As Programmatic OOH Platforms Consolidate, Flexibility Is Driving More Tech-Agnostic Approaches

Consolidation is picking up speed across the programmatic OOH ecosystem as ad tech platforms acquire their way toward end-to-end stacks. The goal is to make a fragmented market easier to navigate, but what’s emerging is more nuanced. Bringing more capabilities under one roof doesn’t always remove complexity, and it changes how buyers experience it. As platforms become more tightly integrated, questions around flexibility, interoperability, and competition are moving to the forefront. At the same time, the core challenges in digital out-of-home, like audience delivery, data, and measurement, still depend on localized execution, and those pieces don’t fully translate through software alone.

Alex Grieves, Global Head of Programmatic at billups, focuses on the operational realities of buying programmatic DOOH. His background spans digital and physical media, starting in display and video at Xaxis before moving into out-of-home roles at Kinetic and GroupM Nexus. Cross-channel experience shapes his data-led approach grounded in an understanding of how the physical medium behaves. At billups, Grieves is responsible for scaling a global programmatic OOH solution that combines custom data with high-touch service to coordinate complex, multi-market campaigns. His perspective favors a tech-agnostic, client-first approach, with a focus on outcomes over the number of integrations in play.

"The best programmatic OOH solution isn't built on the most integrations. It's built on picking the right tools, for the right objective, every time," says Grieves. From that perspective, tech is evaluated on utility, not scale. Expanding access to more platforms can introduce unnecessary complexity, making it harder to stay focused on campaign objectives. Recent consolidation efforts across major players reflect this push toward unified systems, but they also concentrate more decision-making within a smaller set of platforms. For larger buyers, this concentration can introduce new tradeoffs, particularly around pricing and access to inventory. "It all comes down to capabilities, what you require and what you are trying to do," Grieves explains. "As much as one DSP and one SSP would make integration very easy, we would actually see fewer available impressions on media plans because prices would naturally be higher."

• (Weird) knowledge is power: As access to inventory becomes more standardized, differentiation moves elsewhere. For many specialized agencies, the advantage comes from how campaigns are executed, how data is applied, and how well teams understand the medium itself. In DOOH, that means connecting digital tools to physical environments, where performance can vary down to the individual panel. Some generalist buyers find that familiar digital frameworks don’t always translate cleanly into that context. "It takes experience to know exactly why a specific panel or strategy works, and out-of-home people have that 'weird knowledge,'" Grieves notes. "Programmatic DOOH is in its own area where it's not traditional out-of-home, but it's also not standard programmatic. It sits in a middle ground, meaning a programmatic buyer without out-of-home experience won't understand it, and vice versa."

• Agnostic by design: To address that complexity, billups takes a more flexible approach to programmatic DOOH. Rather than relying on a single platform, Grieves’ team builds campaigns that combine planning, reporting, verification, measurement, and inventory into a coordinated solution. That flexibility extends to how platforms are selected. The team works across multiple DSPs - point solutions or omnichannel, choosing based on specific campaign objectives such as footfall or audience targeting, and applies the same logic to SSPs, data sources, and measurement partners. "We're agnostic. We don't mind what DSP or SSP you use," Grieves says. "We're going to use the one that gets us the best price, the most impressions. We take that approach with measurement and data. As long as it's feasible and statistically relevant, it's good. You can use any of our roster of data partners."

Scaling that expertise introduces another layer of complexity, particularly across markets. What works in one region doesn’t always translate cleanly to another, especially when platform coverage and local integrations vary. This variability can create gaps for buyers relying on a single DSP across all regions, limiting visibility and effectiveness in certain markets. To address that, Grieves emphasizes a "glocal" approach, combining a consistent global framework with the flexibility to adapt to local conditions. "We want to build a market-leading solution, but not just in one market," he says. "Every region and every country operates differently, so it's a 'glocal' approach. We have a global way of working with that local nuance which is required in some markets, if not all."

• Beyond the dashboard: Working through that complexity pushes teams toward more intentional campaign design. That can mean integrating programmatic creative, adapting content based on time and place, or tying buys to experiential out-of-home efforts that create real-world impact, including ambush marketing. What looks straightforward on the surface often involves multiple moving parts working together behind the scenes. "A lot of people think if they have a DSP, they have a programmatic out-of-home product, but you have to bring in planning, reporting, verification, and measurement," explains Grieves. "You have to bring in inventory and all of this into one package solution that you hand over to a client and say, 'Don't worry, we'll handle the complex part. You tell us what your audience is and we'll buy it more effectively. You tell us where you want to show up at what time, and we'll build you something dynamic.'"

• Assistance, not autopilot: billups built its own AI tool specific to out-of-home, focused on mock-ups, reporting, data analysis, and assessing creatives, like heat-mapping placements of calls to action. The goal is to reduce manual work so teams can dedicate more hours to strategic planning and understanding clients’ businesses. At the same time, Grieves notes the practical limits of AI embedded directly into buying platforms. "I view AI as an assistant. I look at it the way I looked at automation six years ago when I was in the world of actual programmatic. We kept asking, 'what can we automate?' AI is just a better version of automation, and it's effectively doing the same thing."

Without a centralized standard, trust in programmatic OOH is earned through execution. Agencies are expected to show, not tell, how a programmatic plan addresses a specific client need. For Grieves, that comes down to applying the technology with purpose, focusing on real problems rather than defaulting to programmatic for its own sake. Clear articulation of that value is what builds confidence over time, and that focus on practicality is matched by a more personal connection to the medium itself. "Ultimately, though, OOH is probably one of the last 'old school' mediums out there," he concludes. "As someone who came from a digital world, I find it cool that you can walk along and see a campaign. I never had that feeling when I was running programmatic banners or audio ads. When I'm walking along the road with my fiancée, I can point and say, 'Oh, that's our clients!"