The World Out of Home Organization put a first global figure on programmatic digital out-of-home advertising on September 14, 2026: $1.339 billion in full-year 2025, or 7.0% of all digital out-of-home spend, according to a study built from the confidential revenue data of twelve supply-side platforms and aggregated by PricewaterhouseCoopers. A second report followed on September 22. Read together, the two documents describe a market that trades mostly through invited private deals, that is concentrated in two countries, and whose own published tables do not always agree with each other.

In Short

Twelve companies that sell digital billboard and screen ads by software pooled their sales numbers, and an industry group added them up: about $1.34 billion was spent this way worldwide in 2025. That is only 7 cents of every dollar spent on digital outdoor screens, and the share swings from almost a third in Germany to under 1% in Japan, South Korea and China. You get a first baseline for how outdoor screens are actually bought, but several numbers in the two reports contradict each other, so the fine print matters.

A first number for a market that had only estimates

The WOO Global pDOOH Expenditure Study 2026 is the first supply-side measure of programmatic DOOH at global scale, according to WOO. It covers more than forty markets across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, and it measures 2025 revenue only. The study arrives in two parts. Report 1, "Geography & Country Rankings," became available on September 14, 2026. Report 2 was published on September 22, 2026, according to WOO's study page.

The organization behind it is the global trade body for out-of-home advertising, previously known as FEPE International and established in 1959. According to WOO, it represents operators, suppliers and agencies across more than 70 member countries and already publishes an annual Global OOH Expenditure Survey covering total spend. The new study extends that work to the automated segment of digital out-of-home, meaning screens whose ad slots are bought through software platforms rather than through insertion orders signed by hand.

Charles Parry-Okeden, WOO's VP and Global Lead for Audience Measurement and Data, framed the gap the study is meant to close in his foreword to Report 1. "Estimates have existed - but estimates drawn from models or surveys are not the same as numbers derived from actual transaction records," he wrote. Tom Goddard, WOO's president, called the result "a genuine first: an independently aggregated, supply-side picture of global pDOOH expenditure drawn from actual SSP transaction data - not modelled from third-party proxies."

That claim matters because most of what the market has known about programmatic DOOH until now has come from buyer surveys. PPC Land covered VIOOH's 2026 State of the Nation report in March, which found that pDOOH appeared in 34% of campaigns over the previous 18 months and that buyers expected to raise investment by an average of 44%. Those are intentions and campaign counts. The WOO figures are revenue.

How the numbers were built

The method is the main reason to take the headline seriously, and also the main reason to read it carefully.

According to WOO, each of the twelve participating SSPs submitted net revenue data directly and confidentially to PwC, which WOO engaged under a letter dated May 20, 2026. Submissions were captured at country level and split by delivery format, by channel type (OOH-specialist demand-side platform versus omni-channel DSP), by buy type and by advertiser vertical. PwC aggregated the submissions to market level, applied sense-checks for consistency and completeness, and produced hard-coded output tables labeled version v.07/08/26. No individual operator figure was shared with WOO or with any other participant, according to the report.

PwC's role was narrow, and both reports say so repeatedly. "PwC did not audit, verify, review or assure the accuracy of individual SSP submissions, and has not expressed any opinion on the reliability or completeness of the data received," according to the methodology section. All figures are described as "indicative market estimates." Report 1 adds that figures "have been scaled where market coverage is assessed as incomplete," without saying which markets were scaled or by how much.

Several boundaries shape what the $1.339 billion does and does not include. The study excludes programmatic guaranteed deals executed outside SSP platforms, revenue from direct insertion orders not routed through participating SSPs, and markets where no participant operates. Every figure is in US dollars at 2025 average exchange rates. Country data appears only where at least three SSPs submitted; markets below that threshold are folded into regional and global totals but not shown individually.

The twelve platforms

The press release names no SSPs, saying only that participants "are named and acknowledged in full in the published report." In the reports, the twelve appear as logos: Broadsign, DAX, Live Board, Place Exchange, Pladway, Polygon, Taggify, Ströer, Vistar Media, VIOOH, Hivestack by Perion, and a twelfth "MW" mark that corresponds to Moving Walls, which Nigel Clarkson also tagged in his LinkedIn post about the study.

