How to Measure Your DOOH Campaign: Metrics, Methods, and Tips

Out-of-home (OOH) advertising—with its eye-catching visuals, prominent ad placements in high-traffic areas, and broad audience reach—has long been considered one of the most powerful and cost-effective methods for boosting brand recognition and engagement in public places.

There’s just one problem: historically, measuring the effectiveness of campaigns has been nearly impossible.

For years, advertisers were forced to make do with rough estimates and inconsistent reporting methods to understand and measure the impact of OOH campaigns.

Now, digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is helping to change that, providing marketers with more meaningful insights thanks to technological advancements, real-time data, and improved audience targeting and location tracking.

Read on to learn the metrics, methods, and best practices you need to know to measure the success of your DOOH ads and drive performance.

Metrics and KPIs in DOOH Advertising

The digitization of OOH advertising has made it easier for advertisers to not only swap out creatives and adjust campaigns on the fly, but also measure their impact with many of the same metrics and KPIs used for evaluating the effectiveness of modern digital advertising.

Here are a few of the most important metrics and KPIs to keep an eye on as part of your DOOH campaigns.

Impressions and Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)

Impressions refer to the number of times an audience sees an ad. Unlike digital ads that track individual user interactions, DOOH operates as a one-to-many channel. This means a single ad can be viewed by multiple people simultaneously in a public space, which makes accurately measuring viewership a bit more challenging.

To estimate the number of times an ad is seen, DOOH uses an impression multiplier. This method uses cameras, sensors, and location data from 3rd-party partnerships to more accurately estimate and determine a DOOH ad’s viewership and reach.

Another important metric in DOOH measurement is the CPM (or cost per mille—the word mille is Latin for thousand), which is used during campaign planning and optimization to ensure your advertising budget is used efficiently.

The impression multiplier plays a key role in this process. Without it, CPMs would shift throughout the day due to changes in the number of people passing by a screen at different times in a specific location. For example, an ad displayed outside a subway station entrance might see higher audience numbers during morning and evening rush hours compared to midday commutes, affecting cost estimates. Instead, the impression multiplier accounts for these variations and provides more accurate CPM calculations to advertisers, helping them budget, manage, and evaluate their campaigns more effectively.

Dwell Time

Dwell time measures the average length of time people spend looking at your DOOH ads. It’s calculated using sensors, cameras, anonymized mobile device location data, and even eye-tracking technology to know how long someone remains in the viewing area of a specific DOOH display. 

Dwell time is important for understanding if your ad creatives and messaging capture an audience’s attention. For example, a higher dwell time may mean that a DOOH ad is more engaging than one with a lower dwell time. 

That said, it’s important to have context. For example, interactive ads or ads shown on the side of bus shelters where people naturally spend more time may have longer dwell times than digital billboards next to a highway or at the intersection of a pedestrian crossing.

To increase dwell times, advertisers should focus on creating compelling ads (here are some DOOH ad examples and best practices to help you optimize your campaigns) and place them in contextually relevant environments tailored to their target audience.

In addition to the above metrics and KPIs, advertisers can also track the reach (the amount of people who see an ad), frequency (the average number of times a person sees an ad), the loop frequency (the number of times an ad plays within a single loop, which helps advertisers determine how often their ad is shown, the potential for repeated exposure, and whether or not they should purchase additional slots to increase ad visibility), and return on ad spend (or ROAS), which measures the revenue generated for every dollar spent on DOOH advertising.

How to Measure the Success of DOOH Advertising

Knowing how many people saw your DOOH ad is one thing. But understanding the impact it had on driving results for your brand is even more important.

Unlike traditional OOH advertising, DOOH can use data from location partners, surveys, and QR codes to link ad exposures to conversions and understand the impact DOOH campaigns have on driving business results.

Here are a few ways to measure the success of your DOOH campaigns and how to use those insights to drive customers further down the funnel. 

Brand Lift Studies

In a brand lift study, a group exposed to a DOOH ad (those who have seen a DOOH ad) and a control group (those who haven’t) are surveyed, and their responses are compared. The difference between these groups is then analyzed to understand the “lift” generated by the DOOH campaign.

Brand lift studies are particularly valuable at the top of the funnel for measuring important brand metrics and KPIs like ad recall, awareness, consideration, and purchase intent as part of product launches, seasonal promotions, and rebranding campaigns.

For example, UK-based agency MOBSTA partnered with StackAdapt on a DOOH campaign for their client Michael Kors Jewelry, targeting shoppers in Hamburg and Berlin. The campaign generated over 14 million impressions, and using StackAdapt Brand Lift, they were able to accurately measure and verify an increase in brand awareness of 13% and 39% for their client during the busy holiday shopping season.

Footfall Attribution Studies

If the goal of your DOOH campaign is to drive a particular in-person action, like visiting a nearby store, going to a restaurant, travelling to a specific destination, or attending an event, advertisers can use a footfall attribution study.

When mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) are collected by a privacy-aware data location partner near where a DOOH ad is being served, that information is shared with the demand-side platform (DSP) used for the campaign to link DOOH ad exposure to estimated visits to a location.

For example, Adsquare enables StackAdapt clients to set up footfall studies directly in the platform. Instead of strictly relying on physical addresses, marketers can use custom radiuses and polygons to fine-tune their geographic parameters and capture more specific data. Speak with our team to learn more about StackAdapt Footfall Attribution.

In addition to the above studies, advertisers can also measure the effectiveness of their DOOH campaigns by tying online conversions, app downloads, and increases in sales by using QR codes, campaign-specific URLs, and sales lift studies, which provide additional insights into how DOOH exposure influences consumer actions online and in-store.

Using DOOH Measurement to Drive Further Success Down the Funnel

Programmatic advertising has transformed DOOH—with its granular targeting and advanced measurement capabilities—from a traditional awareness tool into a strategic channel that helps drive performance further down the funnel.

Now, advertisers can collect users exposed to their DOOH ads and retarget them on other programmatic channels with DOOH retargeting as part of their bottom-funnel strategies.

The DSP can then create cross-device segments of exposed users to enable DOOH retargeting across other channels—like native, display, video, CTV, audio, and in-game—and move users further down the funnel.

The Future of DOOH Advertising Measurement

DOOH continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

In the future, expect AI to play a crucial role in this transformation—as it does with everything in digital marketing—and improve DOOH planning, forecasting, and reporting by offering real-time, accurate audience measurement and behaviour updates, modelling metrics with higher precision, and enabling more personalized and contextually relevant ad placements.

Ready to improve your DOOH measurement and campaign performance? Request a demo.