Digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertising market size is projected to be around $16.6 billion, growing between 6-7% a year. However, the advertising market size is around $760 Billion. So DOOH’s share in the industry is relatively small. We believe DOOH advertising is underrated and doesn’t get enough attention from the advertisers. It is the least invasive way of advertising. Unlike other channels, (D)OOH ads are not between the person and the content s/he tries to read/watch/listen to. --- Problems in the Industry We notice 3 main problems in the industry and will discuss them below. 1- Old-fashioned Processes A massive portion of the transactions in the DOOH industry is being done through manual, and let’s admit it, inefficient ways. Campaign management is done through emails, ad-verification is done through photos, and reporting is done through Excel/PDF files - that should be collected from all the media owners separately. There is no modern advertising platform connecting buyers and sellers, where buyers can manage and track their campaigns with real-time insight (except for programmatic / automation technologies, which will be discussed later). --- 2- Lack of Control We’d like to borrow the idea of “information asymmetry” from the economic literature, because in the (D)OOH industry, sellers have almost all the knowledge, and buyers have little information about how their budgets are spent. --- 3. Data There is plenty of data in the internet (digital) advertising industry. It is possible to do targeting, analytics, attribution, real-time campaign tracking, and optimization. Still, Facebook said they’d lose $10 billion in 2022 due to the new data-related limitations introduced by Apple on iPhone devices. So we now live in a universe where privacy concerns have reversed some of the trends in the advertising world and access to audience data is becoming more and more difficult even for the digital advertising industry. --- To summarize; we have mainly 3 types of problems with data in (D)OOH. 1- Collecting data becomes more difficult due to regulations and increasing data constraints from companies like Apple and Google. 2- Targeting an audience in DOOH is also challenging because mainly it’s a one-to-many medium and data is mostly not real-time. 3- Attribution and analytics are also challenging because of all the previous steps + still non-standardized metrics like impression multipliers. Regulations, increasing data constraints from companies like Apple and Google, data quality, and the one-to-many nature of the DOOH medium are pushing the advertisers to question the efficiency and/or make cost-benefit analyses regarding using audience data in the industry. --- Conclusion Just to repeat; we believe DOOH advertising is the least invasive way of advertising. DOOH screens are not between the content people try to watch, read or listen to; they are a natural part of the content.

1. May 2022
The Untold Story of the DOOH
Advertising Industry
​​

2. Executive Summary
Unlike other advertising channels, (D)OOH ads are not between the person and the content s/he
tries to read/watch/listen to. So they’re not invasive, they look cool, yet, DOOH’s share in the
overall advertising market is very small.
There is a great opportunity for this industry to grow very fast, as internet advertising is
becoming more and more inefficient. In early February (2022), Facebook said they’ll lose $10
billion in 2022 due to the data limitations iOS introduced. This money (and more) will have to
shift to other channels, and DOOH could benefit from it.
But to do that, some problems the industry faces have to be solved.
1- It has to replace old-fashioned processes with modern advertising platforms.
2- It has to provide a control mechanism to buyers and increase transparency.
3- It has to solve audience-data-related problems, or just be patient while internet advertising
loses its data-related advantage.
Current trends in the industry are around programmatic / automation, ad-verification, and
improving audience data capabilities. We believe all of these trends and innovations around
these concepts will accelerate the growth of the industry.
We also believe this industry has great potential and a bright future.
▶ More details in the upcoming pages.
1

3. Introduction
Digital-out-of-home (DOOH) advertising market size is projected to be around $16.6 billion,
growing between 6-7% a year .
1
However, the advertising market size is around $760 Billion . So DOOH’s share in the industry is
2
relatively small.
We believe DOOH advertising is underrated and doesn’t get enough attention from the
advertisers. It is the least invasive way of advertising. Unlike other channels, (D)OOH ads are not
between the person and the content s/he tries to read/watch/listen to.
Yet, we accept it has some major problems.
In this whitepaper, we will discuss some of these problems, potential solutions, and some of the
trends we observe in the industry.
Problems in the Industry
We notice 3 main problems in the industry and will discuss them below.
1- Old-fashioned Processes
A massive portion of the transactions in the DOOH industry is being done through manual, and
let’s admit it, inefficient ways.
Campaign management is done through emails, ad-verification is done through photos, and
reporting is done through Excel/PDF files - that should be collected from all the media owners
2
https://www.wsj.com/articles/advertising-market-keeps-growing-much-faster-than-expected-forecasters-sa
y-11638784800
1
https://www.statista.com/outlook/amo/advertising/out-of-home-advertising/digital-out-of-home-advertising/
worldwide
2

