At Advertising Week, amid familiar panel discussions concerning agentic workflows, creator economies, and the constant industry crusade against fragmentation, an unusual and unexpected topic repeatedly dominated conversations: out-of-home advertising.
The relatively traditional media channel has experienced a remarkable resurgence in recent years, taking on renewed relevance in a marketing landscape increasingly dominated by digital saturation. Out-of-home advertising, which serves as an industry catchall for a variety of in-person formats including traditional billboards, wheatpastes, transit displays, and leafleting, is benefiting from a surprising and powerful confluence of industry tailwinds.
Its digital counterpart, somewhat unimaginatively designated as digital out-of-home media, or DOOH, is increasingly perceived by marketers as offering the absolute best of both its digital and analog components. It remains unskippable because it is physically embedded in the environment, yet it offers the precise targeting capabilities and programmatic flexibility of online media.
The financial metrics clearly reflect this renewed institutional interest. U.S. out-of-home advertising revenue grew by 10.7% year over year in the second quarter, reaching a record-breaking $3.16 billion, according to data from the Out of Home Advertising Association of America. Digital out-of-home grew at an even more rapid pace, rising 18.5% and accounting for nearly 40% of the entire category’s total revenue.
Taken more broadly, this robust resurgence of out-of-home reflects a potentially much more consequential shift within the broader advertising ecosystem. As the open internet becomes progressively less trustworthy, less heavily trafficked, and increasingly mediated by artificial intelligence, physical space is rapidly becoming more valuable to brands seeking authentic consumer connections.
For media companies, in-person events have already proven to be one of the few consistent bright spots in an otherwise challenging and volatile advertising environment. Publishers ranging from Condé Nast and Semafor to ADWEEK itself have invested significant capital into their live events businesses, which in many cases now account for more than half of their total revenue streams.
There are several clear explanations for this enduring growth. The post-pandemic rise of remote and hybrid work has created a more distributed workforce, resulting in fewer consistent, organic opportunities for professional networking and in-person convening. Live events solve that structural problem neatly. More broadly, in-person media offers something that is becoming increasingly scarce in the digital age: a tangible, memorable experience, rather than the ephemeral impression of scrolling past a display ad or skipping through an automated ad read.
Now, a host of new technological and structural factors are making that fundamental distinction even more meaningful for modern marketers.
The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence has unleashed an unprecedented onslaught of low-quality online content—frequently referred to as "slop"—whose provenance will only become progressively harder for average consumers to discern as underlying algorithms improve. Consumers are already growing increasingly skeptical of what they encounter online. According to a 2024 report published by Adobe, 87% of U.S. consumers stated that the rise of generative artificial intelligence has made it significantly harder to distinguish between fact and fiction across digital platforms.
That steady erosion of digital trust was precisely one of the primary reasons Mariano Jeger, the former executive creative director at Droga5, cited for his high-profile departure to Outfront Media. As digital and social content become exponentially easier to manufacture and correspondingly harder to authenticate, brands have compelling new reasons to reconsider the relative value of appearing in those increasingly compromised environments.
Yet artificial intelligence is altering far more than just the quality of what consumers encounter online. It is fundamentally transforming whether consumers even need to visit the open web at all.
Emerging answer engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini increasingly provide direct answers to complex user queries without ever requiring individuals to visit the original websites from which that underlying information was sourced. For digital publishers, this evolution threatens to drastically reduce valuable referral traffic, thereby shrinking the overall audiences—and ultimately the available advertising inventory—that the open web can offer to brands.
Autonomous software agents could accelerate this structural shift even further. Products designed to accomplish complex tasks on behalf of consumers threaten to bypass not just individual websites, but the very advertising models that subsidize them.
Recently, for instance, retail giant Amazon blocked an autonomous agent from crawling its e-commerce website. Whatever the specific corporate motivations behind the dispute, the incident highlights an existential vulnerability for advertising-supported digital destinations: an agent can successfully extract the utility of a website without ever consuming the advertisements that help pay for its creation and maintenance.
Taken together, these accumulating forces—declining consumer trust in online content, the growing technological capacity to bypass websites entirely, and the rise of intermediaries that do not consume advertising—could make significant portions of the digital ecosystem markedly less valuable to performance marketers and brand advertisers alike.
At the exact same time, out-of-home advertising has evolved to become considerably more sophisticated.
Striking, eye-catching creative assets can now be deployed onto digital screens programmatically, providing marketers with much of the real-time targeting and operational flexibility they have grown to expect from online campaigns, while retaining the defining, unassailable advantage of physical advertising: consumers simply cannot scroll past a DOOH display.
