Programmatic digital out-of-home may be rooted in data and ad tech, but at its core it’s a deeply human touchpoint.
So says Layla Soufi, Director of Supply Partnerships at Vistar Media…
When I talk about programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH), one of the first things I say in most conversations, is that an impression in DOOH is a data point, but it’s also a human being. A physical person who is present in a location, in front of a screen, for a duration of time, at a specific moment in time.
Once you internalise that, the way you think about DOOH changes entirely.
This distinction matters more than most people realise, and it’s something I’m passionate about encouraging the industry to understand.
More than a moment in a media plan
In digital advertising, an impression is often an abstraction. It’s a split-second of probability that a person might glance at a banner or scroll past a social post.
In DOOH, the impression is grounded in reality. It represents someone who is physically there, they’re walking past a screen, waiting at a station or running on a treadmill directly in front of a full-height digital display.
That’s a fundamentally different proposition. Yet, the CPM is often treated in isolation, without accounting for everything that surrounds that human moment.
The mindset of your audience varies enormously depending on environment. Someone who is commuting is in a different headspace to someone spending 45 minutes in a gym. A person waiting for a lift in an office building has a notable, repeated exposure. A group in a pub or bar might be there for hours.
Dwell time differs across every environment, and that dwell time has a direct bearing on the impact and the value of that impression.
One of the more important mechanics of pDOOH that often goes under-explored is the impression multiplier. A bid request for pDOOH typically relates to one ad play, but one ad play is not just one impression. Built into that play is the number of people who would have seen it, often derived from audience data including footfall measurement, swipe-in data and location intelligence.
Think of it like television. When a household watches an ad, it might be seen by five people at once, not just one. Programmatic DOOH works in a similar way. The impression in pDOOH is built around a verified human presence in a verified location, typically using measurement data from the likes of Route, Lumen, Ipsos and more.
Why it’s incredible value for money
In my opinion, pDOOH is one of the most underpriced media formats available. When you factor in the scale of the format, the environment it exists in, the dwell time of the audience and the physical impossibility of scrolling past it, then the CPM becomes very difficult to argue against. You’re not paying for a possibility; you’re paying for an actual person.
Out-of-home (OOH) inventory is finite, even with the added benefits and flexibility of pDOOH. There’s a limited number of screens, in a limited number of locations, seen by a defined number of real people.
That combined with the impact of large-format, unmissable creative in high-attention environments, makes the impression genuinely valuable. By layering pDOOH into a programmatic campaign, with all the efficiency, targeting and real-time optimisation that brings, you elevate that value further still.
Three things marketers should do right now
First, look at each environment individually. OOH is no longer just roadside billboards. Any screen outside your home is an opportunity. This includes gyms, offices, pubs, transport hubs, retail spaces and each carries its own audience context and dwell dynamic.
Second, put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Think about where they are, what they’re doing and how they’re feeling in that environment. Context is the foundation of OOH.
Third, don’t think of the impression as a unit, think of it as a person. When you consider that behind every impression is at least one human being, likely multiple, who are present, attentive and surrounded by your creative, the value becomes obvious.
The measurement piece for pDOOH is still evolving, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that proving dwell time impact, with standardised data across environments, is a work in progress. But the direction of travel is clear.
As methodologies mature, and as we explore partnerships with attention measurement specialists, the industry will have the tools to make this case with hard numbers behind it.
Watch this space: this conversation is only just getting started in 2026.