4. separately. There is no modern advertising platform connecting buyers and sellers, where
buyers can manage and track their campaigns with real-time insight (except for programmatic /
automation technologies, which will be discussed later).
Yes, some media owners provide dashboards, but two problems there;
I. Buyers have to log in to multiple dashboards, i.e. no centralized platform.
II. There is no verification of the data that is displayed on those dashboards.
While the industry is trying to modernize itself in many different ways, still a major portion of ad
budgets is spent as described above.
2- Lack of Control
We’d like to borrow the idea of “information asymmetry” from the economic literature, because
in the (D)OOH industry, sellers have almost all the knowledge, and buyers have little information
about how their budgets are spent.
Let us explain what we mean. Please have a look at the figure below.
Figure 1
This is a simplified illustration of how a DOOH campaign process flows.
1. Brands talk to the agencies.
2. Agencies talk to the media owners, create a plan, and get approval from clients.
3

5. 3. Media owner sales-people talk to the ad-ops people and make sure the campaign starts.
4. Ad-ops people enter campaign information into their screen management software
(CMS / digital signage).
5. Ads are played on the screens and verified by photos taken by media owners and/or 3rd
party companies.
The main problem with this flow is that buyers lose control after the 2nd step.
Figure 2
They usually don’t know how accurately the campaign information is communicated to the
ad-ops teams (3rd step), how it is entered into the screen management software (4th step), and
whether there was a problem/error during the campaign progress on any one of the screens (5th
step).
4

6. Figure 3
We said earlier that sellers have almost all the information. We said it like that because in some
cases media owners also don’t know what happens with their own screens. Sometimes their
ad-ops teams make some data-entry mistakes, or the screen management software they use is
not functioning in the way they expect, and they only hope that it works properly.
In some of the campaigns that run through our (Airsqreen’s) platform, we see discrepancy
issues up to 87% between what was planned and what was delivered - and in many cases,
media owners are not even aware of these issues.
This lack of transparency and control is one of the major problems in the industry.
3. Data
There is plenty of data in the internet (digital) advertising industry. It is possible to do targeting,
analytics, attribution, real-time campaign tracking, and optimization.
Still, Facebook said they’d lose $10 billion in 2022 due to the new data-related limitations
introduced by Apple on iPhone devices .
3
3
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.ht
ml
5

7. So we now live in a universe where privacy concerns have reversed some of the trends in the
advertising world and access to audience data is becoming more and more difficult even for the
digital advertising industry.
(D)OOH industry has been suffering in this area. Thankfully some organizations like Geopath
and some innovative companies have been tackling this problem and trying to connect audience
data with the DOOH ads. Yet, we believe there is still some work to do in this space.
Even if we could very accurately measure audience profiles around a screen, we’d still have two
more problems: 1) this is a one-to-many medium, and 2) the data is mostly not real-time. So the
nature of DOOH advertising makes it difficult to deal with audience data.
Figure 5
To summarize; we have mainly 3 types of problems with data in (D)OOH.
1- Collecting data becomes more difficult due to regulations and increasing data constraints
from companies like Apple and Google.
2- Targeting an audience in DOOH is also challenging because mainly it’s a one-to-many medium
and data is mostly not real-time.
3- Attribution and analytics are also challenging because of all the previous steps + still
non-standardized metrics like impression multipliers.
Regulations, increasing data constraints from companies like Apple and Google, data quality,
and the one-to-many nature of the DOOH medium are pushing the advertisers to question the
efficiency and/or make cost-benefit analyses regarding using audience data in the industry.
6