Furthermore, as a growing number of companies embrace the core logic of transforming themselves into media businesses, the addressable opportunity has expanded dramatically. Rideshare services, major airlines, grocery store chains, traditional retailers, and other enterprises with physical footprints and captive daily audiences are increasingly converting those physical environments into lucrative advertising inventory.
In a very real sense, the foundational logic of retail media is breaking out of traditional retail. Any company that controls a physical space where people spend substantial time now possesses the fundamental ingredients required to become an independent media owner.
However, the very same economic forces that are making physical space increasingly valuable to advertisers also risk making those spaces significantly less pleasant for everyone else.
In major urban centers like New York City, this phenomenon can already feel like an urban scourge, as shared public spaces progressively give way to glowing kiosks and digital screens featuring a relentless, constant stream of commercial messaging. During a recent episode of his podcast, New York Times journalist Ezra Klein candidly lamented this pervasive trend.
"A column I have wanted to write—and have not written, in part because I’ve been afraid of the reaction to it—is that as a newcomer to New York City, I find the presence of the advertising on the New York City subway and on the buses really sad," Klein remarked during the program.
The natural counterargument offered by transit authorities is that those commercial advertisements help subsidize public transit systems, keeping fares more accessible for everyday riders. However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority receives only about 1% of its total operating revenue from advertising, according to Klein’s analysis. He raises an intriguing and provocative question: Would transit users willingly accept a modest fare increase in exchange for a completely ad-free subway and bus system?
That question points directly to a mounting social tension that will only grow more pronounced if the current out-of-home advertising boom continues unchecked.
In nearly every traditional advertising channel, marketers must constantly balance reach against frequency. Expose a consumer to the exact same advertisement too many times and its overall effectiveness rapidly declines; eventually, brand familiarity curdles into active annoyance. Online, digital advertisers can utilize precise frequency caps to limit excessive exposure. Furthermore, consumers retain an even simpler, ultimate option: they can simply set down their mobile phones, turn off the television set, or put away the printed magazine.
Out-of-home advertising operates under entirely different rules.
As more of the physical world is systematically converted into commercial advertising inventory, consumers retain progressively fewer ways to effectively opt out. An individual can easily close a browser tab or delete a disruptive mobile application. They cannot, however, easily close a public subway platform or ignore a towering digital billboard looming over their daily commute.
For the past two decades, the advertising industry relentlessly followed consumers as they migrated from the physical world into the digital expanse of the internet. Today, the unintended consequences of artificial intelligence may be helping to push some of that commercial value right back in the opposite direction.
The ultimate question facing the industry is just how much of the physical world consumers are ultimately willing to surrender to it.
Talking Heds
Scripps Substack: The major local broadcast company Sinclair, whose television stations reach roughly 38% of all U.S. households, is launching a brand-new national news brand hosted on Substack called The National Press, according to a report from Axios. The new outlet will feature original reporting pulled from across the expansive Sinclair network, which encompasses approximately 1,200 journalists operating across 60 local newsrooms, according to Sinclair president and CEO Chris Ripley. The rollout represents an unusually experimental gambit from an otherwise traditionally staid news organization. Through the venture, which will feature both free and paid subscription tiers, Sinclair will be able to directly gauge the news appetite of the broader Substack ecosystem.
Express Brew: Morning Brew acquired the creator-led editorial brand Express Checkout in an all-cash transaction, Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell confirmed. Express Checkout, a two-person operation co-founded by Nate Rosen and Jenna Movsowitz, covers the consumer packaged goods industry through a distinct mix of newsletters, podcasts, and short-form social video content. Through the deal, Morning Brew secures 100% intellectual property ownership of Express Checkout, while Rosen and Movsowitz will join Morning Brew as full-time employees with specific incentives to scale the brand. While many media publishers frequently talk about the creator economy, few are actively integrating creators into their operations quite as aggressively as Morning Brew, whose creator-focused monetization has increased by more than 50% year over year.
Skydance Rises: Warner Bros. Discovery is now Skydance, marking the latest milestone in David Ellison’s sprawling media empire, which just three years ago did not even formally exist. Today, the newly formed conglomerate encompasses Paramount, Discovery, Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN, HBO, CBS, TNT, Nickelodeon, and numerous other properties, accompanied by roughly $80 billion in outstanding corporate debt. The company undeniably appears to be an industry behemoth on paper, yet from a direct-to-consumer streaming perspective, it remains firmly entrenched in fourth place. While there is certainly more to modern media than direct-to-consumer subscribers, this massive entertainment conglomerate will still face a steep, uphill battle in convincing advertisers that its vast assemblage of sub-scale platforms constitutes a mandatory media buy.
