Out-of-home moves from attention to action
Programmatic DOOH plugs into retail media as out-of-home gets biddable and measurable.
Mariano De Vitto · June 2026
At the World Out of Home congress in London, OUTFRONT Media chief executive Nick Brien argued that real-world media is built for the shift from an attention economy to an action economy. The case: screens in the physical world drive behavior, not just impressions, and the data finally exists to prove it.
The numbers back the push. Programmatic digital out-of-home spend is forecast to rise 23 percent to 1.23 billion dollars in 2026, and in-store retail media is set to drive about 56 percent of all DOOH growth through 2029. Out-of-home is plugging into programmatic buying and retail media at the same time, which is what lets it sit inside an omnichannel plan instead of beside it.
The standardization push has been building for a year, with venue classifications and audience guidelines that let buyers compare a mall screen to a roadside panel the way they compare two websites. That is what makes programmatic out-of-home fit an omnichannel plan. Brien's framing matters because it reframes the medium's weakness, the lack of a click, as a strength: out-of-home reaches people in the physical world, exactly where the action it wants to drive actually happens.
Why it matters now
For years out-of-home was a branding line, bought on gut and measured loosely. That is changing as venue inventory gets standardized and audience data improves, so a screen in a store or on a street can be bought programmatically and tied to a sales outcome. The opportunity is to use DOOH for action, near the point of purchase, not only for reach. The caution is to demand the same measurement rigor you would ask of any digital channel, because an action economy only means something if the action is measured, not assumed.
For a campaign that means buying out-of-home near the shelf and the store, tying each screen to a measurable outcome, and dropping panels that only deliver reach. Ask the vendor for the same attribution you would expect from display, and treat any screen that cannot prove action as branding, priced accordingly.
The signal: Out-of-home is becoming biddable and measurable. Use it near the purchase, and demand proof of action, not just attention.
The Signal Brief · Mariano De Vitto — Head of Marketing, Barcelona