8. Potential Solutions for the Problems
We mentioned some of the major problems the industry faces. Below there are some suggested
potential solutions to these problems.
1- Old-fashioned processes -> Automation
As discussed before, a vast majority of the DOOH budgets are spent in manual ways. The good
news is that these are digital screens, so the process can be automated.
One solution is programmatic advertising, which proved to be very successful in the internet
advertising world. Indeed programmatic budgets have been increasing in DOOH, and some
clients benefit from these technologies.
Another solution is automation tools for existing processes. In the programmatic jargon, this is
known as programmatic direct, where there are guaranteed ad plays/duration in return for a
guaranteed budget. This is no different than an ordinary campaign, it’s just using technology to
bring the efficiency and control of automated flows vs. manual old-fashioned flow.
Here’s a quick comparison table between programmatic vs. automation tools:
Conventional Programmatic Automation / Programmatic
Direct
Control on Campaign Yes Yes
Inventory Type Unsold Premium
Real-time Insights on
Campaign Progress
Yes Yes
Real-time Bidding for the
Ad-Space
Yes No
Automating the Processes Yes Yes
2- Lack of Control -> Full Control
7

9. Instead of showing the ads manually, using technology to run the campaign would give full
control over the process to everyone involved, especially to the buyers. Not to mention it would
be much more efficient to manage the process with technology.
Figure 6
For instance, our advertising platform connects buyers and sellers on a single platform through
a programmatic direct model, which means bringing control, efficiency, and transparency with no
additional technology layer required. But there are other technology companies out there that
can serve the same purpose.
The goal here should be leaving manual processes behind and automating all possible flows
through technology. Once this is achieved, the industry will become much more efficient and
increased buyer confidence will lead to a much higher growth rate than ever before.
3. Data
There are many companies out there trying to connect audience data to the DOOH industry.
Some of them rely on hardware-based solutions, which are not easily scalable. Most of them try
to do that by collecting location data from mobile devices - either from the apps they partnered
with or from the bidstream data (or a combination of these two).
We think this will be gradually more challenging because most likely mobile operating systems
will keep increasing the constraints in collecting and using audience data.
8

10. Organizations like Geopath (US) and Route (UK) also try to tackle the problem regarding
audience data and continuously improve their systems to help the industry . So there is
4
definitely progress in this area.
But our guess is contextual data will be more important when it comes to identifying relevant
audiences. So, targeting an audience at a gym or a high-end shopping mall or an airport with
relevant messages will probably lead to better results.
Figure 7
In any case, we recommend testing any data point that is available, seeing the results and
optimizing accordingly.
But here’s the good(?) news: audience data is becoming problematic for internet advertising as
well. So while the DOOH industry has been trying to become like internet advertising, internet
advertising may become like DOOH.
That means, maybe this problem will be solved in an unexpected way; advertisers will have to
accept that audience targeting is not performing as it used to be and will start looking for
alternative channels to the internet.
This could be indeed happening right now and Facebook’s $10 billion lost revenue could be
looking for a new home.
Some Trends in the Industry
We observe below trends in the industry:
4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHMjTVxNj_I
9

11. 1- Programmatic/automation becomes important, and the industry tries to leave old-fashioned
manual processes behind.
2- Although it is not perfect and its future is unknown, there is ongoing progress around
audience data and it’s being tried to connect to the DOOH ads.
3- Ad-verification becomes more important. Buyers try to gain some control over their budgets
and try to understand if their ads are actually played on the DOOH screens.
These trends, in combination with the privacy-first trends that are limiting the usage of audience
data in the internet advertising industry give the DOOH industry a great opportunity to gain some
market share and grow much faster than its current growth rates.
Conclusion
Just to repeat; we believe DOOH advertising is the least invasive way of advertising. DOOH
screens are not between the content people try to watch, read or listen to; they are a natural
part of the content. So there is great potential in this industry.
Yet, the industry suffers from old-fashioned manual processes, lack of control, and lack of
high-quality data.
The good news is that there are companies and organizations trying to solve these issues.
And the future of DOOH advertising looks bright.
Airsqreen provides a DOOH advertising platform to automate IO-based campaigns (i.e.
programmatic direct), that helps with campaign management, ad-verification, and
real-time reporting.
For more information, please email more@airsqreen.com.
© Airsqreen, Inc.
10