Digital Out-of-Home

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) media refers to advertisements that appear on digital screens in public spaces. These include both outdoor screens, like large digital billboards or urban panels that can be found on bus shelters and street furniture, and indoor screens in places like elevators, taxi cabs, shopping malls, college campuses, and gyms. DOOH displays are often in high-traffic areas, giving advertisers the opportunity to reach a broad audience outside of their homes while they are not actively using personal devices.

Determining the number of impressions for DOOH ads is different than for other ad formats. Most digital ads function on a one-to-one basis, meaning that a single ad spot is seen by a single viewer, resulting in one impression. DOOH ads appear on screens in public spaces, so it's considered a “one-to-many” medium. Every time a DOOH ad plays, it is seen by more than one person and results in multiple impressions.

Impression counts for DOOH are calculated by applying impression multipliers, which estimate how many viewers a screen has on average based on factors such as the dayof the week, the time of day, and the location of the screen (among many others). Exchanges get this data from analytics vendors and then send the actual impression count to the DSP.

In DOOH metrics and reports, the ad spots metric indicates the number of times that the DOOH ad was served—in other words, how many times it appeared on a screen.

Impressions from third-party ad servers don't apply an impression multiplier and just count one impression per ad served. When you're reviewing delivery for DOOH line items, the impression count from third-party ad servers is presented as ad spots.

DOOH Reporting

Basis stores the exact number of impressions as a fraction and performs all calculations using this number, but delivery stats in reports are rounded to the nearest whole number. As a result, you may observe discrepancies in some cases.

For example, if a campaign runs for a week, and you compare the number of impressions reported per day (in a report for specific dates) to the total number of impressions (in a report that spans the entire week), you may see a small difference due to rounding.

See Digital Out-of-Home Venue Reports to learn more about the information available in DOOH reports.

Venues describe the environments where DOOH screens are located and the types of audiences that may be found there. Information about venues is provided to the DSP by the exchange and is based on a standardized taxonomy developed by OpenOOH.

The level of detail available for venues may vary. For example, the venue type could be described as "Transit", referring to an environment related to travel or commuting. Or, it could be "Transit | Airport," referring to a location related to air travel. If more specific details are available, they describe the specific area where the screen is located, such as "Transit | Airport | Baggage Claim."

Review the resources on the Vistar page to learn more about available venues and DOOH inventory.

DOOH inventory is available through private deals or open market bidding. To target DOOH media, create a DSP line item that uses DOOH formats and then add tactics. See Creating Digital Out-of-Home Campaigns for more information.

Review the following sections to learn more about DOOH inventory, deals, ad formats, and other targeting details.

Exchanges

Currently, the integrated exchanges that provide DOOH inventory in the DSP are Vistar and Place Exchange. More exchanges are coming soon.

Open marking bidding on Vistar is available for all geographic regions.

Ad Formats

DOOH screens can run both image and video ads. For broadest acceptance, the recommended dimensions are 1920x1080 (16:9) for landscape placements or 1080x1920 (9:16) for portrait. Images should be JPG files up to 750 KB in size, and videos should be MP4 files that are either 8, 15, or 30 seconds long.

See Digital Out-of-Home Ad Specs for more guidelines and recommendations.

Deals

Basis DSP provides private marketplace deals to use in DOOH campaigns. You can also negotiate custom deals directly with the publisher. See Vistar for more information.

Contextual

Contextual segments for DOOH are currently only available through Foursquare and Peer39.

If you don't have any Foursquare Proximity segments, create one in Foursquare's Proximity Designer. See Foursquare Proximity for more information.