To celebrate the launch of the second year of the JCDecaux Programmatic DOOH Live Awards this Spring, NDA caught up with last year’s winners to discover how their programmatic OOH business had developed this year. Next up is Charlie Smith, MD Europe, Blis.
How has your business developed since winning the award?
I’m proud to say that Blis has experienced phenomenal growth since winning the award nine months ago. Our innovative planning, buying and measurement platform, Audience Explorer, continues to be recognised by brands and agencies as one of the best, and we were recently named the most innovative ad solutions provider in the IPA Digital Media Owners survey.
Despite industry trends that show many ad tech vendors struggling, Blis is expanding across Europe, the US, and APAC, with rapid team growth to accommodate our business expansion. I couldn’t be more excited about 2025!
How has your use of programmatic OOH developed?
As a leading omnichannel platform, we’re obsessed with building technology that enables advertisers to build their ideal audience and easily scale it across any channel, seamlessly. A core element of that process is removing barriers to entry. For advertisers unsure about DOOH, that includes providing bespoke creative reformatting to build DOOH units, which our creative teams have become incredibly adept at. Hearing “we want to run DOOH but don’t have creative” is very much a thing of the past.
One of the historical challenges for DOOH has been connecting the channel to other parts of a campaign, often leading to channel elements being run in silos. That would often lead to potentially strong results, but not being intrinsically linked to other channels blurred the picture of success.
The rise of programmatic DOOH has changed that, opening the door to new possibilities, and we saw an opportunity to radically enhance that process even further. It’s been a focus for us at Blis to ensure customers can plan powerful, data-rich audiences and run them on any channel at any time.
We can now target specific DOOH inventory using powerful data to inform key characteristics of audiences e.g. Burger King customers through their geo-location data or JLR customers through their App ownership or website visitation. We’ve made major investments in premium data sources like VMO2, Vodafone and BT/EE for this very reason.
How have you seen the programmatic OOH industry develop?
Developments in the programmatic DOOH space are certainly among the most exciting in digital advertising, with interactive displays and the retail media boom driving both innovation and adoption.
Advertisers now recognise programmatic DOOH as more than just a standalone channel for brand awareness or pure-play promotion. Our studies, among others, show that programmatic DOOH, when integrated into an omnichannel strategy, is a key component to driving tangible outcomes like sales and footfall. It’s a fantastically effective brand channel that often boosts the effectiveness of the more performance-focused channels—holistic, omnichannel advertising aimed at securing outcomes, not just metrics.
What are you most excited about for programmatic OOH in 2025?
In 2025, we’re most excited about the continued adoption and innovation within the programmatic DOOH space. It’s genuinely exciting to see advertisers who previously overlooked OOH now recognising its value and easily incorporating it into their campaigns for increased effectiveness.
We’re also eager to see (and help drive!) the continued crossover in identifier and cookie-free data solutions with true omnichannel advertising. We might all be done talking about cookies, but it’s hard to argue that the saga hasn’t driven some incredible innovation as the industry works to move away from reliance on identifiers.
Our own solutions are rooted in geo-location data, layered with anonymised, aggregated signals from premium data partners like Mastercard, VMO2 and Circana. Not only does this allow us to deliver impactful advertising across unified audiences in a truly omnichannel approach, but it’s also been fundamental to us being able to demonstrate the power of DOOH, and we’re excited to see that recognition grow further.
What are the biggest challenges and how will they be overcome?
The biggest challenge for programmatic DOOH remains pricing effectiveness. It’s generally still considered to be more expensive than paper and paste, meaning that clear demonstration of the return on investment is critical to sustained/accelerated growth.
That focus on omnichannel proof points has been at the core of our product development over the past few years and in 2024 we launched our machine-learning-led measurement technology called Smart Holdout Groups. It allows advertisers to measure effectiveness across one unified audience, across any channel, and its ability to illustrate how channels can come together to equal something greater than their parts has been phenomenal.
When it comes to challenges facing the ad industry at large, current economic headwinds and media agency consolidations could both lead to restricted ad spending in the short or even long term. However, we believe that by focusing on proof and demonstrating the effectiveness of ad solutions in driving strong brand outcomes, we can overcome these obstacles and continue to see growth in the programmatic DOOH sector and industry as a whole.
After all – and I’m not sure how many more times it can be said before it truly sinks in – companies that invest in advertising during challenging times often emerge stronger. It’s our job to prove that as more than just theory.
What has your most exciting campaign been this year, outside your winning entry!
It’s tough to choose just one, but our campaign with UKTV Play and Havas stands out. While it didn’t include DOOH, it was the first in the UK to utilise our Smart Holdout Groups measurement technology.
This allowed us to measure brand outcomes holistically (in this case, UKTV Play platform usage) across a single audience, regardless of the campaign channel they were exposed to. This campaign was nominated for several awards and was a fantastic indication of what the technology could do.
We made the awards incredibly easy to enter, we thought. How easy was it in reality?!
Our marketing team assures me the entry process was “very easy”!
Working with the agencies and clients, our teams created two video entries in just over a week. It’s refreshing to see award entries that value concise and impactful presentations. Why write 5,000 words when a 90-second video can effectively convey the same message?
To find out more about the JCDecaux pDOOH Live Awards 2025 – now open for entries – click here.
This article originally appeared on New Digital Age.