DOOH Is Becoming a Local Conversion Channel
Digital out-of-home advertising has traditionally benefited from proximity. Put an ad near a restaurant, retailer or dealership and the physical location itself becomes part of the media strategy. Programmatic DOOH is making that relationship more precise.
New research from Vistar Media, Omnicom Media and Annalect finds that something as simple as telling consumers where to find the nearest location can meaningfully increase their intent to visit or buy. The study tested store-locator information within programmatic DOOH creative across retail, quick-service restaurant and consumer packaged goods campaigns, comparing different placements with a control that contained no location details.
The results suggest DOOH can do more than generate awareness near a location. With location data and dynamic creative, the screen can help move a consumer toward the next physical action.
Location Information Changes the Creative
Where the store locator appeared mattered. For CPG campaigns, putting location information at the top of the creative produced a 20% lift in purchase intent compared with the control. Retail and QSR campaigns performed best when the store locator appeared at the bottom, generating a 9% lift in visit intent.
Middle placement generally performed worse because the location information competed with the primary headline and imagery. The effect was especially pronounced for impulse-oriented CPG products such as sweets and chocolate, where purchase intent increased by more than 110%.
The findings suggest proximity alone isn’t enough. How location information is incorporated into the creative can affect how consumers respond to an ad.
Small Design Decisions Matter
The research also found that how location information is presented can influence response. Using a recognizable map pin increased visit intent by 16%, while creating stronger visual contrast between the location information and the rest of the ad generated a 10% lift in visit or purchase intent, depending on the category.
Dynamic creative optimization has often focused on larger changes such as switching products, offers or messages based on weather, time of day or audience. The Vistar research indicates that relatively simple location-based elements, where the information appears and how clearly it is presented, can also influence consumer response.
Vistar already supports dynamic creative that can identify the nearest store and distance to that location across categories including retail, restaurants, automotive, financial services and telecom.
The Retailer Can Help or Compete for Attention
There was another finding with implications for brands sold through third-party retailers. When the store locator prominently included another brand, such as the supermarket, dealership or retailer where the advertised product could be purchased, attention could be divided between the advertiser and reseller.
That creates a creative tradeoff for CPG and other distributed brands. Identifying the nearby retailer can make an ad more actionable, but giving the retailer greater prominence can also dilute recognition of the product brand itself.
As retail media, shopper marketing and DOOH increasingly overlap, those decisions become more important. A brand isn’t simply deciding which audience to reach. It is also deciding how the product, retailer and physical location should work together within the same creative.
From Audience Targeting to Local Action
The research arrives as DOOH is becoming easier to buy through programmatic platforms. Street Fight recently covered how expanding programmatic inventory and new verification models are making DOOH look more like the digital channels against which it competes for advertising budgets.
Vistar’s research adds another piece to that transition by making the creative itself responsive to the physical world around the screen. A restaurant chain with 1,000 locations doesn’t necessarily need 1,000 independently managed DOOH campaigns. Dynamic creative can connect a broader media buy with location-level information.
The same model can apply to franchise locations, dealerships, bank branches and retailers. Location data becomes the bridge between national media scale and local execution, allowing a campaign to adapt based on where the consumer encounters it.
The Screen Gets Closer to the Sale
There is an important limitation to the findings. The Vistar study measures visit and purchase intent, not verified incremental visits or transactions, so intent lift shouldn’t be treated as equivalent to sales attribution.
Even with that distinction, the direction is significant. Programmatic buying determines where and when an ad appears, while dynamic creative can determine which location, offer or message a consumer sees based on that context. Measurement can increasingly connect exposure with what happens afterward.
Together, those capabilities move DOOH further down the marketing funnel and changes the role of the screen. DOOH doesn’t have to stop at telling consumers about a brand when they are out in the physical world. It can increasingly tell them where to act next.
