Dynamic digital out-of-home (DOOH) is one of those things that sounds complex until you see how it actually works. A creative that updates in real time based on live data, served on the right screen at just the right moment — built, targeted and activated all within a single workflow.
To show exactly what it looks like in practice, we reached out to a popular meteorologist and online influencer, Nick Kosir, with a simple proposition: what if your Monday forecast ran live on a billboard in Times Square?
Here’s how it came together.
DOOH has long been known for bold creative impact, but this campaign highlights how far the channel has evolved. Today, the strongest DOOH creative is built around movement, context and real-world impact. Our Creative Studio understands these nuances, designing ads meant to capture attention in these fleeting moments.
The brief was simple: build something that felt instantly recognizable to the audience, just at billboard scale. Doug Mason, who leads our U.S. Creative Studio, started where he always does: with the story behind the brand.
“When we started working on the concept, it was less about figuring out what would look good on a billboard and more about what would make the audience do a double take. We wanted someone scrolling past his instagram to see that billboard and immediately know it was him. Once we had that locked in, the data elements fell into place naturally.” Doug Mason, Director, Creative Studio, Americas
From there, the team thought through every detail, not just what information the creative would display, but how it would look and feel based on the actual conditions. A sunny forecast meant bright blue skies in the background. A cloudy day would have brought muted, grey tones. Check out all the possibilities with dynamic creative.
Dynamic creative isn’t multiple static files swapped in and out. It’s a single creative built with data elements baked in from the start, designed to read the current state of the world and update automatically every time it plays.
That’s where Nic Doelger, Software Engineer, came in. “Dynamic creative spares the need for countless files to manage and tedious revising throughout the campaign. We built one asset and connected it to the right data sources, letting the creative do the work from there. For this campaign, every time the ad played, it was pulling in the current weather forecast and day of the week.” Nic Doelger, Software Engineer at Vistar Media.
Connecting live weather data and day-of-week triggers into a single asset meant that when the ad displayed, it pulled in the current conditions in real time and rendered the correct variation for that exact moment on that exact screen. No manual updates. No separate files for every possible condition. Just one intelligent creative doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Getting a dynamic creative live on a specific screen in Times Square requires more than great design and clean code, but with Vistar Media, it’s more straightforward than most people expect.
Julia Schuster, Sr. Account Manager at Vistar Media, managed the activation from end to end. “A lot of people assume activating on a specific screen like this involves a ton of back and forth. But the workflow is really clean. We worked with Outfront to set up the PMP, built the campaign in Vistar’s DSP, uploaded the dynamic creative and it went straight to Outfront for approval. From there it was ready to go.” Julia Schuster, Sr. Account Manager at Vistar Media.
Day-of-week and time-of-day targeting ensured the ad served at exactly the right moment. Creative, data, inventory and approvals all managed within a single connected workflow.
The only thing left was to see it run. Hannah Lyder, Senior Marketing Manager at Vistar Media, headed to Times Square to capture the campaign in action, watching the weather forecast light up one of the biggest screens in the world.
“There’s nothing like it. You’re standing in the middle of Times Square, screens everywhere, thousands of people moving around… and then you look up and there it is. It’s one thing to work on something like this behind a laptop, it’s another to see it live. And honestly, there’s only one kind of advertising people stop to take selfies with. That’s how powerful it is and it never gets old.” Hannah Lyder, Senior Marketing Manager at Vistar Media.
People walking past, stopped. They looked up. Some pointed, some laughed and many pulled out their phones. A creative that was built to grab attention in one of the busiest, most ad-saturated environments did exactly that.
And it performed. Within a couple hours, the campaign delivered over 1.1 million impressions on a single placement. Check it out!
Now you know how it works. Dynamic creative for digital out-of-home is powerful, and Vistar is set up to support you however you prefer to work. Whether you’re activating fully self-service or alongside Vistar’s team, the process is the same: one connected workflow from creative to campaign.
And however you buy, directly through Vistar’s DSP or through an omnichannel DSP, dynamic creative is available within the workflows you already use. No platform switching. No separate process. Just dynamic DOOH, activated your way.