Billboard advertising and DOOH fit brands with a genuine local or regional footprint, and they're the piece of a media plan most agencies still buy the way they did a decade ago — restaurants, home services, real estate, healthcare, political and film campaigns, and any agency running a full local media plan that needs out-of-home sitting next to Meta and Google spend instead of in a separate spreadsheet. It also fits restaurants, gyms, churches and shops directly, on the other side of the equation: hosting a screen and earning from the ads that run on it, covered on Screens.
Live to host · Manual · Coming
Billboard advertising and DOOH, tracked honestly
Digital billboards, LED signage and out-of-home networks split into three real categories here: our own Local Screens (live to host, marketplace coming), manual channels you can track today, and DOOH platforms scoped as coming.
One place. Every screen.Explore below
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Who this is for
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Our own Local Screens network: live to host, advertiser marketplace coming
This is the one part of this page that isn't waiting on anyone else's API — it's just not fully open yet either. Local Screens is inventory Ads and Pixels owns directly — menu boards and rewards screens in restaurants, gyms, churches and shops — and any business can add a screen and run it live today with no third-party DOOH platform and no partner approval standing in between. Buying into someone else's screen as an outside advertiser is the next stage: a local ad marketplace, opening once a real base of hosted screens exists. See Screens for what's live for hosts now and Advertise on local screens for the advertiser side, coming.
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Manual today: billboard advertising with no API
Most billboard advertising and static out-of-home has no advertiser API at all — not a gap in our integration, a real absence in the industry. Blip Billboards is the clearest example: a genuinely self-serve marketplace (search by city or state, book online) with daily budgets from around $0.01 per display and no minimum spend, but no API to automate against, only a dashboard. Vertical Impression's elevator-screen network is similar — a real self-serve web app with campaigns live in about three days, flat monthly rates, no sales call required, but no public API either. Static billboards booked through traditional out-of-home advertising companies, local radio and print sit here too.
None of that means these campaigns go untracked. Ads and Pixels issues a tracked link, a tracked phone number and a promo code per manual billboard advertising campaign, you log spend or upload an invoice, and the Audience Vault measures the leads, calls and sales it produces — the same discipline applied to Gab Ads or local print, not a lesser version of tracking because the medium is analog.
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Coming: programmatic DOOH platforms
One DOOH platform stands out as the strongest build target we found: Hivestack (now Perion DOOH), the only vendor in our research with a fully documented REST API covering both halves of the job — campaigns, line items, creatives, geofence groups and markets on the buy side, standard and advanced reporting on the read side. Access is partner-gated (an API key issued by a Hivestack rep after a sales conversation), so this is scoped, not connected. Amazon's digital-signage DOOH product — 600-plus grocery and Whole Foods screens — is a genuine self-serve buy through Amazon DSP today on Amazon's own side, and is covered under the broader Amazon Ads integration once that partner approval clears. StackAdapt's DOOH inventory currently looks reporting-only pending a direct Enterprise API demo, and Simpli.fi's DOOH has no public API documentation we could find at all, so both stay in "coming" without a firm capability promise attached. Large billboard owners — Lamar, OUTFRONT, Clear Channel Outdoor, GSTV, Captivate — don't offer direct buy-side APIs; where their inventory becomes reachable, it will be through Hivestack or a similar DSP, not a separate integration with each owner.
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How DOOH measurement actually works
Digital billboards and DOOH screens carry no cookie and no pixel, so the industry measures them two ways instead. Mobile location exposure matching collects anonymized mobile-ad-ID and location bid-request data, geofences it around a screen's known location and play schedule, and matches device IDs to later store visits — producing an "exposure to visit" report rather than a click-based one. Geo-lift testing compares an exposed market running the campaign against a similar unexposed control market and measures the outcome difference; this is the industry's hedge as mobile-ID matching gets harder under iOS App Tracking Transparency and Android's equivalent restrictions. Proof of play — confirmation a specific creative displayed on a specific screen at a specific time — ranges from a fully automated dashboard log to a manual screenshot, depending on the media owner. Geopath is the confirmed US industry-standard audience-measurement body for out-of-home, the OOH equivalent of Nielsen. None of this replaces the click-based attribution used on Meta, Google or TikTok — it's a genuinely different measurement discipline, and Ads and Pixels will represent it as such once a DOOH integration is live, not force it into a click-attribution model it was never built for.
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What "full control" will mean for billboard advertising
When a DOOH integration like Hivestack goes live, billboard advertising here will follow the same shape as every other live channel: goal-based campaign build, geofence-based location targeting instead of a radius or ZIP list, creative review before spend, and a Results Map branch scoped to that screen or market. Until then, "coming" means exactly that — scoped, not simulated, and not sold as live before it is.
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Costs and budget
Real, sourced numbers vary enormously by platform. Blip Billboards has no minimum spend and daily budgets starting around $0.01 per display — the most SMB-friendly out-of-home budget in our research. AdQuick's Marketplace tier requires a $25,000 minimum, pricing out most local and small-business budgets; its DSP tier states no minimum, which is more promising for smaller spend. Amazon's digital-signage product has no stated minimum for the signage unit itself. Vertical Impression charges a flat monthly rate per screen with no minimum disclosed publicly. Hivestack/Perion's minimums aren't published — access starts with a partner conversation, not a rate card. Current Ads and Pixels plan pricing is on /pricing.
A little more clarity
Frequently asked questions
Real answers before you make a decision.
Can I buy a real billboard through Ads and Pixels today?
Not yet, through any route. Hosting your own Local Screens TV is live today; buying into someone else's screen as an outside advertiser is coming once the marketplace opens. Through a traditional billboard or DOOH network, not yet through a direct API either — you can track that spend as a manual channel using tracked links, phone numbers and promo codes in the meantime.
What's the difference between Local Screens and DOOH billboards?
Local Screens is inventory Ads and Pixels owns directly — restaurant, gym and shop screens — so any business can host one live now with no third party involved; buying into someone else's is the marketplace stage, coming. Billboard advertising and most DOOH runs through media owners and platforms we don't control, which is why most of that category is either manual or coming.
Which DOOH platform is Ads and Pixels most likely to connect first?
Hivestack (Perion DOOH) — it's the only platform we found with a fully documented buy-and-report API in one place. Access is partner-gated, so a sales conversation comes before any engineering.
How much does billboard advertising cost?
It depends entirely on the platform. Blip Billboards starts near $0.01 per display per day with no minimum; AdQuick's Marketplace tier requires $25,000 minimum; traditional billboard owners like Lamar typically require a rep conversation with no published rate card at all. There's no single number for billboard advertising the way there's a rough CPC for a search ad — that's the honest, if unsatisfying, answer.
Is billboard advertising worth it for a small local business?
It depends on footprint and budget. A hyper-local business with a single location may get more from Local Screens or a tightly geofenced manual campaign than from a market-wide static billboard; a regional or multi-location brand is more often where traditional billboard advertising earns its cost.
How do you track a billboard campaign without a pixel?
A tracked phone number, a tracked link on any accompanying digital presence, and a promo code specific to that billboard, all measured through the Audience Vault — the same manual-channel discipline used for any network with no API.
Will billboard and DOOH attribution ever look like Meta or Google's click-based model?
No, and it shouldn't pretend to. DOOH measurement is built on mobile-location exposure matching and geo-lift testing, industry-standard methods that answer a different question than a click ever could. Ads and Pixels will represent that difference honestly once a DOOH integration is live.
Your next move
Host a Local Screens TV now, add DOOH as it connects
Add your first screen free today, and track billboard advertising manually until the marketplace and the next DOOH integration ship.