Programmatic DOOH digest: the reports read together

Three recurring reports drive most of what the industry knows about programmatic DOOH — and they’re more useful read together than apart. This digest pulls the latest from VIOOH, Place Exchange and WOO/PwC into one sourced view, with the beauty takeaway.

Sentiment vs reality

The trick with the programmatic DOOH reports is that they measure different things — and conflating them is how people over-read the channel. There are two distinct signals:

Intent / sentiment — what buyers say they’ll do. VIOOH’s recurring State of the Nation survey (~1,050 advertisers and agencies) is the barometer here, and it consistently reads bullish: respondents plan to keep raising programmatic DOOH investment, with a large projected uplift (VIOOH — directional; attitudinal survey, consistently optimistic by nature).
Transacted reality — what actually clears. Place Exchange’s trends reports are the closest to hard data: a blended CPM around $7.62 and ~95–96% of spend on private deals (Place Exchange — primary, single-SSP).

Read together: buyers intend to spend more, and what they do spend runs overwhelmingly through curated private deals, not the open exchange. Intent is leading; the plumbing buyers actually use is the PMP.

The global frame

Sizing the whole thing, WOO/PwC’s aggregated figure — ~$1.4B, ~7% of DOOH globally — is the most rigorous and the most humble, flagged by its own publisher as likely under-reporting, with “the majority of the opportunity still ahead” (WOO/PwC — primary). Set against ~30% US (OAAA) and ~15% on a forecaster basis (MAGNA), the spread is geography and method. The consistent read across all three: a rising minority, US-led, mostly unbuilt.

The beauty takeaway

For a beauty buyer or network, the digest collapses to three instructions, all consistent with the evergreen detail:

Believe the direction, not the sentiment number. Programmatic DOOH is rising — but VIOOH’s uplift figures are stated intent, so plan on the trend, not the percentage.
Buy on a PMP. With ~95–96% of spend on private deals, the curated private deal is where premium salon inventory transacts — not the open exchange.
Don’t extract a beauty CPM. The $7.62 blend is cross-venue; no beauty rate is published.

The synthesis hasn’t changed in a while, which is itself the signal: intent bullish, transacted spend private-deal-heavy, the category early. For beauty, that means wire up programmatic now and sell direct in the meantime — the adoption curve is climbing, just not vertically.