Out-of-Home Just Got Its First Real Global Number for Programmatic Spend

The out-of-home industry has finally put a credible global number on programmatic digital billboards. The World Out of Home Organisation, working with PricewaterhouseCoopers and 11 supply-side platforms, found programmatic digital out-of-home generated around $1.4 billion globally in 2025. That is roughly 7% of all digital out-of-home spend.

The way it was measured is the point. Eleven major platforms, including Broadsign, Hivestack, Vistar Media and VIOOH, submitted data confidentially to PwC, which aggregated it independently. For a channel that has long run on estimates and vendor claims, this is the first standardised, independently validated benchmark.

One number inside it is worth sitting with. Out-of-home specific demand-side platforms drove 65.5% of the spend, while omni-channel platforms like The Trade Desk and Google DV360 drove the other 34.5%. The mainstream digital buyers are moving into the channel.

You cannot manage what you cannot measure, and that has held digital billboards back for years. A credible global figure changes how the channel gets bought and budgeted. When mainstream programmatic buyers can fold digital out-of-home into the same plans and the same measurement as everything else, the money follows.

That 7% is the tell. Programmatic is still a small slice of out-of-home, which means most of the channel is still bought the old manual way. A small share growing off a new measurement standard is exactly the kind of trend line that gets steep.

Out-of-home spent years as the channel everyone trusted and nobody could measure. The share is small today. The point is that an honest, independent number now exists at all. Give it a real number and the buyers who like real numbers start paying attention.