By Brad Palmer, National Director Programmatic, JCDecaux Australia
July marked five years since I joined JCDecaux as the first programmatic employee. Moving from a digital publisher to an Out-of-Home company three months into the COVID pandemic lockdown did raise a few eyebrows at the time. But for me the opportunity was too exciting to pass up and now of course I have no regrets.
Since then, Programmatic Out-of-Home (prDOOH) has shifted from niche to mainstream. While July ad spend across the broader market declined 12.2%, according to Guideline SMI, Out-of-Home has continued to grow. Year-to-date, bookings are up 11.1% – a record for the channel.
Brad Palmer
Hitting my five-year milestone prompted me to reflect on how far prDOOH has come and where it should go next. prDOOH continues to be one of the most rapidly advancing channels in media, driven by innovation and growing buyer confidence. Local investment has grown from just $10 million in 2021 to a projected $100 million by the end of 2025.
Adoption is also accelerating. According to the 2024 VIOOH State of the Nation report, 27% of Australian digital Out-of-Home campaigns already include programmatic, a figure expected to rise to 35% within 18 months. Australian marketers are embracing prDOOH for its targeting precision, flexibility, and sustainability credentials. Early omnichannel campaigns like Tourism Tasmania’s Off Season have raised the bar, winning international awards for their dynamic, data-driven approach.
At JCDecaux, we’ve seen that growth firsthand. Since 2021, we’ve worked with more than 1,100 programmatic advertisers, and in 2025 alone, we expect to deliver over 1.5 billion impressions. We’ve also invested in market education publishing The Definitive Guide to Programmatic Out-of-Home Success. To support and build buyer capability we work with the IAB DOOH Council on consistent education, events, and shared standards, all crucial for turning curiosity into confidence and scale.
And as the sector matures, celebrating best practice becomes more important than ever. So we launched Programmatic Campaign of the Year Award – about to enter its third year – designed to showcase the most innovative and effective programmatic campaigns in the market and inspire what’s next.
But let’s be honest, we’re not there yet. The realist in me knows that not everything in the prDOOH bubble is perfect. Like many maturing channels, prDOOH in Australia still faces growing pains from limited buyer education and inconsistent programmatic narratives, to under-resourced agencies, slow tech developments and concerns around commoditisation.
That’s why the current 8% share of digital Out-of-Home revenues traded programmatically in Australia is only scratching the surface of what’s possible. Other JCDecaux global markets are already achieving 20-40% of DOOH revenues being traded programmatically. Germany even surpassed direct IO in revenue in 2024. The competitor in me sees this as a massive opportunity, and one that is not insurmountable.
If Australia sets its sights on a 40% programmatic share by 2030, that $100M becomes a significant $500M opportunity. Here are five shifts that need to happen to get us there.
1 SELL – Sales teams must sell programmatically not just traditional IO: The 2025 IAB Australia Attitudes to DOOH survey revealed that 81 percent of agencies are planning traditional and programmatic in the same team. Out-of-Home sales teams need to follow suit. We must equip Out-of-Home sales professionals to speak both languages fluently.
2 BUY – Agencies must converge tools and talent: AI, automation, and DSPs are changing media workflows. By 2030, agencies must combine their Out-of-Home expertise with programmatic buying inside DSPs, blending the art of planning with the science of data.
3 PREDICT – MOVE2 delivers Programmatic reach and frequency reporting: MOVE evolves to provide deduplicated reach and frequency metrics across both direct and programmatic campaigns. Marketers need comparable, trustworthy audience data to plan and measure effectively.
4 CREATE – 1 in 4 campaigns must embrace creative and contextual relevance: After a slow start, Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) will become standard across a quarter of campaigns. JCDecaux’s recent research on creative effectiveness with System1 shows that up to 50% of the campaign impact is driven by creative. Contextual signals including location, format, weather, and time of day must power prDOOH ads to make the most of their two-second window to drive emotion and recall.
5 MEASURE – attribution must be simple, credible and ‘always on’: To compete with digital channels, prDOOH must match digital expectations for measurement. In-platform attribution for footfall, site visits and marketing mix modelling connectivity must be table stakes. That immediacy of reporting is what enables the true power of programmatic: agility, outcomes and accountability.
And one more thing. Sustainability must be embedded. JCDecaux is already leading here, launching Scope3-enabled low-emission prDOOH networks. These packages allow brands to reduce their emissions by up to 53% without compromising performance. If prDOOH is to be future proof we must continue to integrate sustainability into planning, trading, and measurement.
So, there it is, the $500M prDOOH blueprint. The challenge has been set. The industry must unite across SELL, BUY, PREDICT, CREATE and MEASURE and embed sustainability at every step. We have everything we need to make Australia a global leader. But without industry collaboration and unity, there’s a chance that the most advanced DOOH market in the world could end up being the great prDOOH underachiever.