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Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH)

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) is digital advertising on screens in public and physical spaces "” billboards, transit, retail, and venues "” increasingly bought programmatically.

Updated 2025-07-06 Author Luc Dumont Reading time ~4 min

Key takeaways

  • DOOH is digital advertising on screens in physical public spaces.
  • Programmatic DOOH (prDOOH) lets these screens be bought via DSPs.
  • It's a one-to-many format, so impressions are modeled, not per-user.
  • Location and mobility data drive DOOH audience targeting and measurement.

Programmatic comes to the street

DOOH digitized billboards and public screens; programmatic DOOH connected them to DSPs so buyers can activate them alongside digital campaigns, triggering creative by time, weather, or audience conditions. It brings automation and data to a channel that was historically bought manually and months in advance.

Measuring a one-to-many medium

DOOH is fundamentally one-to-many "” many people pass one screen "” so it can't count per-user impressions like web. Instead it uses impression multipliers derived from anonymized mobility and location data to estimate how many people were exposed, giving it a comparable currency to other digital channels.

At a glance
What it isDigital screens in physical spaces
Programmatic formprDOOH via DSPs
Audience modelOne-to-many, modeled impressions
DataAnonymized mobility / location

Frequently asked questions

What is programmatic DOOH?

It's the ability to buy digital out-of-home screens through DSPs, activating them alongside digital campaigns and triggering creative by conditions like time, weather, or audience presence.

How are DOOH impressions measured?

Because DOOH is one-to-many, impressions are modeled using anonymized mobility and location data to estimate how many people were exposed, rather than counted per user.