Programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) is moving further into the mainstream of agency media planning, with three in four agencies expecting investment in the channel to increase over the next 12 months.
The finding comes from the IAB Australia Programmatic Digital Out-of-Home State of the Nation 2026 Report, which surveyed 163 advertising decision-makers from agencies involved in out-of-home advertising.
IAB Australia CEO Gai Le Roy described the change as moving from “explain it to me” to “prove it to me”.
“Agencies have largely settled what programmatic out-of-home is and where it fits. What they want now is evidence of what it returns, how the tech is adding value, and how it works effectively alongside other digital inventory,” Le Roy said.
The report found agencies are increasingly demanding greater transparency from pDOOH platforms and suppliers, particularly around inventory quality, impression delivery and campaign reporting.
This includes visibility over campaign pacing and spend delivery, supply paths and non-working media costs, screen availability and win rates, as well as proof of delivery and proof of posting.
Buyers are also calling for greater consistency in audience, reach and frequency metrics, alongside a more standardised approach to counting impressions across vendors.
However, proving return on investment remains the biggest hurdle.
ROI was cited by 42 per cent of respondents as the biggest barrier preventing pDOOH from securing a larger share of advertising budgets.
Audience measurement followed at 23 per cent, while understanding cost versus benefit, understanding the channel’s role and capabilities within the broader media mix, and ad effectiveness measurement were each cited by 22 per cent.
The findings suggest agencies are increasingly treating pDOOH like other digital channels, with expectations around accountability, measurement and performance rising alongside investment.
Eighty-two per cent of agencies now factor pDOOH into their overall cross-channel media planning, while 65 per cent plan and buy it alongside other programmatic channels.
The channel is most commonly planned alongside digital video, at 86 per cent, followed by social media and connected TV, both at 83 per cent.
Retail media, however, remains something of an outlier, with just 59 per cent of agencies pairing it with pDOOH.
That is notable given retail is the advertiser category most agencies have planned or bought pDOOH campaigns for over the past 12 months.
“Programmatic out-of-home is well placed to take a larger share of digital budgets, and agencies are already planning it alongside video, social and connected TV,” Le Roy said.
“Retail media is something of an outlier here — in a market where so much retail media sits on screens, there’s an interesting opportunity for closer cross-media planning.”
Retail, FMCG and government/public sector were the leading advertiser categories using pDOOH over the past year.
While agencies are already using pDOOH effectively to control where and when advertising appears, the report found there is significant room to make greater use of the technology’s capabilities.
Geo-location is used by 88 per cent of agencies, while 70 per cent use day-part targeting.
However, dynamic creative optimisation is used by just 45 per cent, brand first-party data by 39 per cent and cross-channel frequency management by 39 per cent.
Agencies indicated they want this to change, with demand growing for smarter automation, creative optimised around context and technology capable of predicting business outcomes.
The way agencies measure pDOOH is also evolving.
Digital brand lift increased in importance from 52 per cent to 60 per cent year on year, although impressions delivered remains the most commonly used measurement metric at 76 per cent.
Contextual relevance of a screen’s environment recorded the biggest increase among purchase drivers, rising 20 percentage points to 79 per cent.
At the same time, agencies are becoming less certain about how Australia’s evolving privacy laws could affect DOOH.
Forty-three per cent of respondents said they were unsure about the impact of Australian privacy legislation reforms on DOOH, up from 21 per cent last year.
The report attributed the increased uncertainty to delays around Tranche 2 privacy reforms, alongside new determinations and guidance from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
