Unlocking outdoor impact: An interview with Adsquare’s Serkan Uzundonekoglu and James Morgan on programmatic (D)OOH attribution

Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) advertising is a rapidly growing segment of the media landscape, offering brands unique opportunities to engage audiences in the physical world. Yet, the question of accurately measuring and attributing OOH’s true impact has long been a hurdle. How do advertisers confidently prove ROI and seamlessly integrate OOH into their broader omnichannel strategies?

To shed light on this topic, we sat down with Serkan Uzundonekoglu, Product Manager at Adsquare and James Morgan, Lead Product Manager for Data, our two in-house experts on Attribution. Serkan and James discuss how Adsquare is redefining OOH measurement, validating campaign effectiveness, and unlocking the full potential of outdoor advertising through our intuitive Attribution dashboard.

OOH has certainly seen remarkable growth, but attribution has historically been a significant hurdle. From your perspective, what have been the primary challenges preventing advertisers from accurately measuring OOH’s true impact?

Serkan: You’re absolutely right; for a long time, demonstrating the direct impact of OOH campaigns, particularly in driving offline actions like store visits, has been quite difficult. Traditional methods often relied on very broad, “fuzzy” radius estimations or simply lacked the granular data required for precise measurement. This made it challenging to confidently prove ROI and, consequently, to fully integrate OOH into a cohesive omnichannel strategy alongside digital channels, where attribution is generally more established. Advertisers were often left speculating about the true value of their outdoor spend, despite OOH’s undeniable reach and brand-building capabilities.

So, how does Adsquare’s Attribution solution specifically address these unique measurement complexities for OOH?

Serkan: Our Attribution solution is purpose-built to tackle these very challenges. It offers truly granular and verifiable insights, moving beyond simply knowing a device was near an OOH placement to deeply understanding the outcomes of that exposure. The unique selling point of Adsquare’s Attribution lies in its sophisticated methodology, which is designed for accuracy, flexibility, and scalability. Fundamentally, we believe that OOH’s value isn’t just about showing an ad; it’s about understanding the outcomes it drives.

For truly actionable OOH attribution, the underlying measurement and matching process must be accurate. How does Adsquare’s methodology work?

James: Precision is paramount for us throughout this process. We begin by inferring exposed Mobile Advertising IDs (MAIDs) through their precise proximity to OOH poster locations. When a MAID — a unique identifier for a mobile device — passes by a defined OOH placement, we detect this interaction using the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of the OOH inventory provided by the client. This gives us a significantly more accurate understanding of who has genuinely been exposed to your outdoor placements, moving far beyond mere guesswork. For digital OOH, clients simply provide the locations and the display schedule, and we handle the precise exposure detection from there.

Once we’ve identified that exposure, we connect it to actual in-store visits using our proprietary 2D POI polygons. These polygons form the core of our precise visit-matching algorithm. We directly link OOH exposure to in-store visits by filtering visit data according to the exact time the OOH ad is live. We then meticulously cross-reference which exposed MAIDs subsequently visited the designated stores — your conversion points. This rigorous process enables us to identify the critical overlap between those exposed to your OOH ads and those who later visit your physical locations. It provides verifiable proof of offline impact, with our place-visit-matching algorithm ensuring unmatched precision in tracking actual footfall.

Isolating the true incremental effect of advertising is always a challenge for marketers. How does Adsquare’s Attribution account for external factors and provide an unbiased view of OOH uplift?

James: This is where innovation meets impact to deliver  actionable and reliable insights. We’ve developed a sophisticated model — we call it the”Control Conditions” — to isolate the genuine incremental effect of OOH campaigns. The model filters out external noise such as weather fluctuations, seasonality, public holidays, or existing local footfall trends. We essentially simulate how your audience would have behaved without any ad exposure, creating a faster, more reliable baseline. By comparing the behavior of an exposed group against this statistically simulated control, we can quantify the net visitation uplift. This approach provides an unbiased view of your OOH investment’s efficacy, eliminating common control group biases that can arise from mismatches in size, geography, or demographics, resulting in cleaner data and consistent uplift calculations. It ensures the uplift you observe is genuinely attributable to your OOH efforts.

Once these insights are generated, how does the Attribution Dashboard on OnePlatform enable campaign optimisation?

James: The dashboard transforms OOH measurement into a powerful tool for both optimisation and justification. It empowers agencies to confidently demonstrate Net Visitation Uplift from OOH campaigns to their clients, providing clear metrics of success, like total incremental visitors. Beyond proving ROI, our Temporal and POI Performance Dashboards offer granular insights into which specific OOH assets are driving the most conversions and during which time slots. This enables continuous, data-driven adjustments to programmatic OOH buys, ensuring maximised impact and efficiency for both static and dynamic OOH campaigns.

Finally, what advice would you offer to advertisers now that OOH is demonstrably measurable?

Serkan: The key takeaway for advertisers is this: OOH is now a fully measurable, performance-driven channel, making it an indispensable tool within your omnichannel mix. We’re seeing OOH’s real-world impact amplified; it’s felt in cities and in motion, offering geo-contextual engagement that purely digital screens can’t replicate. With our Attribution Dashboard, you can precisely link OOH exposure to store visitations, treating it with the same rigor as digital channels. Therefore, it’s time to stop siloing DOOH. Integrate it directly into your planning. Thanks to our seamless DSP integrations and robust privacy-by-design framework, brands can confidently activate OOH, understand its tangible ROI, and drive incremental value across their entire marketing ecosystem. 

Adsquare Attribution is built for performance and is globally scalable, providing trusted, consented, and transparent attribution across diverse markets. By closing the loop with a purpose-built, privacy-safe solution like Attribution, advertisers can unlock full-funnel insights and confidently deliver verifiable results to their clients. 

Ready to elevate your programmatic (D)OOH strategies and measure what truly matters? Schedule a demo to see how the Attribution Dashboard, available on OnePlatform, can unlock full-funnel insights for your campaigns.