Two details about that list are worth noting. First, Broadsign and Place Exchange appear as separate participants, even though Broadsign acquired Place Exchange in November 2025, a deal that brought its programmatically transactable network to 1.8 million screens. Second, several of the same companies are listed on both sides of the trade. The reports define "OOH-specialist DSPs" with the examples "Broadsign, DAX, Vistar Media, VIOOH, Hivestack by Perion," all of which also appear among the SSPs that supplied the data. WOO does not explain how revenue was classified when one company operates both the buying and the selling platform in a transaction.

Where the money sits

The regional split is lopsided. According to Report 1, the Americas accounted for $667 million (49.8% of global spend) at 14.1% penetration, EMEA for $521 million at 9.4%, and Asia-Pacific for $151 million at 1.7%. WOO defines penetration as pDOOH spend as a percentage of total DOOH spend in a market.

The United States alone accounted for $545.5 million. Germany followed at $216.3 million. Together they made up $761.8 million, or 56.9% of the global total, according to WOO. After them, the gap is wide: the UK at $90.4 million, Australia at $77.2 million, Canada at $73.1 million and France at $55.9 million. A grouped "North Asia" (Japan, South Korea and mainland China) came seventh at $42.8 million, Brazil eighth at $25.9 million, Spain ninth at $21.2 million and the Nordics tenth at $21.1 million.

The study does not disclose total DOOH spend, but the numbers allow it to be inferred. If $1.339 billion is 7.0% of the total, global DOOH spend in 2025 was roughly $19.1 billion. That figure is a PPC Land calculation, not one WOO publishes.

Penetration tells a different story

Ranked by penetration, the order changes completely. Germany led at 31.8%, which WOO describes as "nearly double the USA's 15.9% and more than four times the global average of 7.0%." Belgium came second at 25.5% on just $16.9 million of spend. France ranked third at 16.7%, the US fourth, Canada fifth at 15.0%, New Zealand sixth at 14.2% ($15.2 million), Mexico seventh at 13.5% ($16.9 million), Australia eighth at 11.0%, Spain ninth at 9.5% and South Africa tenth at 8.6% ($4.6 million).

The UK is the conspicuous outlier among large markets. Its DOOH base is put at about $1.27 billion, nearly double Germany's roughly $680 million, according to the country profiles, yet only 7.1% of it was traded programmatically. Report 1's conclusions place the UK alongside North Asia as "underpenetrated relative to their DOOH scale."

Germany's position fits what Ströer, a German outdoor operator and one of the twelve participating SSPs, has been reporting in its own results. PPC Land's coverage of Ströer's second quarter showed programmatic DOOH revenue up 45.0% year over year, with digital out-of-home up 24.3% to EUR 115.6 million. Those are 2026 figures; the WOO study covers 2025.

The size of the gap in Eastern Asia

The most striking number in the study is not a large one. Eastern Asia, which WOO defines as Japan, South Korea and mainland China, holds a $7.3 billion DOOH base but recorded only $42.8 million in programmatic spend, a penetration rate of 0.6%. WOO calls this "the single largest structural growth opportunity in global programmatic Out-of-Home."

Report 1 runs a scenario: if Eastern Asia reached Australia's current penetration of 11%, its pDOOH spend would rise to approximately $803 million, an increase of about $760 million. That is a hypothetical, not a forecast, and the report does not suggest a timeline.

A caveat applies. The study only measures what passes through the twelve participating SSPs, so low penetration in markets with limited SSP participation partly reflects what the study can see. Report 1 itself notes that it does not capture "markets where no SSP participant has active operations." That makes the 0.6% figure hard to compare with survey data. In August 2025, VIOOH's China edition of its State of the Nation report found that 30% of surveyed companies in mainland China used pDOOH in 2025, up from 24% in 2023. One figure counts adoption among 150 buyers; the other counts revenue through twelve platforms. Both can be true, and neither settles the question.

Asia-Pacific as a whole, according to WOO, holds a DOOH base of more than $9 billion at 1.7% penetration. Australia and New Zealand together spent $92.3 million, or 61% of the APAC total. South-East Asia added $16 million at 2.3%.

