Broadsign Makes Advances in DOOH Buying

Broadsign wanted to cut lengthy buying cycles in DOOH (digital out-of-home), and now it can with the launch of a new product called Broadsign In-Advance. Its first customer is now WPP Media in the Netherlands, which tested the new capability to secure DOOH ads across the Netherlands via OutMoove.

The technology enables media buyers to secure inventory in the channel, including static OOH, well in advance of what was possible before. This capability comes in handy in the age of even greater automated media buying. Programmatic DOOH makes up only a small portion of OOH spend but that is changing rapidly.

Executives describe a process of buying OOH that involves a multitude of email and phone calls to negotiate rates and confirm ad placement, all while going over artwork and other specs with various media owners.

Using automated trading platforms, Broadsign in-Advance can book ads months ahead because the platform is built on top of current automated trading tools.

Gavin Lee, Senior Director of Product at Broadsign, sat down with StreetFight to give a more detailed view of the technology and how it’s being used.

It seems surprising that this technology hasn’t existed until now. Is Broadsign the only company with this offering?

While some elements of automated, guaranteed out-of-home (OOH) transactions are possible today, they generally still require manual or offline intervention. Broadsign In-Advance, however, allows for complete end-to-end automation, which is a first. It’s a natural extension of the Broadsign Platform, our leading software solution for OOH advertising, which serves over 2M signs globally, including those owned by some of the largest OOH companies in the world.

Why does programmatic DOOH account for only 10 percent of global ad buys?

Programmatic was introduced to the OOH industry less than a decade ago, and it wasn’t until around 2020 that more OOH companies and media-buying agencies started to embrace the approach. Still, they could only access a fraction of overall OOH inventory programmatically, because the transaction approach lacked support for static OOH formats (posters, street furniture, traditional roadside billboards, etc.), which still account for 70% of overall inventory. With Broadsign In-Advance, we’re working to make more static and digital inventory accessible to buyers for guaranteed, in-advance booking on automated trading platforms. The ultimate goal is to enable 100% of transactions to be automated, allowing both real-time and in-advance buying strategies to be implemented within one platform.

Why is OOH one of the most complex to transact outside of programmatic?

First, inventory is finite and often fixed, meaning that the management of time and space is critical. Because buy-types range from delivering against a target audience to selecting specific locations for contextual reasons, managing the availability and delivery of such a broad range of campaign types across inventory can be difficult. Second, the OOH industry is a lot like a patchwork comprising different media owners, formats, and environments, with minimal standardization.

Further complicating matters, smaller players often use generic digital signage software (versus specialized OOH software) to manage their business. It doesn’t always support advertising, brand safety, complex scheduling, or programmatic transactions. Many of these players may also still manage inventory by hand using excel spreadsheets, which make it near impossible to take advantage of in-advance transactional revenue. This is why it’s essential for OOH media owners to use more robust OOH software that optimizes inventory to maximize time and space available to be sold whilst managing the delivery of different campaign types. This will only prove more important as the continued digitalization of OOH inventory across the board facilitates more opportunities.

What needed to happen for this technology to be developed and used by your clients?

First, a system that could manage availability and optimization capabilities for automated decision-making (for both externally booked campaigns alongside direct bookings) needed to be developed. Then, we needed to invest significantly in developing in-advance technology for our industry and help execute the first campaigns for an agency using this new technology integrated with a DSP, which we’ve done in collaboration with WPP Media Netherlands and the Outmoove DSP.

Now that we’ve proven the capabilities of the technology, our main focus is to enlist more media owners to grow the available inventory for in-advance transactions and extend our DSP integrations to enable more agencies to take advantage of the technology. Presently, Broadsign In-Advance supports digital inventory, but our goal is to expand support for static OOH.

Besides simplifying the media-buying process and cycle, how does this technology enhance ad performance?

Broadsign In-Advance brings data-driven planning to direct-bought OOH to improving time to market for planners and buyers who typically engage in more than 30 email or phone call exchanges to complete a single buy. Furthermore, the capability makes it easier to make campaign changes on the fly, whereas before, a change might have required another round of back-and-forth communication. It also lets buyers easily discover OOH screens that may not have previously been on their radar through direct buys.

Can you make three predictions for the DOOH space in one year’s time?

We anticipate that AI agents for OOH planning may become more commonplace, but without a consistent connection to the inventory availability, they will have limited value in actual execution. However, broad adoption of Broadsign In-Advance could help significantly enhance AI agent innovations, enabling them to execute the “perfect plan.” Beyond AI, we continue to see significant interest and adoption of in-store retail media around the world, and we don’t see that momentum slowing any time soon. Finally, in the next few years, the globalization of campaigns previously reserved for a single region will continue to expand.

Learn more about DOOH and the impact of technology innovation on the MULO (multi-location) ecosystem. Join us at Street Fight LIVE 2025 on September 30th.