What Is Out-of-Home Advertising? Types, Benefits, and Trends You Need to Know

Long before radio or television, OOH advertising was how communities learned what was happening around them. 

In the 1830s, showman P.T. Barnum—of Barnum & Bailey Circus fame—used large, colourful posters to announce when the circus was coming to town. 

These early ads didn’t just promote an event. They brought people together, connecting local communities through shared experiences. 

As cities grew and transportation routes expanded, OOH evolved alongside them, from hand-painted signs and roadside billboards to bright, illuminated displays that became landmarks in their own right.

Now, OOH advertising is experiencing a renaissance, bridging the physical and digital worlds to help marketers reach consumers wherever they are.

Although the technology has evolved, that same spirit of connecting and communicating with a community remains at the heart of OOH advertising today.

In this blog post, we’ll break down everything you need to know about OOH advertising and how it’s evolving, from its core types and benefits to the proven strategies and emerging trends shaping its future.

What Is Out-of-Home Advertising?

OOH advertising is a traditional form of media that uses physical displays to reach audiences in high-traffic, public spaces such as highways, city centers, and transit hubs. It includes formats like billboards, posters, street furniture, and bus wraps. These large-scale, real-world placements help brands stand out by capturing attention and building awareness as consumers move through their day.

Although only 10% of US brand and agency marketers cited OOH advertising as a priority in 2025, 40% of agency professionals expected their clients to increase OOH spending. It now outpaces traditional advertising methods like magazine, newspaper, and radio advertising, and even outperforms traditional linear TV in building brand awareness.

Traditional OOH Advertising vs. DOOH Advertising: What Is the Difference?

OOH advertising refers to any form of advertising that reaches people when they’re outside their homes and off their personal devices. It’s the umbrella term that encompasses everything from traditional, static, non-digital formats—commonly referred to as traditional OOH—to DOOH, programmatic DOOH, and even experiential activations.

DOOH is a subset of OOH that uses digital screens, such as LED billboards and in-store screens, to deliver dynamic ads that can be updated and optimized in real time.

While traditional OOH is static, it offers several advantages, such as 100% share of voice and long-term visibility. These placements are always on, delivering constant exposure. The trade-off is that installation and updates take longer than digital methods, and static ads can lose novelty or require maintenance over time.

DOOH, by comparison, brings flexibility, scale, and automation to the same environments. Advertisers can trigger campaigns based on contextual factors like weather, time of day, or traffic patterns, and easily adjust creative or targeting as performance or conditions change.

DOOH also opens the door to programmatic advertising opportunities, giving marketers access to hundreds of media owners and millions of digital screens through demand-side platforms (DSPs) like StackAdapt. 

Advertisers can buy inventory at scale with just a few clicks, making it easier to plan, activate, measure, and optimize campaigns in real time. Programmatic DOOH provides the same control, flexibility, and data-driven approach familiar to digital buyers, with transaction types such as open exchange, private marketplaces, and programmatic guaranteed, which offer different levels of access, transparency, and pricing control.

Types of OOH Advertising

According to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), OOH advertising falls into four categories, each offering unique advantages, depending on where audiences are and how messages are delivered. 

From highway billboards and street-level posters to hand-painted murals and digital displays in high-traffic public spaces, here are the four main types of OOH placements and what makes each of them most effective.

Billboards

Built for scale, billboards are the most recognizable and high-impact OOH format. They deliver unmatched visibility, making them ideal for generating brand awareness and establishing a lasting presence in key markets.

Billboards are typically found in or alongside:

• Highways and major roadways
• City centers and commuter routes
• Commercial and industrial districts

Billboards are best suited for campaigns focused on awareness or reinforcing brand identity at scale, such as product launches or market expansions.

Street Furniture

Street furniture placements bring OOH to the heart of pedestrian life by positioning them where consumers walk, wait, and shop. These formats offer brands close-up visibility at eye level in high-traffic areas such as downtown cores and residential neighbourhoods.

Street furniture OOH ads are commonly found on:

• Bus shelters and benches
• Kiosks and newsstands
• Bicycle racks and pedestrian panels

Street furniture excels at delivering contextually relevant messages—like promoting local events, nearby businesses, or quick-service restaurants—to audiences already in motion.

Transit

Transit OOH connects with commuters and travellers during their daily journeys. Whether mounted to vehicles or displayed in airports or subway stations, transit ads combine high reach with strong frequency, connecting with audiences as they travel between destinations.

