What is DOOH advertising? Examples, benefits & tips to maximize ROI

Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising refers to kiosks, billboards, and other forms of digital displays that target consumers while they are out of the house. 

Effective marketers engage their prospects and customers wherever they are. While website and social media ads are easy to set up, you’re missing out on a huge audience as people are out and about shopping in their community. This is where DOOH (Digital Out-of-Home) advertising is tremendously valuable. 

Below, we’ll show you how your business can leverage DOOH advertising across kiosks, billboards, and other community-based digital displays to reach consumers as they shop.

What is digital out of home (DOOH) advertising?

DOOH ads differ from traditional out-of-home (OOH) ads in that they utilize the latest tech to drive engagement with consumers. As Terraboost Co-Founder Brett Morrison explains, “The fusion of data, technology, and creativity has transformed OOH into one of the most agile, measurable, and human-centered marketing channels.” This technology includes touchscreens, QR codes, and even dynamic messaging based on real-world factors like weather, time of day, or demographics.

Why is DOOH becoming popular?

In an age where consumers have become desensitized to online ads, marketing experts have gone back to out-of-home advertising. Programmatic DOOH is on the rise, doubling from 1% to 2% of total spend from H1 2024 to H2 2024. As Morrison puts it, “OOH exists in shared public spaces — a verifiable experience that earns trust through visibility.”

Technology is more advanced, and digital displays are more affordable, accessible, and versatile. 

DOOH types

Due to the digital nature of DOOH ads, they can be customized in a variety of formats and platforms. Let’s look at some of these types to learn which are best suited for your marketing campaign. 

Static ads

These ads are the most similar to traditional OOH advertising since they display a single image. However, content updates are easy for digital static ads because they don’t require the physical labor for installation and transfers. 

Interactive ads

Advertising is all about getting consumers to engage with your brand, and interactive ads can deliver a lasting impact via their QR codes and even touch screens that let consumers access additional information. 

Video ads

Nothing can quite catch the eyes of passersby like motion graphics, videos, and animations. Advertisers generally use video ads for large digital screens, like billboards. These ads can last for just a few seconds or even minutes depending on how long consumers are expected to be in front of the display. 

Programmatic ads

The term “programmatic” describes the way digital ads can be purchased and delivered. Programmatic DOOH ads rely on automated tech to select display locations for your messaging. After you select a range of preconditions, such as the weather, time of day, and surrounding demographics, the automated system will find you a display location that’s best suited to hit your target audience. 

DOOH marketing campaigns that utilize both programmatic ad purchases and interactive elements are known to have high conversion rates. By ensuring that your ads will be seen by your target audience and getting them to physically interact with your brand, you’ll have the highest rate of success possible.

Benefits of DOOH retargeting

DOOH retargeting gives you an edge. You can re-target customers on social media who have already shown interest in or seen your brand. This increases the odds that your ad will convert into a sale. Morrison notes, “OOH becomes the first spark in the discovery journey — the moment that prompts consumers to search, share, and act.”

Another advantage of DOOH retargeting is that all your ads are in real time. You pay for the time and place where you want them to show.

As an added bonus, you no longer need to wait weeks for your ads to go live, like with other advertising platforms, such as static billboards. Digital ads can be ready and shown on digital billboards within 10 minutes. No more waiting for ad companies to manually swap out billboards or posters.

DOOH retargeting can also give you valuable insights and analytics through various digital out-of-home advertising platforms. By tracking consumer interactions with the digital screens, you can gather data on impressions, engagement rates, and conversions. You can use this data to refine your ad campaign and increase conversions over time.

Massive brands like Zoom have used this same omni-channel strategy to generate over 18.5 million ad impressions.

Digital out of home marketing best practices

Want the best return on your ad spend? Try these five DOOH best practices

1. Repurpose Old Creatives
2. Know Your Audience
3. Use Motion in Ad Creatives
4. Create Contextually Relevant Content
5. Combine DOOH With Other Marketing Channels

1. Repurpose old creatives for DOOH

Have you ever run a successful online or physical ad campaign in the past?

