Billboards Aren’t Dying—They’re Getting Smarter

 

I was in the car with a friend recently, and when I pointed out a well-executed billboard campaign, she said, “I feel like billboards are kind of dying, though.” 

And (I’m sure to her dismay), this lit a tiny flame in me and I had an “um, actually” moment, explaining all of the reasons why billboards are, in fact, not dying, but are, in fact, thriving. 

I gave her the whole spiel on how they can’t be paused, skipped, or ignored; about how they make for great statements and social media content; about how small business owners love reaching their local communities with outdoor ads and increasing brand recognition.  

But the out-of-home (OOH) industry has grown into something much more complex: it’s digital, data-driven, and increasingly connected to the same targeting and measurement tools that power online advertising. 

OOH has undergone one of the biggest transformations in advertising, albeit maybe slightly under the radar. Digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens allow creative to change in real time, ads to appear only at certain times of day, or align with audience movements.   

And—as much as many of us may dread numbers—behind great billboards lies data. OOH campaigns aren’t just planned based on proximity to storefronts or plopped randomly in major cities, but are now informed by mobile location data, audience segmentation, and attribution modeling, connecting actual impressions to online conversion.  

The perception that OOH is “unmeasurable” or “traditional” hasn’t kept up with the reality of how marketers are using it. Consumers are tuning out of digital spaces thanks to ad blockers, bots, and the noise on home pages and FYPs, and it’s harder than ever to make a meaningful impact online. But, in the real world—like on a street corner, a bus stop, the side of a highway or in an airport—capturing undivided attention is possible in a way that it just isn’t with digital. 

OOH is a critical bridge between online and offline worlds, with many brands using it to amplify retail media campaigns, connect digital ads to the real world, and drive measurable store traffic. 

First-party data and privacy are reshaping how we target audiences, and OOH offers the ability to reach without being creepy or invasive to users. OOH doesn’t require needing to know who someone is, but rather where they are.  

And technology platforms (like DOmedia) have made buying OOH faster, smarter, and more transparent. Aggregated data, automated planning, and centralized inventory access are making it easier for advertisers to treat OOH like a scalable, performance-oriented medium.  

Historically, OOH has thrived because it’s real. It can’t be scrolled past, muted, or skipped, and in an age of digital exhaustion and ad fatigue, that authenticity matters.  

So TL;DR, billboards aren’t dying, they’re just being reimagined and evolving from static displays to dynamic platforms. 

 

Author

Sydney Deibert

Marketing

DOmedia