Last week the Digital Place-Based Advertising Association (DPAA) released its new digital out-of-home (DOOH) programmatic standards. Produced in coordination with Prohaska Consulting, these standards will govern transactions made among buyers, sellers, individual brands, and the advertising technology community. For groups and associations considering advertising in outdoor spaces, these standards promise to create additional opportunities to target consumers.

So, what exactly is programmatic advertising and what makes it so attractive? Essentially, as advertising becomes programmatic, software replaces humans during the buying and selling transactions of digital ads. The benefits include increased efficiency, targeting capabilities, speed of transaction, and ROI.

Additionally, according to DPAA President and CEO Barry Frey, the group’s annual survey of media planners shows that the availability of programmatic capabilities in DOOH advertising will lead to increased media spending.

“These standards put DOOH in a leading position for programmatic adoption, providing exciting opportunities and enabling broad-based compliance that even television and radio have not yet achieved,” Frey said in a news release.

And, it appears that collaboration among partners played a role in making this possible. The Outdoor Advertising Association of America and Interactive Advertising Bureau, as well as several demand-side platforms and media owners, reviewed the standards and provided feedback.

To begin the introduction of programmatic into the world of outdoor advertising, DPAA formed three committees—tech specs, creative specs, and measurement—in March 2016. The tech committee was put in charge of creating DOOH-specific standards for the process of how programmatic buys are handled, and the creative committee put together a set of creative standards permitting advertisers to publish ads across most DOOH networks with just one set of creative assets.

Now that the tech and creative specs have been finalized, the measurement committee will work with DPAA partners to determine how the results of programmatic transactions can be integrated with other outcomes that are being measured in DOOH buy.

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