What 2024 OOH advertising trends could reveal about the coming year

From retail media's rise to the race to automate global OOH transactions, and increasing experimentation with AI, OOH technology is rapidly evolving. These shifts are poised to transform how OOH is bought, sold, and measured.

As we get ready to turn the page on 2024, reflecting on the unexpected twists and turns the ad industry saw this year can better prepare us for 2025. Just look to Google’s decision to let the third-party cookie live on as an example. It may have prompted new questions around privacy and addressability for online and mobile ad buys, but it also has media buyers rethinking how they’ll divvy out spend across ad channels next year. As they do, out-of-home (OOH) is proving a medium with strong curb appeal.

Between the rise of retail media, increasing demand to streamline global OOH transactions, and growing experimentation with artificial intelligence (AI), the technology behind OOH is rapidly progressing. Continuous advancements in the space are transforming how the medium is bought, sold, and measured. As you ready your OOH plans for 2025, keep these trends in mind:

As retail media matures, in-store and programmatic remain untapped opportunities

As of September 2024, Mimbi reported the number of retail media networks topped 200. Retail media is projected to make up 1/5 of digital ad spend in 2024, according to eMarketer. However, it’s still a nascent business, and there are many hurdles it must overcome.

Some retailers, for instance, have yet to incorporate in-store media into their larger networks to enable brands to target audiences at the point of purchase, missing out on a huge opportunity. Furthermore, many retailers operate their retail media networks (RMNs) as walled gardens; they don’t plug into programmatic marketplaces, making it difficult for buyers who want to incorporate retail media into their omnichannel strategies. We may just see that shift next year, with Marketing Dive reporting that spending on offsite programmatic retail media is projected to more than double by the end of this year from 2023.

Giving buyers more options to reach audiences at the point of purchase and the flexibility to buy direct or programmatic will open the revenue floodgates for retailers, including spend from non-endemic brands looking to reach their target audiences. Now is the time for brands and agencies to talk to retailers about the kinds of in-store media they’d like to see, and for the ad tech industry to advocate retailers to integrate their RMNs with more programmatic exchanges.

The race to automate and the role of AI

While programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) has enabled more automated DOOH transactions, purchasing static or even guaranteed digital inventory that is not programmatically accessible remains manual and labor intensive. A desire to resolve this pain point and a growing appetite for more efficient ways to measure OOH campaign effectiveness kicked the race to automate into high gear in 2024.

Being able to get insight into relevant available inventory, understand the costs, and then reserve and schedule your ads ahead of time will be game-changing. It’s also immensely helpful to have automatic access to measurement benchmarks, like brand lift studies or web and app lift download data. We expect to see new technology partnerships emerge in 2025 that will help drive automation and new interest in the medium, and there’s a role for AI to play in this automation evolution.

Almost everyone in the ad industry is experimenting with AI or machine learning (ML) on some level, but OOH is still in the very early stages of experimentation. That said, there is a lot of promise for AI and ML to streamline backend processes that can alleviate common pain points for OOH media buyers and media owners.

To this end, we won’t be surprised when new automation and AI- and ML- powered tools hit the market in 2025. If you want to get an idea of what might be coming down the pipe and even influence how these tools are developed, it’s a good time to check in with your ad tech partners.

pDOOH tools mature, measurement and attribution become more accessible

pDOOH tools are growing up. They’re getting smarter and more efficient, and offering advanced, data-driven targeting capabilities, curated deal packages, and more. The technology is poised to advance further next year, especially as more advertisers become aware of the available targeting, measurement, and attribution opportunities.

With modern DSPs, you can leverage real-time data – like live sports and stock market data, local weather conditions and more – to target your core audience, and make use of curated deal packages that leverage this data to reach specific audiences, such as travel and tourism, retail or sports betting. These offerings include targeted audiences, inventory, and contextual locations from inventory spanning multiple media owners, with data delivered through a single ID. They quickly caught on in 2024, because they streamline the DOOH campaign proposal review and approval process, as buyers can leverage their preferred DSP to access functionality traditionally reserved for bespoke DOOH DSPs. DOOH campaigns that took days to plan and execute now take minutes. Plus, with so much data at our fingertips today, the post-campaign data and analysis capabilities will only continue to grow, making these campaigns even more measurable in the coming year.

Not only do curated deal packages help simplify transactions, but they can also advance OOH performance or measurement results. Leveraging audience segment targeting, these packages can ensure that you’re concentrating budget to deliver on screens with the best opportunity to reach your target audience. They also come in various formats, like outdoor screens in downtown city centers, or roadside freeway digital billboards. Curated inventory with preferred pricing allows buyers to target screen formats like these based on factors that make the most contextual sense for a brand’s performance goals. And better performance translates to better measurement results; the more tactical the campaign planning and execution, generally speaking, the more positive the campaign performance.

In 2025, we expect even more data-driven targeting capabilities, curated deal packages, and measurement data to become available on major DSPs, and more media buyers will make use of them across the globe. Working with a strong, experienced media team who can guide you in delivering campaigns that align with your goals is a great way to ensure success.

Cross-regional pDOOH campaign planning and execution takes flight

Local has been OOH’s sweet spot for years, but as pDOOH technology has matured, the pool of international inventory on major DSPs is broadening. More brands and agencies are embracing a multinational approach to DOOH campaign planning and execution. And it makes sense, especially for travel and tourism brands, automotive manufacturers, and consumer technology developers, or any company that wants to target audiences in multiple geographical markets.

This trend was readily apparent in the travel and tourism industry in 2024 when it came to media buyers working with Broadsign, with airlines and tourist destinations planning and executing DOOH ads out of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia that targeted audiences abroad. Advertisers who have executed these multinational campaigns found they could achieve more cohesive creative, dynamically adapt it to match real-time conditions at scale, and optimize future ad campaigns using consistent campaign insights from across regions, among other benefits.

We foresee significant growth in cross-regional campaigns next year, especially as the trend picks up steam in North America. For any brand or agency considering a multinational campaign, consider working with a DOOH SSP partner that offers a broad range of inventory in the geographical markets you want to reach. Tap into their knowledge base to determine the best inventory available to achieve your campaign goals and find out how you can optimize your campaigns across different regions, while adding performance KPIs to measure success.

The trends that defined 2024 for DOOH are creating new opportunities for media buyers and owners investing in the medium. They’re paving the way to a vibrant future for the industry and will continue to influence new developments in 2025, so stay tuned for more to come.