UK What DOOH means
DOOH, or digital out-of-home, is advertising shown on digital screens in places people pass through outside the home: roadsides, railway and bus stations, airports, shopping centres, shops, gyms and surgeries. It is the digital part of out-of-home (OOH) media, which also covers printed billboards, posters and bus sides.
A DOOH screen is owned by a media owner, who sells its airtime to advertisers. Each screen plays a loop of adverts, and several brands usually share that loop, each getting a fixed slot length and a share of plays. The schedule is sent to the screen over a network, so a new campaign can go live across hundreds of sites without anyone visiting them.
In the UK the OOH industry’s trade body is Outsmart, and audiences are measured by Route. In the US the equivalents are the OAAA and Geopath. Their audience figures are what turn a play on a screen into a number of impressions that an advertiser can buy.
OOH vs DOOH
Both reach people in the same public places. The difference is how the advert gets onto the site and what can be done with it once it is live.
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Changing the creative. A printed poster needs printing and a site visit to change. A DOOH advert is a file that is scheduled remotely and can change in minutes.
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Sharing the site. A paper billboard usually shows one brand for a fixed period. A digital screen rotates several adverts in a loop, so one site carries several campaigns at once.
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Timing and context. DOOH can run different creative by time of day, day of week, weather or live data such as travel updates or sports scores.
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Motion and interaction. Screens can show video and animation, and some add touch, QR codes or a link to a phone.
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Buying and reporting. DOOH can be bought programmatically as well as directly, and each play is logged, which gives faster delivery reports than a static poster.
Where DOOH screens are found
DOOH formats are usually grouped by where the screen is and how long people spend near it. The location also decides the hardware: a roadside screen in full sun needs several times the brightness of a screen in a shopping centre.
| Format | Typical locations | Usual screen | Typical brightness | Hardware notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roadside large format | Main roads, city centres, building walls | Direct-view LED panels | Often 5,000 nits or more by day, dimmed at night | Weatherproof cabinets, light sensors, remote monitoring |
| Street furniture and transit | Bus shelters, platforms, concourses, taxis | LCD in a sealed enclosure, often 75–86″ | Around 2,500 nits or more outdoors | Cooling, vandal-resistant glass, wide temperature |
| Shopping centres and airports | Shopping centres, terminals, lifts | Portrait LCD totems and video walls | Around 500–700 nits indoors | Synchronised players, 4K content |
| Retail and point of purchase | Shop windows, aisles, shelf edges, checkouts | LCD, stretched bar displays, window screens | 350–700 nits inside, 2,500 nits or more in windows | Compact players, links to stock and price data |
| Place-based venues | Gyms, surgeries, offices, campuses, forecourts | LCD, typically 43–55″ | Around 350–500 nits | Low-power players, long daily hours |
Figures are typical for each format, not limits. Outdoor LCDs pair high brightness with low reflection and usually optical bonding, which is what our sunlight readable monitors are built around, with large format models up to 55″ at 2,500 nits. Shelf-edge and aisle formats often use stretched displays, bar-type LCDs such as 1920 × 540 that fit where a 16:9 screen will not.
How a DOOH screen network works
Behind every DOOH screen sits the same chain of digital signage hardware and software. The media owner runs an ad server or content management system that builds each screen’s playlist. A media player at the screen downloads that playlist and the creative files, stores them locally and plays them in order, so a short network outage does not leave the screen blank.
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The media player. A small computer behind or inside the screen. Our digital signage players range from fanless Intel N97 players with dual 4K HDMI to quad HDMI players that drive several screens from one box.
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Slot-in modules. Many large commercial displays take a plug-in computer, so the player sits inside the screen. OPS computers are the common standard for this.
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Proof of play. The player logs every advert it shows, with the time and screen ID. Those logs are the record the media owner bills against.
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Connectivity. Wired Ethernet where it exists, otherwise 4G or 5G, which is common on roadside and street furniture sites.
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Remote management. A dark screen earns nothing, so networks monitor every player and restart it remotely. Out-of-band management can recover a player even when its operating system has hung.
How DOOH campaigns are measured
Online adverts count one impression per device. A DOOH screen is seen by many people at once, so the industry measures it differently. Route and Geopath model how many people pass each site and how likely they are to see the screen, and that estimate is applied to every play. One play can therefore count as several impressions.
On top of the audience model, campaigns are judged on proof-of-play logs, brand lift surveys, and footfall studies that compare store visits from aggregated mobile location data. Some networks add camera-based people counting at the screen, processed on the player so that only anonymous counts leave the site. Because none of this needs personal identifiers, DOOH is generally seen as a privacy-safe channel, although cameras in public places still have to meet UK GDPR or local privacy law.
Buying DOOH: direct and programmatic
DOOH is sold in two main ways. A direct buy books specific screens or packages from a media owner for a set period at an agreed rate. A programmatic buy uses software platforms to buy plays automatically, often with rules about time, place or audience, and it can sit in the same campaign as online display and video. Many campaigns use both: direct for guaranteed presence on landmark sites, programmatic for flexible reach across a network.
Quick answers on DOOH
DOOH: common questions
What does DOOH stand for?
Digital out-of-home. Out-of-home is any advertising seen outside the home, and digital means it runs on networked screens rather than printed media.
Is DOOH the same as digital signage?
No, but it runs on it. Digital signage is the screens, players and software. DOOH is the paid advertising that media owners sell on some of those screens. A menu board or a departure screen is digital signage without being DOOH.
What are examples of DOOH?
Digital billboards, bus shelter and station screens, shopping centre totems, airport displays, in-store and window screens, and screens in gyms, surgeries and forecourts.
Is DOOH privacy-safe?
Generally, yes. Planning and measurement use aggregated audience data rather than personal identifiers. Any camera-based counting should be anonymous and processed on the device.
How is DOOH priced?
Usually per thousand impressions or per package of plays. Rates depend on format, location, time of day, share of the loop and whether the buy is direct or programmatic.
We supply the players, OPS modules and high-brightness displays for DOOH and digital signage networks, and image and test every player with the network’s software as standard before it ships.