Beyond the Screen
Where DOOH is heading – and why “digital” was always the smaller half of the story.
For a decade, “digital out-of-home” has mostly meant one thing: a billboard that can change its picture. That was the upgrade – static to dynamic, print to pixel. And the numbers show just how far that upgrade has carried the industry.
Forecast global DOOH spend in 2026 - set to overtake static formats
Share of global DOOH spend from Asia-Pacific, led by China
Of total OOH revenue that DOOH already represents
That’s a real achievement. It’s also, still, mostly a story about brightness – bigger, sharper, more flexible screens showing better-looking ads. What comes next is intelligence, not just resolution.
What Intelligence Looks Like in Practice
A handful of brands have already shown what that looks like in practice, and the results are hard to argue with.
La Redoute (France) - weather-triggered DOOH
34% increase in website traffic and 17% sales lift, despite running entirely on an offline channel.
Stella Cidre (UK) - weather-responsive campaign
65.6% year-on-year sales increase during the campaign period.
Benadryl (US) - live pollen-count triggers
Turned a real-time health data feed into both a public service and a sales moment near point of sale.
None of those screens got smarter because they got bigger or sharper. They got smarter because they were connected – to weather feeds, to pollen data, to something happening in the real world that a static loop could never know about. That’s a different category of product than “digital signage,” even though it runs on the same hardware. It’s the difference between a display and a decision-maker.
Don't Audit Your Screens. Audit Your Data.
If your displays can’t see or respond to what’s happening around them, you don’t have a digital signage problem — you have an intelligence gap. And based on where the world’s most effective campaigns are already winning, that gap is exactly where the next decade of advantage is going to be won or lost.
Sources: World Out of Home Organisation, 2026 Global OOH Expenditure Report · WeatherAds, weather-marketing case study data (La Redoute, Stella Cidre) · Cenareo, contextual signage case studies (Benadryl)
Retail Media Is Outgrowing the Website
Retail media has been an e-commerce story. That’s about to change.
Retail media networks became one of advertising’s biggest success stories almost entirely online — a retailer’s website and app, turned into ad inventory, sold back to the brands on its shelves. It’s now genuinely one of the largest channels in advertising, sitting alongside search and social as a top-three ad channel.
% of spending in-store vs. % of retail media dollars still spent online - the mismatch closing now
Projected size of the in-store digital display market by 2030
Of all DOOH ad-spend growth (2025–29) driven by in-store screens alone
That gap is exactly what’s closing right now, and retailers on three different continents are proving it at real scale.
Proof Across Continents
NORTH AMERICA - Walmart Connect & Grocery TV (US)
44% revenue growth for Walmart Connect in early 2026; CPG brands on Grocery TV see 4.7x ROAS and a 14% sales lift.
EUROPE - Sainsbury's & the European market (UK)
Part of a European retail media market projected to nearly double to €31B by 2028, with the UK leading.
APAC - Cartology / Woolworths (Australia)
1,600+ in-store screens, ~14M weekly impressions, 31% shopper engagement and a 17% average sales uplift.
The Infrastructure Gap
The retailers who treat this as “let’s put some screens in the store” will end up with a signage project. The ones who treat it as “let’s extend our retail media network into physical space” — the way Woolworths, Sainsbury’s and Walmart already have — will end up with a second major revenue line.
The buyers are already conditioned to pay for this attention. They’re just waiting for the inventory to be sellable.
Proof of play, audience measurement, attribution back to sales — that’s the infrastructure that turns a screen from decoration into a line item a media buyer can justify.
Sources: Fugo, Retail Media Growth Report 2026 · GlobeNewswire, In-Store Digital Advertising Display Market report · Osmos, Retail Media Networks 2026 Guide · Adtelligent, Retail Media Market Outlook 2026 · AdNews Australia, Cartology in-store screen network rollout
Programmatic DOOH Isn't a Feature. It's a Different Business.
Turning on programmatic doesn’t happen by flipping a switch — and treating it that way is why most rollouts underdeliver.
Programmatic DOOH is usually pitched as one more capability to bolt onto a screen network: connect an SSP, expose inventory, accept bids. That undersells what actually changes – it changes how inventory is structured, priced, sold, delivered, measured and reconciled. In other words, it changes the operating model of the media business itself.
Global pDOOH spend in 2025 — still just ~7% of total DOOH expenditure
T-Mobile's price for Vistar Media - the transaction layer, not the screens
Share of global pDOOH spend still transacted through specialist OOH DSPs
Direct-Sold DOOH
Relationships. Negotiated deals. Campaigns booked weeks ahead.
Programmatic DOOH
Inventory classification. Real-time pricing. Compliance. Reconciliation.
The screen is only the supply. A traditional media network sells locations, dates and loop positions. A programmatic business has to additionally define machine-readable inventory, audience classifications, floor prices and deal rules, creative validation, proof of play, and billing and reconciliation. Skip that groundwork, and connecting to an SSP just makes poorly structured inventory available faster – it doesn’t make it more valuable.
pDOOH Penetration by Region
The screen is only the supply. A traditional media network sells locations, dates and loop positions. A programmatic business has to additionally define machine-readable inventory, audience classifications, floor prices and deal rules, creative validation, proof of play, and billing and reconciliation. Skip that groundwork, and connecting to an SSP just makes poorly structured inventory available faster — it doesn’t make it more valuable.
Where This Is Done Right
US · RETAIL - JCPenney location-aware holiday campaign
592,392 incremental store visits, 70% lift in messaging association, 13% lift in purchase intent.
AU / NZ · CPG — Musashi multi-venue pDOOH with retargeting
26% sales increase from a programmatic DOOH campaign combined with cross-channel retargeting.
Don't Buy Your Way Into Programmatic. Build Your Way In.
Sources: World Out of Home Organization, 2025 Global pDOOH Spend Study (June 2026, aggregated by PwC from 11 participating SSPs) · Vistar Media, JCPenney holiday foot traffic case study · Vistar Media / Spark Foundry, Musashi campaign case study · The Drum, “Programmatic DOOH: How brands can engage key audiences on a global scale”