You can save time and money by repurposing those ad creatives for your DOOH campaign. Take your existing digital assets, such as images, videos, or even social media campaigns and adapt them for DOOH.

Just be mindful that not every DOOH campaign will use the same ad formats and specs. You may need to adjust your creative according to the digital screen specs. 

The Terraboost digital LCD displays on wellness kiosks have a resolution of 1320 x 2000px. Advertisers will receive templates that make it easy to reformat their ad creatives for this network (which includes major retail locations such as CVS, Walgreens, grocery stores, and more).

Additional tips:

• Use vibrant photos and bold colors in your creative to grab attention
• Keep your message clear, not clever
• Select fonts that can easily be read from a distance

2. Know your audience

This DOOH best practice is obvious, but you’d be surprised by how many people overlook this. Who are you trying to target? The more specific you get, such as income, age, health needs, or lifestyle; the better your placement. 96% of consumers say they’re more likely to act when messaging feels personalized or relevant. 

Terraboost has over 6,000 shopper data points and demographics. For example, if you want to reach married couples with kids who make over $150K, you can target the exact pharmacy and grocery locations in the suburbs where the average household income meets this requirement. 

Or, if you want to reach customers with diabetes, we can identify pharmacies that have higher-than-average levels of diabetes prescriptions. 

You can select a kiosk in a specific geographic location, and customize your messaging for a retail store or city.  For example, you can create an ad that says, “When you’re done with your weekly shop at Albertsons, renew your car insurance next door at Insurance Agency Inc.” Remember, personalization and catering to your audience go a long way.

3. Use motion in ad creatives

Motion can be powerful in DOOH programmatic advertising. Unlike static billboards or posters, DOOH screens allow for dynamic and animated content. Animations or videos can make your ad creatives more memorable and draw more attention.

4. Create contextually relevant content

Think about your audience’s surrounding environment. Then think about what they could be doing before or after they visit a grocery store, pharmacy, or retail location, and what may be on their mind. For example, your shoppers may be visiting a pharmacy and thinking about their family’s health, making them more susceptible to advertising for health and wellness products. 

For added personalization, you can use your customers’ environment to create dynamic, digital content that references:

• Traffic near their location
• Current events
• Current location
• Flight statuses
• Weather 
• And more

5. Combine DOOH with other marketing channels

DOOH by itself can be powerful, but when you toss it into an omnichannel marketing mix (ads and marketing on multiple channels and platforms), you have the potential to earn an even higher return on ad spend (ROAS).

• Here’s an example: When a customer walks near an in-store digital billboard, their phone gets tagged by geofencing software. The advertiser can then later retarget ads to their mobile device. By increasing ad touchpoints, the advertiser is more likely to stay top-of-mind. The more familiarity you build with your customers, the more likely they’ll take action.

How to get the best ROI with DOOH

To get the best returns on your DOOH ad campaign, you’ll need to make full use of all the tools the digital medium offers. 

1. Eye-catching content: The best digital ads are brightly colored and contain a simple format. If you can utilize movement and animation, you’ll be able to garner even more impressions. You’re looking to create a simple image or animation that will turn heads and communicate your brand message in just a few seconds. 
2. Utilize interactive content: Studies have shown that ad campaigns that appeal to one or more of the five senses have a greater chance of succeeding. An eye-catching display paired with a QR code can go a long way to drive meaningful engagement.
3. Reach your target audience: Traditional OOH ads cannot compare to the precise targeting capabilities of programmatic digital ads. DOOH inventory owners collect and send out contextual data like foot traffic, demographics, and weather conditions. For example, a clothing line could advertise swimsuits on a sunny day and raincoats on a rainy one. 

A CPG food product used DOOH ads with all these features and tools including eye-catching, interactive content to reach their target audience. This wellness kiosk digital campaign with Terraboost resulted in 15.9% lift in product sales and 8x ROAS for the company.

