Do digital billboards support video creatives?

You can upload full motion video files to most digital out of home networks. Standard programmatic specifications accept common video formats, allowing your creative team to deploy television commercials or social media assets directly to pedestrian kiosks and large format spectaculars in major urban centers.

How fast do programmatic screen buys execute?

Your automated systems can bid on and secure physical screen inventory in milliseconds. The open real time bidding protocol processes the transaction instantly, meaning your advertisement can appear on a street level display moments after your software determines the location meets your current campaign criteria.

Can developers test the bidding infrastructure first?

Engineering teams usually access sandbox environments provided by demand side platforms to validate their code. These testing endpoints let your developers confirm that their JSON payloads format correctly and that their automated agents handle bid responses properly before you commit real advertising budgets to a campaign.

What happens if a screen loses internet connection?

Displays cache your creative assets locally to ensure smooth playback even during network interruptions. If a board goes offline, the hardware continues playing the scheduled loop and stores the play logs internally. The system uploads the complete delivery record once the connection restores.

Do physical screens play sound with the ads?

Most roadside and transit displays operate without audio to comply with local municipal regulations. However, you will find sound enabled inventory in specific venue categories like bars, gyms, and gas stations where the environment supports an audio visual experience for a captive audience.

Is there an API to buy DOOH ads programmatically?

Sneh Dhruv · Updated October 22, 2026

Yes, you can buy DOOH ads programmatically using standardized APIs that connect your systems directly to publisher inventory. Trillboards lets you build on the OpenAPI reference to automate your media buying and access 15 audience and measurement data products delivered as feeds.

The numbers

Measure	Figure	Sample	Data window
Audience and measurement data products delivered as feeds, each with rows in the latest settled week	15	15 feeds	Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2026
Third-party board faces the geometry engine measures against	149,600	149,600 faces	Oct 13, 2026
Days of history kept on the sources the data products are built from	400	6 sources	Oct 13, 2026
Logged ad plays measured by camera	811,776	811,776 plays	Jun 24 – Oct 10, 2026
Creatives in the creative library	225,203	225,203 creatives	Oct 13, 2026

Standardizing the programmatic connection

You can connect your internal software directly to digital out-of-home inventory using standardized application programming interfaces. Programmatic DOOH transactions run on the IAB Tech Lab’s OpenRTB protocol. The Out of Home Advertising Association of America worked with the IAB to develop specialized extensions that support the one-to-many transmission model of physical screens. These extensions allow your systems to read incoming auctions, evaluate the available inventory, and submit a bid in milliseconds. The protocol defines standard objects for the physical venue, the screen hardware, and the expected audience multiplier.

When you build a custom buying tool for a software company targeting developer hubs, your system ingests these standardized auctions continuously. The outgoing bid requests transmit the display's IP address, geographic coordinates, and real-time audience metrics. This lets your AI agents or automated bidding algorithms decide exactly which screen to buy and when to buy it, matching the precision you expect from digital channels. Your developers can parse the OpenRTB JSON payloads to evaluate 149,600 third-party board faces measured before committing your budget. By standardizing the communication layer, the industry allows your software to treat a billboard in Times Square and a digital kiosk in a local coffee shop as identical programmable resources.

Automating the transaction

Programmatic out-of-home inventory transacts on a cost per thousand model, primarily through private marketplace deals. Market data shows average US CPMs fluctuate between $6.50 and $7.60. You'll see rates start around $4 for transit screens and scale up to $25 or more for high-impact venue placements like airports or landmark video walls.

Your development team can write scripts that read the floor CPMs and execute the buy without human intervention. An AI agent working for your agency can evaluate these pricing tiers, select the venues that match your target audience, and trigger the purchase through the API. The global programmatic DOOH market reached $916.2 million in 2023 and is projected to grow at a 31.5% compound annual growth rate through 2030, driven by this automation. Your systems can adjust bids based on time of day, weather conditions, or live foot traffic, optimizing your spend dynamically. For example, a quick-service restaurant chain can deploy an AI agent that monitors local temperature APIs and automatically increases bids on DOOH screens near their locations when the weather gets hot, promoting cold beverages. The agent uses the API to execute these private marketplace deals instantly, securing the inventory only when the real-world conditions match the campaign strategy.

