To celebrate the second year of the JCDecaux Programmatic DOOH Live Awards this Spring, NDA caught up with the judging panel of industry experts to find our what they are looking for in this year’s entries.
Next up is Nadia Stowell, OOH Business Director, Spark Foundry.
What is the best example of programmatic DOOH you have seen this year? Why did it work?
The Maltesers campaign is a great example of how programmatic DOOH can be used creatively. By delivering humorous, tailored content to different audience segments, the campaign successfully drove higher engagement.
What made it work so well was its smart use of programmatic technology, ensuring ads were shown at the right time and place to the right people. By using data-driven insights, Mars was able to connect with its audience in a more relevant and impactful way.
As programmatic DOOH continues to evolve, campaigns like this set a strong precedent for how brands can use dynamic, targeted messaging to get real results.
How quickly are budgets shifting to programmatic OOH and where are they coming from?
PrDOOH advertising continues to experience significant growth, and this shift seems to be primarily funded by reallocating budgets from other digital channels, as advertisers recognize the benefits of integrating PrDOOH into their multi-channel strategies.
The upcoming restrictions on advertising HFSS products (due to take effect in October of this year) is also likely to prompt advertisers to explore alternative channels, such as PrDOOH, which to all intensive purposes, is not effected as the medium has been navigating this field for quite some time.
Therefore, due to PrDOOH offering dynamic, data-driven ad placements in public spaces, brands will still have the flexibility to reach their target audiences effectively despite the restrictions imposed in other channels. With that being said, as traditional digital avenues become limited for HFSS products, reallocating budgets to programmatic DOOH will allow advertisers to maintain visibility and engagement without breaching the new regulations.
This shift not only ensures compliance but also leverages the benefits of DOOH’s contextual relevance and broad reach. To summarise, the impending HFSS advertising restrictions are expected to drive a reallocation of marketing budgets towards PrDOOH, as brands seek compliant and effective platforms to promote their products.
How can digital OOH fit into clients’ existing attribution and effectiveness models?
Clients can achieve this by using data-driven methods that fit within their existing measurement systems. Most brands use a combination of research pieces such as Marketing Mix Modelling or brand lift studies etc, and DOOH can fit into clients’ existing measurement models by linking ad exposure to real-world actions.
This can be done through footfall tracking, online conversions, and sales lift analysis, using mobile data, website visits, or POS insights. DOOH also integrates with digital analytics by measuring impressions, tracking QR codes or URLs, and assessing brand impact through surveys. Additionally, it works alongside other media channels, helping brands understand how DOOH drives engagement and sales within their broader marketing mix.
What do you see as the primary benefits of programmatic activation in OOH?
PrDOOH offers several key benefits, including flexibility, agility, and data-driven targeting. It allows advertisers to adjust campaigns in real-time based on performance, external triggers, or audience insights, ensuring ads reach the right people at the right time. This approach enhances measurement and attribution by tracking exposure and conversions through mobile data and integrating with other digital channels for a more complete view of performance.
PrDOOH also reduces media wastage, can in some cases improve cost-efficiency, and simplifies cross-channel integration, enabling seamless campaigns across multiple platforms – a true omnichannel approach. Additionally, dynamic creative optimization allow for real-time creative changes, keeping messaging relevant and engaging.
How will clients and agencies use data for targeting and measurement over the next 2-3 years?
Over the next 2-3 years, I believe that both clients and agencies will increasingly rely on data for more precise targeting and measurement in their advertising strategies. With privacy concerns and the phase-out of third-party cookies, brands will focus on using their own data from websites, apps, and loyalty programmes to build accurate audience profiles.
Mobile geolocation and contextual data will further enhance targeting, enabling real-time ad customisation based on factors like location, weather, and time of day. Predictive analytics and AI will also play a bigger role, allowing brands to forecast trends and optimize campaigns for better efficiency and ROI.
As cross-platform measurement becomes more important, agencies will also likely seek integrated solutions to track customer journeys and evaluate campaign performance across various channels. With stricter privacy regulations, the use of data will be more privacy-compliant, ensuring consumer consent is respected.
