The outdoor advertising market begins to recoup its losses after a difficult 2020.

Also in France, planning and buying agency Kinetic is collaborating with Hivestack, a DOOH ad tech provider, to facilitate the programmatic buying of outdoor ads. Axel Springer—the largest digital publisher in Europe—has launched Framen, a DOOH marketplace platform, in the UK. (Axel Springer is Insider Intelligence’s parent company.)

With COVID-19 putting pressure on media budgets, advertisers are figuring out how to realign their OOH strategies.

But most outdoor ads are still static

US advertisers increased their investments on digital media by almost 15% last year despite a pandemic and recession, looking for flexibility and accountability.

In China, out-of-home (OOH) was among the hardest-hit ad formats last year. Though spending on outdoor ads will start returning to normal this year, where and how brands deploy them may be anything but ordinary in a post-pandemic China.

While programmatic buying makes it easier for ad campaigns to be adjusted on the fly, the way data is used for targeting digital outdoor ads differs from how users are targeted online. OOH is still a one-to-many medium, so it doesn’t offer one-to-one targeting like online advertising. In OOH, a campaign can be set so that inventory is programmatically purchased whenever certain conditions are met.

Outdoor Industry Association. Pew Research Center. Roblox. RoosterMoney. SellCell. Smarty Pants. The Genius of Play. The Harris Poll. The NPD Group. YouGov.

And even now in the current abnormal environment, OOH ads are playing a key role in public service messaging, with major OOH industry players, including Clear Channel Outdoor, JCDecaux, ReachTV, Uber and the OAAA, donating ad space.

The “Grateful Britain” campaign used media space donated by numerous property owners (blowUP media, Clear Channel, JCDecaux, Mass Media, Maxx Media, Ocean Outdoor and UKBillboards). It also targeted those UK consumers who made up the low percentages of physical footfall around OOH sites.

Still, this outdoor advertising growth may be limited in times of economic pressure: When ad budgets are tight, advertisers are more likely to rely on direct-response ads over longer-term brand-building ads, the latter of which make up the majority of OOH ads.