Out-of-home advertising is reshaping itself around AI, dynamic creative, and collaborative landlords
The out-of-home industry is capturing attention as digital marketing fractures. With AI answering user questions in a single click, brands are abandoning lower-funnel performance marketing and returning to the upper funnel - where out-of-home excels.
Barry Frey, president and CEO of the Digital Place Based Advertising Association, laid out the shift at the DPAA Town Hall in London: "When you want to get something, now you go to AI, you're having one click. You're not clicking all around. That will hurt Google's business and a lot of the internet business."
Physical fatigue is driving the change too. After years on screens, consumers are shopping in person and attending live events. They want human connection. And they trust what they see in the physical world more than what appears online.
Landlords are becoming partners, not just rent-takers
Transport for London operates an advertising estate that reaches five million journeys a day. Rather than extract maximum rent, TfL has shifted toward collaboration with brands.
Chris Reader, head of commercial media at TfL, said the organization now asks: "Where to focus, where to invest?" instead of simply maximizing contracts. Historical deals - a £25 million Barclays cycle hire sponsorship and a £36 million Emirates cable car deal - proved public transport could be lucrative for both parties.
But TfL learned hard lessons. A Burberry takeover of Bond Street station during Fashion Week confused customers because the brand used TfL's iconic blue instead of tartan. Harriet McDonald, part of TfL's commercial partners team, offered blunt advice: "Don't do a station rename unless it makes absolutely perfect sense to a customer and is clever and simple to understand."
She drew a sharp distinction between what TfL does and traditional media buying. When Sony transformed Oxford Circus station's roundels into PlayStation controller shapes for the PS5 launch, it generated global PR and social media buzz. That's a stunt, not an ad. "The brief needs a packshot and call to action stuff. You can't crowbar one thing into another," McDonald said.
Dynamic creative remains almost entirely unused
The disconnect between OOH technology and how it's actually used is stark. Just over 1% of digital out-of-home screen output uses dynamic creative, according to Ben Gardiner, chief client officer at Grand Visual.
Andrew Newman, founder and CEO of DOOH.com, explained the opportunity: programmatic OOH isn't just about pushing multiple pieces of creative - it's about triggering the media buy at the exact right moment using live data.
TfL tested this with a campaign aimed at nudging drivers out of their cars. Using live traffic congestion data from the TfL Roads Traffic API, the campaign served contextually relevant creative to drivers stuck in jams, suggesting they read a book on the tube instead.
McDonald's work by Grand Visual showed what context can achieve: contextually relevant content drove a 15% average uplift in engagement. "We have this real step change moment where I think the norm of programmatic is genuinely the most exciting landmark moment in the industry since probably the first digital screen started getting ground in 2004-2005," Gardiner said.
To make dynamic creative standard, media owners need to offer it as a frictionless capability. Newman described the goal: "an AI precision loop where your campaign is constantly enhancing itself."
Brands see AI solving a production problem
Rather than fear AI, brands recognize it solves a structural problem: they need more assets than ever before. Rob Edwards, head of media and digital for Arla Foods, explained the math.
Top-of-funnel work remains highly crafted by humans because it builds brand. But bottom-funnel work - location-specific, moment-driven assets that drive retail conversion - requires volume that traditional production can't supply. "Maybe AI can fill that hole," Edwards said.
The division of labor is clear: humans handle the creative platform; AI handles the volume. "Maybe the AI opportunity is to create a volume of assets that are guarded well, protected well based on your brand requirements, and then delivered into the most appropriate time," Edwards said.
His message to the OOH industry was direct: simplify buying. "We need to make the out-of-home industry needs to make buying more frictionless." In a world increasingly saturated with digital noise, physical presence is OOH's greatest asset - but only if the industry makes it as easy to buy and as dynamic to use as its digital counterparts.
For creative professionals, this moment demands new skills. Understanding how to work with AI design tools and generative art techniques will become essential as dynamic creative optimization becomes the norm rather than the exception.
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