Uncensored Offering: Piers Morgan and his two-year-old Uncensored Media are taking a prominent step into paid subscriptions. Morgan has established himself as one of a select group of highly recognizable news personalities who successfully decamped to YouTube in recent years, building a budding global media empire out of various Uncensored franchises that currently cover diverse topics including international soccer, royal news, and historical deep dives. The company shared its strategic plan to launch individual $4.99 monthly subscriptions for its distinct franchises, marking part of a broader mandate from new CEO Rashida Jones to improve the enterprise’s bottom line by developing diversified revenue streams. Jones, who assumed her role in March after departing MSNBC, has also spearheaded ongoing efforts to scale the brand’s lucrative licensing and live events businesses.
OpenWeb Falters: The prominent ad-tech firm OpenWeb, which assists premium digital publishers in monetizing their website properties, formally requested insolvency protections in an Israeli court. The acute financial strain is the direct result of a cascading series of unfortunate events—notably, Microsoft, a critical client, abruptly ceased working with OpenWeb, prompting a key lender to worry that the withdrawal posed an existential threat to the business, subsequently demanding the immediate repayment of its capital. However, the root cause of the distress lies in the ongoing structural contraction of the open internet, which is being severely exacerbated by the rise of AI-powered search engines. Just four years ago, OpenWeb was valued at an impressive $1.5 billion, counted The New York Times as a high-profile investor, and featured industry luminaries like Scott Galloway on its corporate board. A turbulent boardroom coup, combined with severe macroeconomic headwinds facing the open web advertising sector, has ultimately left the company struggling to recover.
Quote/Unquote
The world of video games has historically been relatively late to advertising compared to other major media channels, but that dynamic is poised for a rapid transformation. EA announced its first proprietary ad platform, while major entertainment firms like Netflix and LG are investing heavily to convert traditional streaming audiences into active video game enthusiasts, a shift that could dramatically expand the total pool of accessible gamers.
As a result, Wes Morton, the co-founder and CEO of Creativ Company, believes that automated, programmatic advertising will soon become ubiquitous within the core video game experience itself. If that prediction holds true, in-game programmatic advertising could easily emerge as one of the single largest advertising mediums on the planet over the next five years, driven by vastly improved technology, lower barriers to entry, and a newly motivated cohort of entertainment industry entrants.
Mark Stenberg: Why are so many gaming companies launching dedicated advertising businesses right now?
Wes Morton: They are all actively looking for innovative ways to monetize their massive audiences. Traditional game publishers were always somewhat open to custom partnership deals, but now they are aggressively professionalizing those operations. To put the audience in proper context, The Game Awards routinely commands more total viewership than the other major traditional award shows combined. I firmly believe video games will become the single biggest advertising medium within the next five years.
Mark: It is nearly 2027. Why has the gaming industry taken so long to embrace programmatic advertising at scale?
Wes: Measurement is inherently much more complicated in gaming. A traditional website is a flat, static page that people look at directly. Inside a video game environment, the camera view is constantly rotating and changing, which makes standard viewability metrics far more difficult to accurately measure. The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently released updated in-game advertising standards, which represents a very positive step forward for the industry.
Mark: What critical milestones still need to happen before programmatic ads fully infiltrate video games?
Wes: The foundational plumbing still needs to be built out properly. Right now, programmatic partners will allow you to buy across multiple titles, but not yet studio by studio or publisher by publisher. No dominant, recognizable names have emerged in programmatic gaming ads just yet. Unity has a very strong shot at capturing that market, and Roblox is certainly interesting. There are currently a lot of companies trying to figure out how to effectively tap into this valuable audience.
Mark: Entertainment companies outside of the gaming sector are moving into the space as well. What is fundamentally driving that migration?
Wes: Companies like Netflix and Amazon are spending significant capital on gaming because they clearly recognize it is the next major entertainment frontier. Gaming is already significantly outpacing traditional television and movies in terms of both total revenue generated and consumer time spent.
Mark: What happens when the barrier to entry for gaming is reduced to simply owning a smart TV?
Wes: Ease of entry is hugely important for mass adoption. The mobile phone is already the single biggest gaming device by revenue, easily surpassing traditional consoles. A prediction I love to make is that we are going to see high-fidelity games streamed directly to the television screen, utilizing the mobile phone as the controller. The consumer experience isn’t quite fully there yet, but that is purely a temporary technology constraint, not a lack of consumer desire. Once those technical hurdles are cleared, the industry will be able to distribute entertainment in entirely new and interesting ways, and that will be transformative for the market.
