IAB Australia DOOH Summit: ‘Programmatic out-of-home isn’t that complicated’

Programmatic digital out-of-home is growing rapidly in Australia, but a lingering perception of complexity may be holding it back. At this week’s IAB Australia Powering DOOH Summit in Sydney, industry leaders argued that the technology itself isn’t the problem.

“Programmatic out-of-home is just not that complicated,” Brady Arlt, client development director at WPP Media, told attendees during a panel.

Asked about the biggest barrier preventing programmatic DOOH (pDOOH) from commanding a larger share of media investment, Arlt said traditional out-of-home expertise and programmatic expertise have not always met in the middle.

“We’ve got people who call themselves billboard experts — I’m one of them — but they look at programmatic as being way more complex than it actually is,” he said.

Contributing to this misperception is a knowledge gap. Previous studies from IAB Australia have highlighted fragmented practices as a barrier to adoption and a need for industry education that can help bridge the gap between traditional OOH and digital buyers.

That doesn’t mean media buyers should treat pDOOH like any other digital channel.

“DOOH as a channel is nuanced — it’s a one-to-many medium, and context and environment and creative really matter,” Laura Mayers, lead associate account director at The Trade Desk, said at the event. “But siloing it off in the way that you plan it … is a bit remiss. That’s where you lose the power of programmatic smarts in general.”

Instead, buyers can build a broader audience strategy across DOOH and other channels while still taking into account the nuances of the medium, she said.

IAB Australia’s research suggests agencies are increasingly doing that.  Geo-location targeting, data and targeting capabilities and contextual relevance are the leading reasons agencies choose to buy OOH programmatically. Eight in 10 agencies surveyed now consider pDOOH as part of their overall cross-channel media planning, particularly alongside digital video and social media.

Proving what pDOOH contributes

According to IAB Australia’s newly released Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home State of the Nation 2026 report, 68% of agencies increased their pDOOH investment over the past year, while 74% of advertising decision-makers expect to increase investment over the next 12 months. The share saying pDOOH represents a “significant” part of their activity has also risen, from 17% last year to 27% in 2026.

But as investment grows, the industry still faces another obstacle: proving ROI.

Four in 10 agencies surveyed by IAB Australia cited demonstrating return on investment as the leading barrier to pDOOH taking a greater share of advertising budgets. The industry is also calling for more standardized measurement and greater pricing and inventory transparency.

Mayers said measuring DOOH as part of a broader consumer journey could help demonstrate contributions that last-click attribution can overlook.

“If you’re looking at a performance campaign and you’re looking at sales return, in a last-click world, often those upper [funnel] channels and metrics get dismissed,” she said.

Bringing DOOH into omnichannel measurement can help quantify influences such as building brand equity and memory encoding, and connect them to ROI or brand-impact metrics, she added.

“There is still reluctance because people think [DOOH] is just a big-reach play,” Mayers said. “But you can bring it into your measurement as you would all the other [channels]. It’s a highly addressable channel now.”

Amid an “infinite supply” of content across digital platforms, industry leaders argued that DOOH can also give brands something increasingly valuable: legitimacy.

“Trust is the key piece,” Matt Proud, director of business development at The Trade Desk, said. “For me, DOOH, pDOOH, adds that element of trust and legitimacy to a brand.” 

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