Why Out-of-Home Advertising is Winning in a Digitally Drained World

While most of the marketing world spent Advertising Week New York obsessing over AI, some turned to advertising's power in the physical world. With consumers facing high levels of digital fatigue, proponents are positioning Out-of-Home (OOH) as an unblockable and newly measurable complement to digital efforts that stops the scroll and builds real-life connections between brands and consumers.

That perspective is highlighted by Advertising Week panelist Brian Rappaport, Founder and CEO of Quan Media Group, an AdWeek Fastest Growing Agency. With over a decade of experience managing OOH campaigns for major brands at RapportWW and ZenithOptimedia, Rappaport says OOH's relevance stems from consistent growth, challenging the common comeback narrative. "If you want to continue to grow your brand and if you really want to continue to increase awareness, there's no better awareness channel than out-of-home," he says.

• Don't call it a comeback: Calling the renewed interest in OOH a "resurgence" is the wrong way to frame it, Rappaport says. He points instead to sustained financial performance, with OOH hitting a record-breaking $1.98 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2025 and industry commentary positioning it as one of today's most progressive media spaces. He says many brands are drawn to the channel’s agility and speed to market. “I hate using the word resurgence, because I feel like it's been a growing channel for a while. Brands are starting to realize that you can go live pretty quickly, whether it's through digital out-of-home or non-digital out-of-home. There isn't a six-month lead time. It's getting brands live instantly for digital and within one to two weeks for printed out-of-home," he explains.

• Can't skip this: With ad-blockers and skippable content now commonplace, OOH’s core strength is its persistent presence in the real world. The medium’s power, Rappaport says, comes from its potential for seamless integration into the consumer’s daily journey, creating multiple, contextually relevant touch points. “I think it's unblockable. You can follow a consumer along their daily journey,” he states. He points to a recent campaign for the baby brand Nanit that targeted parents across New York City. The team placed creative along a typical parent's route, from transit hubs like Moynihan Station to the area around Madison Square Garden, with messaging that reflected the specific location and moment. He adds, "It's the ability to truly follow the consumer along their journey, be there at multiple touch points, and connect with them in an unblockable environment.”

For forward-thinking brands, OOH isn't just billboards. Today’s OOH world includes private Blade helicopter lounges, JSX terminals, screens inside residential elevators, and large-format displays in lifestyle centers like The Grove in Los Angeles. Rappaport explains that this brand-first mindset prioritizes identifying contextually relevant moments over simple vanity buys. His agency puts this philosophy into practice for Hebbia AI, targeting high-net-worth individuals by branding the very helicopters and seaplanes they fly to the Hamptons.

But the elephant in the room has always been measurement. Rappaport insists the age-old question of ROI has a modern answer. "Out-of-home is not a perfect science of measurement yet, but it's come leaps and bounds," he says. His team looks at a combination of brand lift studies and bottom-funnel tracking to measure impact. Using anonymous mobile location data, brands can also measure KPIs like site traffic, app downloads, and drive-to-store visits resulting from exposure to specific OOH placements. He surfaces a common pattern where digital-first brands, like the crypto platform Gemini test OOH, with a clear measurement strategy, see its value, and begin to move larger investment into the channel. "It's always interesting to understand which bus shelters perform the highest in terms of exposure and conversion, and which ones didn't. That allows us to optimize the next time we run a campaign for them and double down on the areas where they perform the best,” he explains.

A key takeaway from the discussions at Advertising Week is that OOH should no longer be treated as a siloed channel. Rappaport highlights that a major theme from his panel on the subject is the medium’s new role as an engine for digital content, tying into experiential marketing, another major point of discussion at the conference.

• A second life: A key trend in OOH is designing physical campaigns explicitly to fuel online conversation, giving the investment a powerful second life online. He notes, "The creator economy and social is how brands can leverage out-of-home for a second life." A prime example is the campaign for Good Eat’n, a snack brand founded by NBA star Chris Paul. The brand placed two digital billboards directly outside the Intuit Dome at the start of the season, featuring a QR code that drove fans to a site offering free snacks. The placement was timely, interactive, and celebrity-adjacent, perfectly engineered to be shared on social media, Rappaport says.

Looking ahead, he predicts the next phase of OOH will be sensory. He spotlights a campaign for the razor brand Billie that featured scratch-and-sniff walls across New York City, allowing people to smell the product directly from the ad. Rappaport is excited to see how brands leverage ambient sound and scent, and envisions a future where digital screens show a basketball fan an ad for sneakers, then immediately pivots to show their companion an ad for running shoes, all based on anonymized mobile data. But he cautions that success depends on a brand’s willingness to abandon old habits. His final challenge to marketers is to be bold and trust the process. “If a brand has guts, then they're going to see success in out-of-home."