Publicis are already doing this through their acquisition of Epsilon; the platforms expertise in data collection, analytics, and technology integration aligns perfectly with the increased focus on first-party data and cross-platform measurement.
As agencies and clients increasingly rely on their own customer data, Epsilon can help them build robust audience profiles and segmentations, allowing for more precise and personalized advertising strategies across digital, TV, OOH, and other media, and with Epsilon’s emphasis on privacy-compliant data, clients can navigate the evolving regulatory landscape with confidence, using data responsibly while still delivering targeted, impactful campaigns.
Finally, real-time performance data will also enable brands to dynamically adjust campaigns, particularly through programmatic and DOOH, enhancing effectiveness and personalization. This evolution in data use will enable more sophisticated, targeted, and impactful advertising strategies.
Where can the OOH industry learn from the mistakes made by other channels in programmatic activation?
One key lesson is to avoid relying too much on automation without proper controls, which can lead to wasted impressions and misaligned targeting. Transparency is also crucial—clear measurement standards and real-time reporting are necessary to track campaign success and justify investments.
Additionally, the OOH industry should focus on integrating PrDOOH seamlessly with other digital channels for a unified, omnichannel approach. It’s important to prioritize data privacy and compliance from the start, ensuring consumer trust. Creative flexibility is another area for improvement, as it’s vital to allow real-time adjustments to creative elements.
Finally, the industry should go beyond basic demographic targeting by using deeper audience insights, like foot traffic and behaviour data, to drive higher engagement. By tackling these issues, I believe the OOH industry can create a more streamlined and impactful programmatic ecosystem.
What are the biggest challenges in audience targeting and campaign measurement in digital OOH and how are they being overcome?
The biggest challenges DOOH include accurately measuring audience engagement, integrating DOOH with other media channels, and optimizing campaigns in real-time. Unlike digital channels, DOOH relies on indirect data like foot traffic and location-based analytics, making it harder to measure true campaign impact. Additionally, DOOH campaigns often run separately from other media, which can make it difficult to track effectiveness across multiple platforms.
To overcome these challenges, the industry is using advanced data tools such as mobile location tracking, sensors, and facial recognition to improve audience measurement. PrDOOH is also helping us to integrate campaigns across digital channels, creating a more cohesive strategy.
Dynamic creative optimization allows for real-time changes to content based on factors like weather or time of day, while new attribution models link DOOH exposure to online actions, helping brands measure ROI more accurately.
There is a fair argument that DOOH can already use dynamic creative on digital screens, so why would programmatically executing a campaign reap greater results….. the challenge lies in ensuring that the dynamic creative is not just automated but also data-driven and optimized in real-time based on audience insights, location, and external factors.
While DOOH can change creative content dynamically, the key issue is the ability to use more granular and actionable data—such as foot traffic patterns, demographic information, and even contextual data like weather or live events—to adjust those creatives in ways that are truly aligned with the audience’s behaviour.
Therefore, the real benefit of evolving PrDOOH is not just the automation of creative changes but the seamless integration of data from multiple sources to continuously refine and improve targeting, even while campaigns are running.
This means advertisers can leverage real-time audience insights, optimizing campaigns on the fly and ensuring their message is always relevant and timely. Essentially, it’s about making the automation smarter, using a deeper level of data integration and advanced attribution models to maximize the impact and effectiveness of the dynamic creative, rather than just relying solely on fixed or limited variables.
What are you looking for from the award entries?
I will be looking for campaigns that showcase creativity and innovation, particularly in how they leverage programmatic technology and dynamic content. I excited to hopefully see some unique, engaging ways that real-time data is being used to adapt creatives based on factors like location, audience behaviour, weather, and time of day etc.
Effective audience targeting is of course key, so I will be looking for campaigns that use data to personalize content.
The use of programmatic technology to automate media buying and optimize targeting is also crucial, as is real-time optimization to adjust based on performance metrics. I’d expect clear measurement and attribution models, showing how the campaign drove real-world results, such as increased foot traffic or sales.
Additionally, I will be looking for how well the campaign integrates with other channels to create a seamless omnichannel experience.
This article originally appeared on New Digital Age.