Latin America and Africa

Latin America contributed $48.5 million in 2025, according to Report 1. Brazil spent $25.9 million at 5.7% penetration, with an unusually high Programmatic Guaranteed share of 35.3% and an omni-channel DSP share of 66.3%. Mexico, classified by WOO under the UN's Central America sub-region, spent $16.9 million at 13.5%.

Africa is almost entirely South Africa. The continent contributed $4.65 million, of which South Africa accounted for $4.6 million at 8.6% penetration on a DOOH base of $53.3 million. The rest of Africa combined recorded about $0.05 million. "The findings challenge assumptions - Germany's extraordinary penetration rate, New Zealand ranking sixth globally, and the concentration of African pDOOH spend in South Africa," said Gideon Adey, principal of GUROOH, who WOO says was instrumental in designing the methodology.

How it is traded: private deals, not open auctions

The second structural finding is about deal type, and it repeats across every region. According to WOO, Private Marketplace transactions accounted for 75.7% ($1.014 billion) of global pDOOH spend. Open auction, or real-time bidding, accounted for 17.4% ($232 million), and Programmatic Guaranteed deals for 6.9% ($93 million).

WOO defines a PMP as "invited, non-guaranteed auctions between selected buyers and sellers operating within defined parameters." In practice, that means most programmatic DOOH is bought through deals set up in advance between known parties, not through open exchange.

The national differences are large. France ran 96.2% of its pDOOH through PMPs and the UK 94.6%. The US, by contrast, ran 29.8% through open auction, which WOO attributes to "mainstream programmatic demand from agencies using omni-channel platforms." Germany's profile is unlike any other: according to Report 1, 51.4% Programmatic Guaranteed, 48.2% PMP and 0.4% open auction.

Parry-Okeden's foreword to Report 2 reads the PMP figure as a deliberate departure from how online display developed. "Digital's programmatic journey began in open exchange - high volume, low friction, and ultimately, low trust," he wrote. "pDOOH arrived there first. 75.7% PMP share is not a channel maturing through its open-auction phase - it is the baseline." Report 2's conclusions go further, stating that PMP "is the structural default - and will remain so." That is a prediction, and a single year of data cannot test it. Report 1 itself acknowledges that the study "covers a single calendar year (2025) and does not on its own establish directional trends."

Specialist platforms versus omni-channel DSPs

According to WOO, OOH-specialist DSPs handled 65.5% ($877 million) of global spend and omni-channel DSPs 34.5% ($462 million). The specialist share was highest in Canada (90.2%), New Zealand (86.4%), Australia (75.8%) and the UK (71.1%). Omni-channel platforms dominated in Brazil (66.3%), South Africa (62.8%) and, among major markets, Germany (52.9%).

WOO does not name the omni-channel platforms. Clarkson, in his LinkedIn post, offered his own reading of that 34.5%: "the omni-channel DSP's account for 35% (and one in particular I suspect drives over half of that!)." That is his suspicion, not a finding of the study, which discloses no platform-level data.

Report 2 adds a vertical dimension. Consumer Electronics advertisers ran 72% of their pDOOH spend through omni-channel platforms, according to WOO, against 27.6% for Vehicles, the most specialist-led category. Goddard described the Consumer Electronics figure as "a particularly telling indicator of where cross-channel planning is most advanced."

That trend is visible in the deals PPC Land has covered. In December 2025, Place Exchange made Programmatic Guaranteed for DOOH generally available in Google's Display & Video 360, and in the same month Adform agreed to acquire Splicky, adding DOOH expertise to an omnichannel buying platform focused on the DACH region. Both moves pull outdoor inventory into general-purpose buying tools, which is the segment WOO measured at 34.5%.

Who buys, and on which screens

Report 2 shifts from geography to advertisers and venues. Outdoor environments - roadside billboards, large-format panels and street furniture - took 52.8% ($707 million) of global spend, according to WOO. Retail venues took 17.1% ($229 million), Transit 15.6% ($209 million) and Other indoor venues 14.5% ($194 million).

Report 2 also lists detailed venue types within each category, for example roadside billboards at 44.8% of Outdoor and international airports at 34.9% of Transit. Those within-category percentages are described as "indicative estimates based on relative screen volume, CPM levels and SSP submission patterns," according to the report. They are not revenue splits in the way the top-level venue figures are.

