Nearly a third (31%) of UK advertisers have included programmatic digital out of home in their campaigns in the past 12-18 months, a percentage expected to grow to 39% in the coming year-and-a-half, according to research from VIOOH.
The DOOH supply-side company's State of the Nation report found advertisers plan to boost spend by 31% in the next 18 months; that 33% of advertisers are shifting adspend from other digital channels into programmatic DOOH; 24% are moving it from traditional media; and 15% are allocating new budget to the discipline.
This growth is thanks, in part, to greater awareness of the virtues of programmatic DOOH: hyper targeting (name checked by 64% of respondents), increased brand awareness (64%), "high quality viewability" (59%) and ROI (57%).
Programmatic DOOH is most notably popular among retail, FMCG and healthcare marketers due to its ability to capitalise on location (according to 68% of respondents) and target specific audiences (67%), and its use of dynamic, often tactical, creative (62%).
Jean-Christophe Conti, chief executive of VIOOH, said: "Programmatic DOOH is becoming mainstream and is now a must-have on every media plan. This year's State of the Nation report shows not only that advertising budgets continue to be reallocated for increased programmatic DOOH spend year on year, but the opportunities from highly targeted activations to trigger-based buying are giving advertisers a raft of flexible high-value tools that complement both brand and performance ad campaigns.
"With programmatic DOOH becoming more mature, media professionals are also increasingly integrating it into multi-channel strategies, often using it alongside social media and display advertising."
The research was conducted among 1,200 advertisers and agencies in the UK, US, Australia, Germany, France and Spain. All respondents had bought programmatic DOOH in the past 12 months or were digital buyers open to the idea of purchasing it.