Skip to content

Digital Out of Home Integration into OpenDirect

OAAA (Out of Home Advertising Association of America), OMA (Outdoor Media Association of Australia) and Outsmart (Out of Home Trade Association in UK) today announced that they have collaborated with IAB Tech Lab, the global digital advertising technical standard-setting body, to publish a comprehensive document and technical resources to support standardized Programmatic Guaranteed Direct trading across Classic and Digital Out of Home (OOH) media.  

OpenDirect 2.1 is the updated programmatic trading standard that allows OOH buyers to plan, buy, activate and report directly from premium publishers. OOH screens and billboards can now be discovered, planned, traded, activated and reported using a common data driven trading standard.  

The features supported in OpenDirect include:  

  • Searching for managed product inventory and guaranteed deals. 
  • Determining price and availability. 
  • Applying targeting and frequency constraints. 
  • Creating orders and adding lines. 
  • Uploading creative and assigning creative rules to booking lines. 
  • Reserving and booking inventory.  
  • Proof of Posting/Play. 

Key organizations who contributed to this work include Clear Channel, Global Outdoor, JCDecaux, Ocean Outdoor, Place Exchange, Publicis, WPP, Denstu and Omnicom.  

The OpenDirect API enables buyers to plan and deliver a guaranteed OOH advertising campaigns alongside both ‘Online’ and ‘Offline’ premium inventory channels such as, Display, Mobile, Print, TV and Radio that can also use the OpenDirect trading method. 

Tim Lumb, Director of Outsmart comments, “The benefits of international collaboration across advertising associations, publishers and buyers are clear to see. IAB Tech Lab’s OpenDirect makes it even easier for brands to buy across media channels.” 

“Embracing OpenDirect 2.1 represents a significant growth opportunity for the OOH industry,” said Jeff Jan, EVP Strategy & Growth, OAAA. “This update not only helps streamline our transactions but also greatly enhances our ability to integrate OOH with online and offline media, ensuring a more unified marketplace.” 

Elizabeth McIntyre, CEO of the OMA commented “It's exciting that OpenDirect 2.1 brings the real world Out-Of-Home benefits of contextual relevance, attention and reach into the OpenDirect schema, allowing the programmatic guaranteed trade of both our OOH traditional (offline) and digital (online) formats alongside other premium media inventory.” 

“The opportunity for true omnichannel advertising has grown exponentially over the past decade,” said Hillary Slattery, Director of Programmatic, Product, IAB Tech Lab. “As a growing number of advertisers integrate offline media into the funnel of online, mobile, audio, and CTV advertising, the importance of working with stakeholders across the programmatic ecosystem to establish a living, common language with standard definitions cannot be overstated. IAB Tech Lab is proud to collaborate with global Media Owners, Agencies and OOH trade organizations like OAAA, OMA and Outsmart to establish a common implementation of IAB Tech Lab’s OpenDirect methodology.” 

Further details about the OpenDirect value proposition can be found here: 
https://iabtechlab.com/opendirect-2-1-for-the-programmatic-guaranteed-trading-of-both-traditional-and-digital-media/  

The documentation and technical resources to support standardized Programmatic Guaranteed Direct trading are available free of charge and can be found here:
https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/OpenDirect/blob/main/OpenDirect.v2.1.final.md