Millions of ads are seen each day. Far fewer are remembered – and fewer still are linked to the right brand. That gap between exposure and recognition is where so many campaigns fall short, and why marketers are rethinking what success looks like.
For years, out-of-home (OOH) advertising was measured by audience size and impressions. Easy to report, yes – but those numbers only tell us who might have seen an ad, not whether it connected or drove any shift in awareness, perception or intent.
Attribution changes the game. It measures how many people not only saw a campaign but remembered the right brand. It asks a far better question than reach ever could: not “how many passed by,” but “how many remembered us.”
Measuring OOH has always been tricky. Billboards and forecourt screens don’t live in closed, trackable feeds like digital display ads. But tools have caught up. Advances in mobile data, programmatic digital OOH (pDOOH) and cross-channel analytics now reveal how exposure drives behaviour across the funnel, from recall and recognition to consideration and purchase.
Success isn’t about who sees your ad. It’s about who remembers it
Brand lift studies show how powerful OOH can be when creative, format and placement align. One of Tractor Outdoor’s static OOH campaigns for a leading e-commerce brand, built around a single high-traffic site in Cape Town with clean creative, achieved a +17-point lift in brand attribution and 55% ad recall, which is among the best global benchmarks. The lesson is simple: strategic sites, clear messaging and repeated exposure embed brands in memory.
Digital formats add another layer. Tractor’s programmatic campaign for a software brand delivered a +37-point uplift in brand image and +32 in ad likeability, showing how dynamic delivery and real-time optimisation deepen resonance. By reaching the right people at the right moment and adjusting mid-flight, pDOOH combines OOH’s visibility with digital precision.
Attribution also highlights the unique roles of different formats. Large-format DOOH captures attention and builds brand visibility, often outperforming benchmarks for recall. Proximity placements near points of sale, like forecourts, are especially effective for influencing purchase decisions – one snack brand campaign saw a +34 uplift in consideration among 18-34-year-olds.
We’ve seen that static OOH builds long-term brand presence, while DOOH adds flexibility, fine-tuning frequency and context for efficiency. Used together, these formats deliver both reach and impact.
Attribution reveals what works and where to go next
At Tractor Outdoor, attribution insights inform every stage of planning. We use data to understand which formats and environments consistently shift perception or intent, applying those learnings to media mix, site selection and creative refinement. Sometimes, the fix is as simple as making the logo more prominent or reinforcing distinctive brand cues. These small tweaks can have measurable impact.
It also deepens understanding of audiences. Younger demographics often show bigger uplifts in purchase intent, while older groups lean toward positive brand perception. These insights shape campaigns that speak differently to different segments, ensuring every placement works harder.
Challenges remain. Consumers move fluidly between channels, making OOH’s role harder to isolate. Data quality and inconsistent benchmarks complicate comparisons. But these are opportunities, not barriers.
By combining mobility analytics, surveys and behavioural data, we’re building a fuller view of how outdoor media influences the wider journey – and that journey is becoming more dynamic every day. Programmatic DOOH is shifting attribution from retrospective reporting to real-time optimisation. Soon, campaigns will adapt mid-flight based on live attribution signals, reallocating spend, refining creative and amplifying what works. Advances in mobile data, AI and modelling will push this further, showing not just whether the campaign worked but which message, screen or moment drove the strongest result.
OOH has always been a powerful brand-building medium. Attribution now proves it delivers measurable business outcomes, too. What matters isn’t how many people could have seen an ad. It’s whether the right people recognised the brand, remembered the message and acted on it. Because the true measure of a campaign isn’t how far its message travels, but how deeply it lands.
