You don’t often think of lead gen in the same breath as OOH, do you?
But at last week’s JCDecaux in partnership with NDA Programmatic DOOH Live Awards 2025, one of the big winners was exactly that. A fantastic campaign from Skyrise using programmatic OOH for lead gen for investment company Flagstone.
Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising has traditionally been the domain of brand awareness. Big, bold, public, and often beautiful, it’s a medium known for scale and spectacle, not performance and direct response. But as digital capabilities evolve and media planners get more ambitious, we’re seeing OOH being used in very different ways.
Celebrating a new kind of out-of-home
On 1 May, we gathered at the Curzon Cinema Soho for the second annual Programmatic DOOH Live Awards, created in partnership between JCDecaux and New Digital Age. This was the second year of the awards, a celebration of the most creative, innovative, and effective programmatic digital Out-of-Home campaigns in the UK.
In testament to the health of the sector, for this year’s awards we saw the audience more than double and the number of award entries more than doubled as well.
What I also loved about the awards last week was seeing the strength of the programmatic digital OOH community. What was not so long ago a small section of our industry is today definitely its own successful community.
A spotlight on results, not just reach
What made this year’s entries stand out wasn’t just their creativity or the media strategies behind them, but the outcomes they delivered.
The Flagstone campaign with Skyrise and CNS Media picked up multiple awards, including Best Use of Data, Best Use of Performance Measurement, and Best Campaign – Independent Agency.
Using programmatic DOOH for lead generation feels counterintuitive to many. OOH has long been seen as a pure-play awareness channel. But with the targeting capabilities of programmatic, alongside data partnerships and smarter attribution technology, that’s no longer the case. This was a performance campaign that just happened to run in the physical world.
The power of integration
Across all the winning campaigns, one theme was clear: success comes from integration. Whether that’s integrating pDOOH with mobile, social, or other digital channels, or integrating teams, data, and platforms, the best results came from true collaboration.
Campaigns like TUI’s, which won Best Use of Dynamic Creative Optimisation, Best Use of Brand Measurement, and Best Campaign – Network Agency, showed how a smartly executed programmatic DOOH strategy can deliver full-funnel outcomes. Delivered in partnership with GroupM UK, EssenceMediacom, DOOH.com, and On Device, it combined data, creativity, and measurement in a way that made a real impact.
And then there was the work from Talon, OMD UK and McDonald’s, which took home Best Use of Traditional and pDOOH, Best Presentation, Best Campaign – Specialist Agency, and People’s Choice. A campaign that proved the value of strong creative with clever planning to deliver outstanding, sales driving, results.
A huge thank you
To everyone who entered, judged, attended, voted, and supported this year’s Programmatic DOOH Live Awards, a massive thank you.
And of course, none of this would be possible without our incredible partners at JCDecaux. Their commitment to pushing the programmatic DOOH space forward is helping change how the industry sees and uses this format.
With programmatic technology powering OOH, it’s becoming one of the most dynamic, measurable, and exciting channels in the marketer’s toolkit.
Now I can’t wait till next year’s awards!