On verticals, Retail, Finance and Business & Industrial lead in every version of the data WOO published. The amounts, however, depend on which page is read.

Where the study contradicts itself

PPC Land compared the press release, the study's landing page and both reports, and found several inconsistencies that WOO's documents do not acknowledge.

Report 2's vertical figures exist in two versions

The executive summary and deep-dive pages of Report 2 put Retail at $165 million (12.4% of global spend), Finance at $161 million (12.1%) and Business & Industrial at $130 million (9.7%), for a combined 34.2%. The landing page and Goddard's foreword ("Retail and Finance together account for nearly a quarter") match those numbers.

Report 2's own "Full Vertical Breakdown - Top 15 Advertiser Verticals" table shows different figures: Retail at $190 million (14.2%), Finance & Insurance at $160 million (12.0%) and Business & Industrial at $132 million (9.9%). Those three add up to 36.1%, yet the key insight printed directly below the table still says 34.2%. The two versions also diverge further down. The executive summary says seven verticals accounted for 62.1% of spend, with 37.9% ($507 million) spread across all other categories. The 15-row table lists eight more named verticals - Health & Medical and Consumer Electronics at $59 million each, Events & Performances at $52 million, Media at $40 million, Telecom at $30 million, Clothing & Accessories at $29 million, Alcohol at $27 million and Cosmetic Services at $22 million - and leaves only $152 million (11.4%) for "Other Verticals." The top seven in that table sum to 64.8%. Both versions add up to roughly $1.339 billion, so they appear to be different cuts of the vertical data rather than a typing error. WOO does not say which is correct.

Regional buy-type splits differ between the two reports

The global split is identical in both reports: 75.7% PMP, 17.4% open auction, 6.9% PG. The regional splits are not.

Region Report 1 (PMP / RTB / PG) Report 2 (PMP / RTB / PG)
Americas 69.4% / 26.9% / 3.1% 73.2% / 19.8% / 7.0%
EMEA 86.7% / 2.1% / 11.2% 86.7% / 8.1% / 5.2%
APAC 75.1% / 11.2% / 13.7% 71.4% / 23.6% / 5.0%

Report 1 also describes the RTB share as "highest in the Americas (26.9%)" and says "EMEA leads" on PG at 11.2%, while its own regional table puts APAC's PG share higher, at 13.7%. In Report 2, APAC has the highest open-auction share. Report 2 states that its figures come from "the same aggregated dataset as Report 1." Both cannot be right.

Germany's PG share does not fit the totals

Report 1 says Programmatic Guaranteed accounts for 51.4% of Germany's pDOOH, on spend of $216.3 million. Applied to spend, that would be about $111 million, more than the $58 million Report 1 gives for PG across all of EMEA and more than the $93 million global PG total. The Germany profile describes the 51.4% as a share "of transactions," which may mean it is not a share of revenue, but the report does not say so. By contrast, the US, Canadian and Brazilian buy-type shares reconcile with the Americas totals when applied to spend.

Smaller inconsistencies

  • Report 1's country profiles rank Mexico ninth and Belgium tenth by volume. The top-10 spend table ranks Spain ninth ($21.2 million) and the Nordics tenth ($21.1 million); Mexico and Belgium, at $16.9 million each, do not appear in it.
  • The UK profile calls its 94.6% PMP share "the highest PMP share of any covered major market," while the France profile, two pages later, describes France's 96.2% as "the highest PMP share of any covered market."
  • Report 2 says Business & Industrial has "the highest Transit venue share of any major vertical at 28.4%," but the same report gives Travel a Transit share of 31.7%.
  • Report 1 states the study covers 12 UN sub-regions; its tables list 11. The five EMEA sub-regions shown add up to $517.5 million, against the $521 million EMEA total.
  • Report 1 and Adey's foreword to it said Report 2 would cover seasonality. The published Report 2 contains no seasonality section.
  • The press release said Report 2 would be published "in due course"; the landing page dates it September 22, 2026. The landing page calls it "Verticals, DSP & Transaction Analysis"; the report's cover title is "Advertiser Verticals & Transaction Analysis."