Digital Out Of Home Advertising rates with a Terraboost are surprisingly affordable, too.

How to measure the impact of digital out of home advertising

The problem with physical advertising is that it’s more difficult to track compared to digital advertising. For example, let’s say you’re running a campaign on a physical billboard outside a highway. You might be able to track how many cars pass by the billboard but how on earth are you going to track the amount of people that took action after seeing it? It’s difficult to isolate the impacts, especially if you’re running multiple ad campaigns across different channels. With Digital Out Of Home (DOOH), you can get more granular and measure the effectiveness of your overall campaigns.

 

There are 4 ways you can measure a DOOH campaign:

• Brand Study
• Foot Traffic
• Online Conversions
• Match Panel Study

Brand study

A brand health study looks at the overall health of a brand after exposure to DOOH ads. The purpose is to measure brand perception, customer awareness and loyalty.

With a brand health study, you will talk to customers or prospects through in-person interviews or digital surveys. 

In your surveys, you ask a series of questions related to brand perception, awareness, and loyalty. It’s important to survey one group of people who did not see your ads and a second group who have. By comparing the two sets of data, you can see how effective your overall campaign was.

Foot traffic

Foot traffic is the number of people who walk into a store or physical location. Retailers can keep track of foot traffic using infrared sensors and thermal cameras. For example, let’s say you’re launching a DOOH campaign at several different locations. You can see exactly how much foot traffic is being generated at each location. If your retail locations are getting more visits compared to locations where ads aren’t being shown, then you know your campaign is effective. Marketers in automotive, financial services, telecommunications, and QSR use this type of measurement.

These types of campaigns are best for:

• New store openings
• New product launches
• Special in-store promotions
• Tourism or attraction destinations

Online conversions and device ID passbacks

Whenever someone is exposed to a DOOH ad, their device ID is recorded. You can use this device ID to match them with online conversion data.

As a marketer, you can use this type of DOOH measurement to:

• See how many exposed consumers complete an action (purchase, download, sign up)
• Understand how many customers visit your site after seeing the  DOOH ad
• Check in-app metrics for a lift in key activities

Match panel study

A match panel study is when you compare an unexposed area to an exposed area. With DOOH, you can record data on log timestamps, venue type, device locations and screen locations. Then you can look at specific consumer behavior of unexposed vs exposed customers. For example, if exposed customers took 50% more action than unexposed customers, you know your ads are working.

Example of a successful DOOH marketing campaign

To see how DOOH works in practice, let’s look at a recent in-store campaign with Tejava Tea:

Tejava partnered with Terraboost to increase awareness and prompt purchase at select ABSCO supermarkets. The campaign leveraged wellness kiosks placed at store entrances; a high-visibility moment when shoppers are just beginning their shopping trip and are more open to influence.

As shoppers engaged with the kiosk to take a sanitizing wipe, they also saw Tejava’s product messaging front and center, creating both physical interaction and brand impression in one touchpoint.

Key Shopper Insights & Results:

• 87% of shoppers noticed the kiosk display
• 55% of shoppers took a sanitizing wipe, creating a direct engagement moment
• 65% of engaged shoppers were already aware of Tejava
  • Of those, 76% had purchased Tejava before
• 33% of engaged shoppers said the ad made them more likely to purchase Tejava

Additionally, the campaign helped identify brand-switch potential among shoppers currently purchasing other ready-to-drink teas (such as Arizona, Pure Leaf, Gold Peak, Lipton, or Brisk). Shoppers indicated they would be encouraged to switch to Tejava if offered:

• Coupons or promotional savings (40%)
• In-store sampling to try the product first (41%)
• Lower everyday pricing (38%)
• More flavor variety (35%)

Why this worked:

The campaign reached shoppers at the exact moment they were making beverage purchasing decisions. By combining visibility, relevance, and a physical engagement action (taking a wipe), Tejava strengthened brand recall and influenced purchase intent right inside the store.

