Outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising or out-of-home (OOH) advertising includes public billboards, wallscapes, and posters seen while "on the go". OOH advertising formats fall into four main categories: billboards, street furniture, transit, and alternative.
Advertisements are commonly placed by large companies like JCDecaux and Clear Channel Outdoor.
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) refers to dynamic media distributed across place-based networks in venues including.
Within the DOOH industry, advertisements might be purchased through programmatic platforms. Programmatic platforms ask marketers to specify desired audience characteristics and automatically locate the media vehicles to deliver that audience. These platforms may allow buyers (the demand side) to plan, execute and monitor campaigns across multiple media platforms (the supply side) using a familiar workflow. A major difference between programmatic digital out-of-home (pDOOH) and traditional OOH or DOOH is that programmatic automates the process of buying, selling and delivering inventory across multiple screens with enhanced capabilities. These enhanced capabilities include the creation of measurable, highly targeted campaigns by utilizing geolocation data to activate the best DOOH screens in real-time based on consumer behaviour and audience movement patterns. Additionally, programmatic allows buyers to set specific parameters or conditions (also known as triggers) for a campaign or inventory and unleash the potential to power campaigns with unlimited data sets from a myriad of data sources. Only when the selected conditions are met will an ad or content be served onto the screen.
Printed out of home refers to static media distributed across physical spaces. Examples include:
Other types of non-digital OOH advertising include airport displays, transit and bus-shelter displays, headrest displays, double-sided panels, junior posters and mall displays.
Space advertising, by use of an array of small satellites that reflect sunlight, has been evaluated by researchers at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.
São Paulo, Brazil, established an almost total outdoor advertising ban in 2006. The ban required that all billboard and banner advertisements be removed and that store signs be greatly reduced in size and prominence.
The Swiss municipality of Vernier banned outdoor advertising.
Outdoor advertising in Finland is subject to license. According to section 52 of the Finnish road law outdoor advertising along roads is forbidden in principle, but a Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment can grant an exceptional permit for advertising, if it does not endanger traffic safety and is not in conflict with the environment. In places subject to zoning the permit is granted by the local municipality.
Outdoor advertising has also been criticised because of landscape protection or because it would cause environmental damage or "visual pollution" in the landscape. Loose advertising billboards placed on sidewalks in front of businesses cause harm and danger to the visually impaired. Many municipalities in Finland require a minimum of 1.5 metres' width of free passage space and that billboards can only be used while the businesses are open. Municipalities also give guides and grant permits for placing construction signs, signs about events and other advertising devices. In 2002, the predecessor of the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency published a guide for advertising along roads together with the Ministry of Environment and the Finnish Municipal Association.
The difference between outdoor advertising and display window advertising was discussed because of a series of 16 illuminated advertising displays placed inside a series of windows on the corner of the streets Runeberginkatu and Mannerheimintie in Helsinki showing animated advertising for several years. This advertising display had been criticised because of dazzling and light pollution. According to the advertising company, the display was a case of common display window advertising. In May 2024, the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland confirmed the decision given by administrative court in January 2023 about evicting the display but specified that advertising displays can only be removed by officials, not by the housing cooperative.
One form of criticism towards outdoor advertising is about which images are considered appropriate for outdoor advertising because of sexual equality or in the interest of child protection. In 2003 the ethical council for advertising received a complaint about a Christmas advertising campaign for Hennes & Mauritz underwear showing Naomi Campbell and other famous international models in 1930s-style glamour images. The council ruled the campaign as a whole did not go against the international rules for advertising or the council's own equality principles. In contrast, in 2008 the council gave the same advertiser (H&M) a warning about "sexualising the public space". According to the council, the six-story high underwear advertisement on the corner of the Forum shopping centre in central Helsinki featured the 24-year-old model Isabeli Fontana in "unnatural positions" and thus was a "passive object" of the advertisement.