None of these alters the $1.339 billion total or the 7.0% share, which are consistent across every document. They do affect the regional and vertical detail that buyers and sellers are most likely to quote.

How the figures travelled on LinkedIn

The numbers were circulating in rounded form within days. Nigel Clarkson, UK Managing Director and Global Chief Revenue Officer at Adwanted and a former Global Chief Revenue Officer at Hivestack from 2020 to 2023, according to his LinkedIn profile, summarized the study in a post about two weeks before October 12, 2026. "Ever wondered how much money is actually going into programmatic OOH now?" he wrote.

His summary contains two errors against the source. He put global spend at "$1.35billion," where the study says $1.339 billion, which rounds to $1.34 billion. And he gave Asia-Pacific as "£151m," in pounds, where the study reports $151 million in US dollars. His other figures - Americas at $670 million, EMEA at $520 million, 75% PMP, 17% open exchange, 7% PG - are rounded but consistent with Report 1. He described the 7% as "properly programmatic not sort-of automated!"

In the comments, Srikanth Ramachandran, whose LinkedIn headline references Moving Walls, wrote: "APAC accounts for nearly 50% of global digital out-of-home, yet automation remains in the low single digits." The study's numbers support that roughly: an APAC DOOH base of more than $9 billion set against an implied global total of about $19.1 billion is close to half.

Why this matters for marketers

For buyers, the most useful finding is about mechanics rather than size. Three-quarters of programmatic DOOH, by WOO's count, is bought through private deals. A buyer moving outdoor budget into a DSP is far more likely to be working within pre-arranged PMPs than bidding on open inventory, and the pricing and access terms of those deals sit with the seller. That fits what PPC Land has been reporting from the supply side. JCDecaux, whose VIOOH platform is one of the twelve participants, said in its first-half 2026 results that programmatic revenue rose 30.9% organically to EUR 102.8 million, reaching 12.3% of its digital sales.

For anyone sizing a budget, the 7% figure is also a reminder that most DOOH is still sold the traditional way. In the US, OAAA data covered by PPC Land showed digital out-of-home reaching 38.4% of quarterly out-of-home revenue in Q2 2026, with total quarterly revenue at $3.16 billion. WOO puts the US DOOH base at $3.4 billion for 2025, with 15.9% of it programmatic. Different trackers use different scopes: Guideline put total US out-of-home at $3.9 billion for 2025, with DOOH at 20% of it. Those figures do not reconcile with WOO's US DOOH base, and they are not meant to; each measures a different slice of the market.

For anyone comparing this study with future editions, the baseline problem is real. Parry-Okeden wrote that "the programme will only improve as participation grows and the time series lengthens." The study names twelve participants for its first year, and it scales data where coverage is judged incomplete. If participation changes, part of next year's movement will reflect who submitted rather than what was spent. WOO does not say whether it will restate the 2025 figures if that happens, nor which of the conflicting regional and vertical tables in this edition will serve as the comparison point.

Timeline

Summary

Who: The World Out of Home Organization (WOO), working with twelve supply-side platforms (Broadsign, DAX, Live Board, Place Exchange, Pladway, Polygon, Taggify, Ströer, Vistar Media, VIOOH, Hivestack by Perion and Moving Walls) and PricewaterhouseCoopers as aggregator; methodology designed with Gideon Adey of GUROOH; commentary from Adwanted's Nigel Clarkson on LinkedIn.

What: The WOO Global pDOOH Expenditure Study 2026 puts global programmatic digital out-of-home spend at $1.339 billion in 2025, 7.0% of DOOH, with the US at $545.5 million, Germany leading penetration at 31.8%, Eastern Asia at 0.6%, and 75.7% of spend through Private Marketplace deals. The two reports disagree on several regional and vertical figures, and PwC did not audit the data.

When: Report 1 was published on September 14, 2026, and Report 2 on September 22, 2026. The data covers calendar year 2025.

Where: More than forty markets across the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific, with country-level figures for 13 markets that met the three-SSP threshold.

Why: WOO says the industry lacked revenue-based data on programmatic DOOH and relied on models and surveys. The study gives buyers, sellers and platforms a first baseline, though its internal inconsistencies and single year of data limit how far its regional and vertical details can be relied on.