Transit OOH placements include:

• Wraps and posters on buses and taxis
• Displays and screens in airports and transit hubs
• Truckside billboards and mobile displays mounted on vehicles

Transit ads are especially effective for tourism boards, entertainment brands, and local retailers looking to reach consumers on the move.

Place-Based OOH

Place-based OOH covers nearly any location where audiences gather, offering advertisers the flexibility to reach consumers in contextually relevant settings. These formats connect with people as they shop, work out, refuel, or unwind.

Place-based OOH placements can appear in and around:

• Arenas, stadiums, and movie theatres
• Gyms, campuses, and offices
• Shopping malls, retail locations, gas stations, and convenience stores

Place-based OOH excels at contextually targeting audiences based on their environment, whether it’s inspiring movie-goers, energizing sports fans, or catching shoppers’ attention closer to the point of purchase.

Benefits of OOH Advertising

OOH advertising is one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness in the physical world.

Here are a few of its benefits:

High Visibility and Impact

OOH advertising provides unmatched visibility in public spaces where people live, work, and travel. Large-scale formats, such as billboards or high-impact digital displays, help brands stand out and deliver long-lasting impressions, even in high-traffic environments.

Broad Reach and Audience Diversity

OOH reaches broad and varied audiences across cities, suburbs, and transit corridors. Whether it’s commuters, shoppers, or event-goers, brands can use OOH advertising to connect with diverse demographics at a massive scale.

Continuous Visibility and Exposure

Unlike other forms of advertising, ads can’t be skipped, muted, or blocked, giving brands consistent visibility that helps reinforce brand awareness as audiences move through their day.

Localized and Contextual Targeting

OOH placements reach audiences based on where they are, not just who they are. Advertisers can tailor messages by geography, venue type, or environment. DOOH enhances precision with location data, time-of-day triggers, and contextual signals, like weather or events, to deliver relevant messages that feel timely and personalized.

Creative Flexibility

OOH gives brands the space to think big. From large-scale visuals and 3D installations to dynamic DOOH creatives featuring videos or animation, OOH is the perfect canvas for bold, creative storytelling.

Campaign Agility and Optimization

Programmatic DOOH adds real-time flexibility to traditional OOH. Marketers can adjust targeting, swap creatives, and optimize delivery in response to audience behaviour or campaign performance without site visits.

Retail and Point-of-Purchase Impact

OOH drives action where it matters most. Ads near stores and inside shopping centers can influence purchase decisions when intent is at its highest. In fact, a study found that 51% of people who saw a DOOH ad providing directions to a specific retail location ended up visiting it (and 93% of those completed a purchase).

Measurable Attribution

New measurement tools make it easier to quantify the impact of OOH campaigns. With DOOH, advertisers can track impressions, foot traffic, and sales lift through mobile device data and attribution studies, helping marketers link ad exposure to bottom-line results.

How to Measure OOH Advertising

For years, one of the biggest critiques of OOH advertising was that you couldn’t measure the impact of a billboard—at least, not accurately.

Traditional OOH measurement relied on traffic counts and audience ratings from 3rd-party organizations to estimate reach and frequency.

Now, that’s changing.

Advances in mobile location data, programmatic delivery, and 3rd-party attribution have made it easier to measure the real-world effectiveness of OOH campaigns, especially for DOOH activations. Marketers can now connect campaign exposure to tangible results across the entire customer journey with more accuracy than ever before.

Here are a few of the most effective ways to measure OOH and DOOH campaign performance to prove the impact of your investment.

Footfall Attribution

Footfall attribution connects DOOH ad exposure to in-person visits. Aggregated, privacy-safe mobile location data from audiences near specific placements helps advertisers understand how many people visited a store, venue, or event after seeing an ad, making it possible to connect ad exposure to actions at specific physical locations.

Brand Lift

Brand lift studies measure the impact DOOH campaigns have on consumer perception and awareness. By comparing a group exposed to your ads with a control group that hasn’t seen them, marketers can quantify changes in brand recognition, recall, consideration, or purchase intent.

Sales Lift

Sales lift analysis links ad exposure to actual purchases. Advertisers can examine consumer or transaction data before and after a campaign to determine whether those exposed to an ad were more likely to buy the promoted product.

Of course, these examples only scratch the surface. Additional measurement options are increasingly available through 3rd-party measurement providers and SSP integrations, covering everything from reach and frequency analysis to more advanced reporting through managed services.

