buy, sell and deliver OOH campaigns. For media owners, the latest evolution of the Broadsign Platform aims at removing any friction that stands between them and their revenue.

Discover the platform that powers out-of-home here.

Product News | October 11, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In today’s competitive media landscape, digital out-of-home must be as easy to discover, plan, buy, and measure as any other channel, and this collaboration proves it’s possible,” said Mink Zwolsman, Business Development Director, Global Netherlands. “What excites us most is that no single party could have done this alone. By combining Broadsign’s infrastructure with buy-side intelligence, Draft Digital’s ambition and our diverse digital out-of-home offering, we’ve shown that outdoor can be planned, bought, and activated with the same speed and data-driven precision as any digital channel. For Global Netherlands, this is a meaningful step toward making our inventory more accessible to buyers who want seamless, omnichannel campaigns and we’ve only just begun to uncover the advantages.”

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

About Broadsign

Broadsign develops the leading global platform for managing and monetizing out-of-home (OOH) media. The company, which also operates Place Exchange by Broadsign, the largest independent SSP for Digital OOH, empowers media owners, media buyers, and retailers to harness the power and reach of out-of-home to connect with audiences in ways unlike any other advertising channel. More than 2.8 million static and digital signs along roadways and in airports, shopping malls, grocery and convenience stores, health clinics, transit systems, and more run on Broadsign. https://broadsign.com

About Draft Digital

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

About Global Netherlands

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

About Lot of Happiness

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

Product News | October 11, 2021

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

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

Objective

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

Strategy

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

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

Results

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

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

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

Want the campaign highlights? Check out the infographic below.

Product News | October 11, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

OOH creative fundamentals

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

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

Think Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get the Specs Right

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

A few fundamentals to keep in mind:

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

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

Most Common Display Sizes:

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

Most Common Video Sizes (15-Second):

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

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

Let’s talk about text

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

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

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

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

Video creatives

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

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

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

Creating personalized and dynamic content

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

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

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

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

Some ideas include:

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

McDonald’s weather-triggered OOH campaign in Qatar

Tracking and measurement

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

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

Ready to launch a high-impact, creative out-of-home campaign that delivers results? Browse our inventory catalog to see the complete network of high-impact digital screens available.

Product News | October 11, 2021

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

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

Objective

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

Strategy

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

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

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

Creative

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

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

Results

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

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