Sprite’s heat-activated digital billboards suggest a future spot for OOH in the media mix

Alongside paid social activations on Meta, as well as online video and digital display units, the brand is running digital out-of-home (DOOH) work triggered by rising local temperatures. If the thermometer in Rome, for example, hits a preset temperature, ads reminding consumers to get a cold refreshment (preferably a Sprite) will run. Lower temperatures will trigger different ads from the beverage brand, which is running the campaign across the E.U. and in the U.K. Australia, Korea and the Philippines.

“Everything that we’re doing now is meant to reinforce Sprite as the ultimate refreshment,” explained Oana Vlad, global vp, Sprite. “We wanted to try something experimental in a channel that also gives scale.”

The mechanism relies on heat and humidity information drawn from commercial data company OpenWeather, Coca-Cola’s dynamic creative optimization partner Clinch, The Trade Desk and OOH firm Hivestack.

But Sprite’s not the only brand advertiser making space for street-level ad inventory this summer. 

European dairy company Arla has been pushing its lactose-free range of products through the early summer months, a period that provides a key seasonal boost to sales, according to Laura Butler, strategic brand manager for Arla LactoFREE.

Its campaign in the U.K. encompasses CTV (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+), YouTube, retail media activations, paid social and PR. But DOOH has been playing an outsized role, taking up at a third of the campaign’s overall budget, said Butler, who declined to provide an overall budget estimate.

“Generally, out of home is a really important channel for us,” she said. Working with Dentsu media agency Carat (and a commercial partnership with OOH firm ClearChannel), the brand has been prioritizing DOOH units located within 500-800 meters of a shop stocking its range; 60% of the sites it’s using are digital, Butler confirmed.

The campaign also included specialist units such as a bespoke install at Boxpark Croydon in London, spanning digital video screens and static inventory. The brand showed creative promoting recipes using its products, which differed depending on the time of day — in the morning, for example, it ran video creative showcasing a breakfast recipe. Such activity can help a brand spread “super simple, really impactful” messages to target consumers, said John Treacy, executive creative director at Zeal, the agency that created the Boxpark DOOH assets.

“Context is key” to making such placements work, said Emma Labrador, CMO of French DOOH network Displayce.

Unsurprisingly, advertiser demand for digital out of home outstrips traditional OOH. Per the Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), digital OOH accounted for 34% of total U.S. outdoor ad spending in Q1 of 2025, growing 9% over the same period last year.

Recent research provides solid evidence that the format is significantly more effective than its static cousin. Happydemics, a company that runs brand uplift studies for advertisers, collated over 1,300 reports on DOOH campaigns — and found that DOOH inventory prompted brand recall from pedestrians at 2.2x the rate of traditional billboards.

“It’s a great tool for shaping brand image and reinforcing key messages,” said Virginie Chesnais, CMO at Happydemics. Veterinary brand Dutch, for example, has begun using OOH in Florida and California to build upon previous brand awareness-boosting TV work.

“We need more eyes on us and increased brand exposure,” said Jenna Brennan, vp of growth.

The industry’s collective investment in out-of-home — digital or otherwise — has been falling for several years, as advertisers gradually siphon budget out of traditional channels and into digital ones. OOH’s share of global ad spend is expected to fall from 5.5% ($42.6 billion) in 2024 to 5.2% in 2027, according to Dentsu’s December ad spending forecast. That report also suggested that growth is set to slow from 4.8% last year to 3.4% by 2027. For what it’s worth, WPP Media pegs OOH’s total revenue in 2025 at $52 billion, 41% of which is digital revenue.

But OOH remains a regular tool of major advertisers — especially for specialist usages like Sprite’s campaign. “DOOH is a bridge between the physical and the digital world,” said Chesnais.

According to WPP Media’s latest biannual forecast, 75% of the world’s advertisers spend 80% of their media dollars on digital channels, while the top 25% spend 47% on digital — the remainder of their budgets being spread across TV, audio, cinema and our old friend the billboard. 

That gap is growing smaller, as more of those major brands devote more budget to digital. But it’s unlikely to close entirely. In the first quarter of 2025, 60% of the top 100 out-of-home advertisers increased their investment, relative to the same period in 2024, according to Mediaradar data published by the OAAA.

In basic terms, expect to gradually see fewer small to mid-sized advertisers and more megabrands in OOH placements.

DOOH media owners are leaning in. Pearl Media, a New Jersey-based DOOH provider, recently expanded its portfolio in midtown Manhattan, adding 40 digital screens throughout the central neighborhood, each roughly four times the size of a city bus shelter and each capable of displaying video (or indeed any other creative asset — 3D included) at any time of day.

According to Pearl Media’s CEO Joshua Cohen, the company added the new screens to hoover up latent demand from big brands. “We built this network to attract the world’s biggest advertisers to amplify their message,” Cohen told Digiday. 

In line with broader industry trends, the new midtown network can be bought programmatically. Cohen, naturally, is keen to highlight the advantages to brands buying the entire set direct — chiefly, that they can turn such a buy into an event that gets them attention at street level.

“It’s an opportunity to really get involved with New Yorkers during their days and their nights,” he said.