• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, August 6, 2024

Advertisers got a break on the cost of running programmatic out of home (OOH) ads during the first half of 2024, compared with the second half of 2023.

The Place Exchange Programmatic OOH Trends report shows overall CPMs fell slightly to $7.16 during the first half of 2024, compared with $7.24 in the second half of 2023.

The report, released Tuesday, provides a snapshot of select U.S. programmatic OOH spending patterns based on the transactions through its platform.

The data analyzes delivery across billions of programmatic OOH impressions, comparing first-half 2024 with data from second-half 2023.

Education, Transit, and Outdoor CPMs slightly rose in price in the first half of 2024, compared with the second half in 2023. For example, Education rose to $8.50 from $7.79; and Transit to $6.83 from $6.40, respectively.

Most other categories fell slightly. Point of Care and Health and Beauty fell the most to $6.28 in first-half 2024 from $7.03 in second-half 2023, according to data released Tuesday.

The fastest-growing categories were Automotive, Shopping, Home/Garden, Tech/Computing, and Style/Fashion.

Place Exchange CEO Ari Buchalter expects to see continued spend in the automotive category mainly because OOH offers advanced targeting capabilities, dynamic creative, and the ability to measure lift in brand awareness.

Billboards remained the single largest asset category in terms of the amount spent, at 41%. Outdoor media such as billboards and street furniture remained the largest venue category, with 60% of spend. Retail followed with 13%, transit at 9%, and entertainment at 8%.

The number of programmatic OOH screens rose by 17%, driven mainly by deployments at entertainment, retail, transit, and healthcare locations.

Video continued to represent a material portion of programmatic OOH spending, comprising 43% of spend on video-enabled screens.

Programmatic video OOH rose in share to 24% in H1 2024 across all screens from 21% in H2 2023. OOH video-enabled screens accounted for more than 40% of H1 2024 spend. Fifteen-second video ads were the most common length, representing 71% of all spend in this category.

In H2 2023, 10-second and 6-second video ads rose in share, and 30-second and 8-second ads declined in share.

The study suggests that programmatic OOH buyers continue to prefer to buy ads through private marketplace deals (PMPs). This includes Always-on PMPs, Custom PMPs, and Programmatic Guaranteed deals, which collectively represent 93% of spend in H1 2024.

Private deals are preferred compared with open auction.