Programmatic DOOH Hit $1.34B Globally in 2025, Study Finds
2026-09-18 · via Digital Signage Today
Global programmatic digital out-of-home advertising spend reached $1.34 billion in 2025, accounting for 7% of total global DOOH spend, according to a study from the World Out of Home Organization independently aggregated by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
For operators and media owners weighing whether to invest in programmatic infrastructure, the study offers something that has been missing: a baseline figure that multiple markets can be measured against. Charles Parry-Okeden, VP and global lead for audience measurement and data at WOO, said in the release that the study "marks a genuine first for our industry — a credible, independently aggregated baseline for programmatic DOOH at global scale."
US leads in dollars, not in adoption
The United States is the single largest programmatic DOOH market by revenue, at $545.5 million, according to the release. But that scale does not translate into the highest adoption rate. US programmatic penetration sits at 15.9%, well behind Germany's 31.8%, which the release describes as the highest of any major market globally.
Belgium (25.5%) and France (16.7%) also rank among the top five markets by programmatic penetration, according to the study. WOO's framing is that raw market size and programmatic adoption are two different things, and operators in large ad markets should not assume scale automatically drives programmatic uptake.
Eastern Asia flagged as the biggest opportunity
The study identifies Eastern Asia as the largest untapped opportunity in global programmatic out-of-home. The region has a $7.3 billion DOOH advertising base, per the release, but programmatic penetration there is just 0.6%. That gap between overall DOOH spend and programmatic spend is far wider than in North America or Western Europe, suggesting the region's screens are largely still sold and booked through traditional, non-programmatic channels.
The release also notes that private marketplace (PMP) deals are the dominant transaction model in programmatic DOOH, though it does not break out what share of the $1.34 billion moved through PMPs versus open exchange or programmatic guaranteed deals.
What is missing from the numbers
The release does not detail the study's methodology beyond noting that PwC independently aggregated the figures, and it does not say how many countries or media owners were included in the dataset. It also does not provide a prior-year comparison, so there is no stated growth rate for programmatic DOOH spend year over year. For operators trying to benchmark their own programmatic revenue against the industry, those gaps limit how much can be drawn from this release alone. The full study, presumably available through WOO, would likely be needed to assess methodology and trend data in more depth.
The announcement in full
Reproduced from Digital Signage Today for reference. Digital Signage Magazine did not write the text below.
Global programmatic digital out-of-home advertising reached $1.34 billion in full-year 2025, representing 7% of total global DOOH spend.
That's a top finding from a World Out of Home Organization study independently aggregated by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, according to a press release.
"This study marks a genuine first for our industry — a credible, independently aggregated baseline for programmatic DOOH at global scale. The headline figure of $1.339 billion matters, but the structural insights are equally compelling: the stark divergence between volume and penetration, the scale of the untapped opportunity in Eastern Asia, and the dominance of PMP as the transaction model of choice. For the first time, the global pDOOH market has a benchmark it can build from," Charles Parry-Okeden, VP and global lead, audience measurement and data, World Out of Home Organization, said in the release.
The United States accounts for $545.5 million of global pDOOH spend — the largest single market by a wide margin — yet its penetration rate of 15.9% trails Germany's 31.8%, the highest of any major market globally.
Belgium (25.5%) and France (16.7%) also rank in the top five by programmatic penetration, demonstrating that absolute market scale and programmatic adoption do not necessarily advance in lockstep.
Eastern Asia holds a $7.3 billion DOOH advertising base operating at just 0.6% pDOOH penetration. This represents the single largest structural growth opportunity in global programmatic Out-of-Home.
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