Out-of-home (OOH) advertising, once considered a broad-brush approach, is undergoing a profound transformation thanks to the strategic integration of Artificial Intelligence. Leading this charge is OneScreen.ai, a company with the explicit aim of making OOH more measurable, accessible, and impactful for brands and agencies alike.
“Since founding OneScreen.ai in 2020, we have been transforming the landscape of out-of-home (OOH) advertising,” states Greg Wise, Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer. “Our data-driven platform streamlines the entire OOH media process for both brands and agencies, standing out by aggregating an immense inventory of over 1.2 million traditional and digital OOH placements across the United States. This vast network enables advertisers to pinpoint and effectively reach their target audiences.”
The AI Engine Behind OOH Success
OneScreen.ai’s core strength lies in its AI-driven insights and a proprietary approach to media planning. Wise elaborates on how AI is woven into the fabric of their platform: “OOH planning traditionally involves sifting through a vast amount of unstructured data, which is where AI and large language models (LLMs) truly excel.” This data encompasses a range of information, including demographic details, people’s movement patterns, contextual neighborhood details, inventory quality, proximity to key Points of Interest (POIs), and traffic chokepoints.
“Our AI engine meticulously analyzes these complex data sets to provide unparalleled market research and analysis,” Wise explains. This granular analysis enables OneScreen.ai to understand the unique characteristics of a location and extract precise data on vehicle and pedestrian traffic. Beyond planning, AI also plays a crucial role in creative optimization. “Another crucial application of our AI is in grading OOH creative,” Wise adds. “The AI scans content to determine optimal creative elements, such as logo placement and the quantity of copywriting, for specific geotargets and audiences, ensuring campaigns are not only well-placed but also highly engaging.”
The inspiration for this AI integration stemmed from a clear need to enhance OOH effectiveness. Wise highlights a significant outcome: “Our AI tool evaluates and scores ad creatives, providing actionable insights to improve their effectiveness. This process has led to 63% of our customers making creative adjustments before final production.” Such recommendations might include repositioning a logo for improved visibility in traffic or condensing copy for greater memorability during brief viewing windows. “While AI is a powerful creative strategy tool in its own right, its true potential is realized when combined with human-driven creative campaigns,” Wise emphasizes. OneScreen.ai leverages AI across the board, including planning and buying, creative optimization, and measurement.
Greg Wise
Supercharging Measurement and Personalization
AI’s impact extends significantly to the often-challenging areas of OOH measurement and attribution. “AI supercharges OOH measurement and attribution by transforming how we understand audience exposure and campaign impact,” Wise states. “Instead of relying on broad estimates, AI leverages unstructured data, such as foot traffic, shopping behaviors, and proximity to key locations, to provide a much more precise picture of who sees an ad and how likely they are to engage.”
For a medium traditionally known for its broad reach, AI is redefining targeting and personalization in OOH. “AI transforms OOH into a data-driven, targeted, and highly personalized advertising channel,” Wise details. This is achieved by:
- Processing Unstructured Data: Analyzing demographics, movement patterns, shopping behaviors, and POIs to identify optimal OOH locations.
- Dynamic Content Optimization (DCO): For digital OOH (DOOH), AI enables real-time creative changes based on triggers like time of day, weather, traffic, or audience demographics, ensuring messages are contextually relevant.
- Programmatic OOH (pDOOH): AI automates the buying and delivery of DOOH ads, allowing advertisers to set audience criteria and bid on placements only when those conditions are met, seamlessly integrating OOH into omnichannel strategies.
The Future of OOH: Intelligent, Dynamic, and Accountable
Wise envisions a future where AI transforms OOH into an “innovative, responsive, and accountable performance channel that seamlessly connects with consumers in the physical world.” This includes:
- Hyper-Personalized Targeting: Pinpointing when and where specific audiences are most receptive.
- Dynamic Content Optimization (DCO): Real-time creative changes on digital screens based on context.
- Enhanced Measurement & Attribution: Linking OOH exposure directly to conversions, proving ROI with data.
- Automated & Programmatic Buying: Streamlining OOH media buys and integrating them with other digital channels.
- Predictive Analytics: Forecasting campaign performance and optimizing budget allocation.
Key AI trends expected to have the biggest impact on OOH include hyper-personalization and contextual relevance, advanced measurement and cross-channel attribution, the expansion into programmatic advertising, and the rise of generative AI for creative purposes. These trends will make OOH more targeted, measurable, efficient, and creatively enhanced.
Overcoming Limitations and Looking Ahead
Despite the immense potential, limitations in AI for OOH still exist. Wise acknowledges challenges such as data privacy and ethical concerns, infrastructure and cost, the “black box” problem of AI predictions, the need for human oversight, and regulatory complexity. OneScreen.ai is actively working to overcome these by focusing on responsible data usage, developing robust and scalable infrastructure, and emphasizing the synergy between AI and human expertise.
Over the next five years, Wise anticipates AI will make advertising “far more efficient, personalized, and measurable.” This includes hyper-personalization at scale, generative AI for diverse ad content, advanced measurement and attribution providing unprecedented ROI clarity, automated campaign management, privacy-compliant targeting, and predictive and prescriptive analytics to anticipate consumer behavior.
OneScreen.ai, under the leadership of Greg Wise, is poised to continue leading this revolution, ensuring that OOH advertising not only keeps pace with the digital world but also reclaims its vital role in connecting with consumers in the real world.