As technology evolves, expect new capabilities, such as incrementality and retargeting lift, to emerge, giving marketers even more ways to understand and optimize the impact of their campaigns.

How Brands Are Using OOH Advertising Today

Brands and agencies are reimagining how OOH fits into their marketing strategies, using it not just for awareness, but as part of connected, omnichannel campaigns. 

Need proof? Working with StackAdapt, these clients used DOOH to drive brand awareness and performance across the funnel:

• MOBSTA set out to boost brand awareness for Michael Kors Jewelry across Germany. Focusing on high-traffic DOOH placements in airports, malls, and luxury shopping districts, the campaign delivered over 14 million impressions.
• Octopus Energy, a global energy provider, wanted to build brand awareness and drive engagement across six major Spanish cities. The campaign retargeted users exposed to DOOH ads with native and display ads, generating over 3 million impressions and achieving a 1.34% average CTR.
• Somebody Digital created a full-funnel campaign for Ramsbury—an eco-friendly spirits brand—targeting premium retail locations near Waitrose and Sainsbury’s across England. The campaign generated over 32 million impressions and boosted site traffic by 99%.
• Chicago Fire FC aimed to boost ticket sales for a high-profile match against a new rival. Using a full-funnel, multi-channel campaign across DOOH, CTV, and display, they drove more than 16,000 clicks, nearly 600 conversions, and delivered a 122% return on ad spend.

Trends Reshaping OOH in 2025 and Beyond

OOH is evolving faster than ever, shaped by new technologies, shifting consumer habits, and a growing demand for measurable, omnichannel experiences. Based on emerging industry data and recent innovations, here are four key trends shaping OOH advertising now and in the future.

OOH and Digital Channels Grow More Connected

As OOH evolves, brands are finding new and inventive ways to connect it with digital and social channels to tell a cohesive story and move customers down the funnel.

Through creative partnerships and data integrations, social content can now be mirrored in real-world environments, while DOOH enables retargeting and sequential messaging across display, mobile, and CTV to extend engagement and maintain message consistency across every touchpoint.

According to the OAAA, 74% of mobile users take action on their device after seeing a DOOH ad, highlighting just how important OOH is in driving customer interactions, both online and in the physical world.

AI Is Making DOOH Smarter

Artificial intelligence is reshaping what’s possible in DOOH advertising—from how creatives are built to how campaigns are optimized.

AI can process massive datasets and adjust messaging based on context like weather, traffic, or trending topics, all while being privacy-friendly. It’s also enhancing measurement, pairing with attribution tools to connect DOOH exposure to foot traffic, retail lift, and conversions. 

Together, these advances are helping OOH earn new credibility with performance marketers, not just brand advertisers.

OOH Expands Into New Environments

As brands look for even more ways to engage shoppers closer to the point of purchase, retail media has emerged as one of the fastest-growing channels in advertising, with in-store retail media ad spending set to make up nearly one-fifth of total ad spending by 2027 and 55.9% of total DOOH growth between 2025 and 2029.

But it’s not stopping there. OOH continues to expand into new environments such as gyms, healthcare offices, and even electric vehicle charging stations. 

EMARKETER reports that EV owners are ideal targets for DOOH advertising due to the lengthy downtime required to charge their vehicles and the close proximity of charging stations to nearby businesses.

DOOH Becomes Even More Accessible

In the past, advertisers had to either deal directly with media owners using traditional insertion orders or use DOOH-specific DSPs to get their ads on digital screens.

Now, programmatic platforms like StackAdapt simplify the process by bringing everything together under one unified platform, making it easier for advertisers to launch, adjust, and track the impact of DOOH ads and use them as part of multi-channel campaigns.

As a result, Statista reports that programmatic DOOH now represents 30% of DOOH ad spending and is projected to account for 65% by 2029—proof that marketers are moving beyond manual DOOH buys and embracing programmatic as the most efficient way to activate DOOH as part of their campaigns.

Does OOH Deserve a Spot in Your Media Mix?

Thanks to DOOH, OOH is no longer just a top-of-funnel awareness play. It’s a measurable, data-driven performance driver that connects the physical and digital worlds in powerful new ways. 

From flexible creative formats to programmatic activations, DOOH is helping brands reach audiences with precision, creativity, and scale. 

Learn more about our DOOH advertising solutions and speak with our team to see how StackAdapt can help you plan, activate, and measure your next DOOH campaign more effectively.

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