Outlook for digital out-of-home advertising & marketing

A recent report from Nielsen showed wellness kiosk ads sponsors receive 80% kiosk engagement rate and boost purchase intent by 36%. In addition, these ads boosted consumer brand opinion by 94%. 

Marketing experts have been quick to recognize the effectiveness of DOOH advertising and have been investing heavily into it. As Morrison notes, “OOH is inherently resilient to AI disruption — physical, unmissable, and immune to ad blockers or algorithmic filtering.” Between 2022 and 2030, the DOOH advertising market is expected to grow 13.2% annually and will reach $84.03 billion by 2033. 

DOOH vs OOH

While we’ve discussed the impressive benefits of DOOH marketing campaigns, there are some upsides to traditional non-digital OOH ads. The primary benefit of non-digital ads is that their upfront costs are generally cheaper than their digital counterparts. You may also want to use non-digital ads if your consumer base is composed of senior citizens who are less likely to make use of digital elements like touch screens and QR codes. 

Though digital ads have a higher upfront cost, they can be more cost-effective in the long term. With programmatic DOOH marketing campaigns, you only pay for ad space when the ideal conditions to reach your target audience are met. Alternatively, with non-digital ads, you’ll most likely be renting ad space for four-week periods, meaning that you’ll be paying for days and times when fewer consumers will be viewing your brand.

DOOH vs online advertising

Despite so many people spending hours online every day, the online advertising market is considered to be oversaturated. With pop-up ads appearing on just about every website, consumers have developed a sort of blindness and fatigue towards them. Furthermore, as of Q1 2025, e-commerce accounts for ~16.2% of total retail sales in the U.S, which means the vast majority of purchases still happen in-store.  

Online advertising may be getting ignored by consumers, but OOH ads aren’t. For example, shoppers engage with and appreciate the wellness kiosks and their sponsors, earning an 80% kiosk engagement rate. Customers often make their purchase decisions based on this messaging. 

If you’ve developed an extensive online presence, that doesn’t mean that online advertising is the best path forward. With DOOH ads, you can equip displays with QR codes and other information to direct them back to your online store and other brand information. 

If you’re interested in starting a DOOH or OOH advertising campaign, you can talk to one of our Terraboost agents today to learn about all your options and receive a personalized quote. 

At Terraboost, we are market leaders in out-of-home advertising and our 120,000+ displays are featured in big name stores like Kroger, CVS, and even mall networks like Simon Malls. 

Our innovative approach to OOH and DOOH feature ads on wellness (sanitizing wipe station) kiosks, perfect for in-store advertising. These sanitizing billboards have a proven track record of driving consumer engagement with 80% of shoppers engaging with them and 94% having a positive opinion of the company sponsoring the wellness station.

Ready to drive real results?

Increase the touchpoints you have with your customers and be top-of-mind when they’re ready to buy from you. Advertising on DOOH platforms, such as wellness kiosks, puts your brand and promotions front and center as your customers shop at local malls, grocery stores, pharmacies, fitness centers, and more. 

Unlike other digital out-of-home advertising networks that scatter advertising screens across highways or city centers, Terraboost’s 2,900+ digital screens are positioned at the entrances of over 1,700 leading supermarkets, capturing shoppers’ attention as they head in to make purchase decisions. This purposeful, prime placement ensures your brand reaches consumers in a trusted retail environment and has a stronger impact than passive roadside impressions. 

With Terraboost, advertisers benefit from high visibility and influence at critical moments when shoppers are ready to buy and the credibility that comes from being featured alongside major supermarket partners.

Start with Terraboost’s in-store DOOH marketing solutions and wellness kiosks. We’ll help you stand out, get noticed, and grow your business by driving consumer awareness, consideration, and action. 

Book a brief call with Terraboost to learn more about how digital wellness kiosk advertising can meet your advertising and business goals today.