Measuring the physical audience

Because multiple people view a single physical screen, the industry uses an impression multiplier to estimate the volume of viewers per individual ad play. In the US, Geopath provides the audited audience measurement currency used to calculate these multiplier metrics. Traditional systems rely on traffic counts, mobile panels, and modeled impressions to establish a baseline for how many people likely saw the board.

Today's hardware actively evaluates the surrounding audiences and their smartphones. When the lens spots a viewer, the display logs their estimated age range, gender, primary emotional expression, total presence time, and how long they actually watched the content. Your API integration can ingest this direct measurement data to grade the performance of your programmatic buys, moving past models to evaluate 811,776 ad plays measured by camera. The industry infrastructure maintains 400 days of history kept on the sources the data products are built from, giving your data science teams a deep historical baseline to train their bidding algorithms.

Managing creatives programmatically

Before your automated systems can bid on a screen, the publisher must approve the advertisement. Standard APIs provide endpoints for your developers to submit image and video files directly to the creative library, joining the 225,203 creatives in the library. A consumer banking client launching new credit card offers across multiple cities can programmatically upload dozens of creative variations tailored to different neighborhoods.

The API handles the file transfer, assigns tracking IDs, and checks the asset against the hardware specifications of the target screens. Your software can then poll the endpoint to check the approval status, ensuring your AI agents bid on inventory where the creative is cleared to play. This automated asset pipeline eliminates the manual email chains traditionally required to traffic out-of-home campaigns.

Accessing the inventory pipelines

You access these automated API pipelines through DOOH exchanges and demand-side platforms that aggregate the fragmented physical screen market into a single endpoint. When you integrate your systems with these pipelines, you tap into a massive footprint of digital displays without needing to negotiate individual publisher contracts.

You can evaluate 757,000+ screens reachable through Trillboards and 29,000+ screens registered on our own network. Your developers can pull live availability, submit creatives for approval, and monitor campaign pacing entirely through code. This infrastructure gives your AI agents the reach they need to execute national campaigns while maintaining strict programmatic control over every dollar spent. By treating physical screens as programmable infrastructure, your brand achieves the scale of broadcast media with the accountability of direct-response software.

Sources

Related on Trillboards

Plan this on Trillboards

Developers build on the OpenAPI reference, and advertisers sign up here. Your AI agent can find the products and buy them over the Trillboards MCP server. Plan it on live inventory to see the screens, weekly views and effective CPM for the audience you pick.

Frequently asked questions

Do digital billboards support video creatives?: You can upload full motion video files to most digital out of home networks. Standard programmatic specifications accept common video formats, allowing your creative team to deploy television commercials or social media assets directly to pedestrian kiosks and large format spectaculars in major urban centers.
How fast do programmatic screen buys execute?: Your automated systems can bid on and secure physical screen inventory in milliseconds. The open real time bidding protocol processes the transaction instantly, meaning your advertisement can appear on a street level display moments after your software determines the location meets your current campaign criteria.
Can developers test the bidding infrastructure first?: Engineering teams usually access sandbox environments provided by demand side platforms to validate their code. These testing endpoints let your developers confirm that their JSON payloads format correctly and that their automated agents handle bid responses properly before you commit real advertising budgets to a campaign.
What happens if a screen loses internet connection?: Displays cache your creative assets locally to ensure smooth playback even during network interruptions. If a board goes offline, the hardware continues playing the scheduled loop and stores the play logs internally. The system uploads the complete delivery record once the connection restores.
Do physical screens play sound with the ads?: Most roadside and transit displays operate without audio to comply with local municipal regulations. However, you will find sound enabled inventory in specific venue categories like bars, gyms, and gas stations where the environment supports an audio visual experience for a captive audience.

Plan it

Open the planner in the planner to see the screens, the weekly views and the price before you book, or browse the audience catalogue.