If you’ve ever bought out-of-home (OOH) ads, you’ll know how time-consuming it can be – briefings, rate negotiations, booking confirmations, artwork reviews and measurement discussions, often with multiple media owners. A last-minute budget, timing, or geography change can mean another round of calls. The amount of back and forth required to finalise digital and static OOH bookings is inefficient, especially compared to the ease of booking flights or hotels online.
Many in the industry see programmatic as the solution, but according to Magna Global, an estimated 95% of OOH transactions are still handled manually. Most OOH spend still goes to static inventory, which isn’t accessible via programmatic platforms.
This poses a dilemma. OOH is one of the most impactful ad channels, and while it continues to grow, that momentum could slow if transaction processes don’t evolve. As AI and automation reshape industries, OOH must keep pace or risk falling behind. Automating OOH workflows will streamline agency operations and help advertisers maximise the medium’s potential.
The case for automation from an agency perspective
OOH is powerful for driving brand awareness, footfall and viral moments. It’s highly visible, reaches broad audiences and enables unique activations. The channel is also well-suited to contextual storytelling and directing traffic to other brand channels.
Advertisers want to invest in OOH, but booking complexity can be a barrier. Budget adjustments are common in omnichannel campaigns, and while social and search plans can be updated in under 24 hours, revising an OOH plan can take days. When time is tight, OOH budgets are often reallocated to more flexible channels.
It’s easy to see why. In a world of instant transactions, where products can be compared and purchased in minutes, OOH planning remains cumbersome. While media owners, specialists and agency platforms exist to streamline processes, they are often disconnected, creating inefficiencies.
According to Statista, agencies spend around 60% of their time planning manual OOH transactions. Gavin Lee, senior director, product at Broadsign, explains: “The long tail of advertisers is growing, and sectors like CTV and audio are restructuring to accommodate that. With so many smaller advertisers and campaigns entering the market, the revenue growth potential for OOH is high. But as an industry, we are already spending about 80% of our time managing about 15-20% of revenue; this means we’re wasting valuable time that we could be selling and capitalising on these new advertisers, which has to change.”
Automating static and digital OOH transactions would free up agency time for higher-value strategic work. With the right automation strategy, repetitive tasks could be eliminated, allowing agencies and advertisers to focus on creative and performance-driven conversations.
Speaking at the World Out of Home Organization event in Milan, Ocean Outdoor Nederland’s Daan Krijnen stressed the importance of automation: “Streamlining the OOH buying process allows advertisers to spend more time with us talking about their creative strategies rather than navigating availability. Automation will build trust in our approach, and that's crucial in our fast-paced omnichannel world.”
What does automation mean for OOH?
Beyond programmatic, OOH automation refers to system-to-system integration that removes manual intervention in tasks such as inventory discovery, planning, availability checks, transaction amendments and content submission. Ideally, a single platform would connect multiple demand-side parties, making OOH inventory accessible for automated transactions – the benefit is increased efficiency and yield.
The challenges ahead
Automating OOH won’t happen overnight. Collaboration is needed between agencies, media owners, ad tech providers and advertisers. The in-advance buying process must be consolidated into a centralised platform, enabling standardised measurement – something advertisers increasingly demand. OOH campaigns can be quick and easy to activate with measurable outcomes, but it’s up to OOH ad tech developers and media owners to show agencies how to do this better.
Simplifying OOH buying processes with automation will reduce friction and enable agencies like us to focus on more strategic conversations around the value of OOH, as well as OOH creative and measurement. Moving forward requires trust, transparency and collaboration. Agencies must start talking to media owners to understand their automation capabilities and the pricing models that make the most sense. Media owners need to listen and learn from the feedback. They must also work with the ad tech community to make OOH inventory more accessible in advance so that agencies and brands can build better OOH plans faster.
Brands also have a role to play. They need to advocate for more flexible OOH transactions with their agencies. OOH specialists and agencies must also work together to create one connected solution that can offer consistent measurement and reporting capabilities. It’s up to ad tech developers to then work with media owners to make a singular, automated OOH in-advance static and digital buying platform possible.
Defining next steps
While OOH continues to grow, its future success hinges on innovation. The industry must evolve to secure a more significant share of media budgets, but that can’t be done in silos; it requires collaboration – between brands, agencies, media owners and ad tech firms.
Collectively, we need to embrace new ways of working. Now is the time to think about an automation strategy beyond programmatic. Failure to affect change risks losing OOH spend to other channels and stalling OOH industry growth. Automation will free up more of our time to show advertisers and brands just how effective OOH is as a medium and why they should increase their overall OOH investment.