• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, December 24, 2018

Amobee recently announced a partnership with Place Exchange to launch one of the first programmatic marketplaces for out-of-home solutions to a challenging problem.

“It allow us to break into a whole new channel, which is digital out-of-home programmatic,” said Katie Ford, chief client officer at Amobee. “A whole lot of people in the industry have been talking about it.”

This partnership allows marketers real-time bidding as well as a way to plan and execute other digital channels alongside DOOH programmatically on one platform. 

Programmatic offers DOOH the ability to bid in real-time, Ford said.

The fledgling media has room to grow, Ford said. “I’m not saying programmatic digital out-of-home will grow into the high double digits in 2019, but I do see an increase of advertisers taking advantage of the space,” she said. “I believe it will be less of a crawl and more of a skip or run into the space.”

Ford hopes the partnership will create that easy entrance into the space, but does see some challenges in 2019. These include integration with other media to buy an audience rather than channel, scaling to reach a national buy to become locally relevant, and following a standard measurement.

The partnership enables advertisers to buy an audience -- not just a channel -- which seems a little odd when talking about a digital billboard, but Ford said the targeting focuses on “a grid that connects through mobile where we can identify the ID and serve the ad based on location.” For example, the DOOH billboard could be close to a health club.

For the first time, programmatic DOOH will have access to the same workflow, real-time bidding auction capability and the ability to buy transparently, as what’s known as traditional digital advertising for mobile or desktop display and video.

The partnership, which is not exclusive to Place Exchange, allows Amobee to integrate information from any location, demographic, weather or anything based on first-party customer data, specifically for brands in the U.S.

For Place Exchange, Dave Etherington, the company’s chief commercial officer, believes the partnership will allow advertisers to leverage familiar online and mobile capabilities such as hyperlocal targeting, real-time data triggers, dynamic creative execution, and video advertising.