Getting Started
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In this video we’re going to go over how to create a basic campaign in a market like, let’s say, Los Angeles.
To start, we’re going to create a new campaign by selecting the New Campaign button on the top right. For this example, let’s just use a large brand like Coca-Cola. Go ahead and type in the campaign name. I’ll just say Coke April 2025.
I’m going to add them as an advertiser because we haven’t used them yet in this account. I know it’s Coca-Cola, but I’m just going to type in Coke for now. In order to add the advertiser, you type in the name and hit enter. Now that it’s added, it will appear in the dropdown. Additionally, we can put their website as coke.com, and every time I select the dropdown moving forward, it will automatically input the advertiser domain after the campaign is saved.
Now that we have that in there, we’re going to go through our first step in planning a campaign, which is the geo target or the area. There are lots of different ways, like we reviewed in a previous video, to choose the area that you’d like to advertise in. A very common way in the US is by DMA, so we’ll go ahead and use that today.
If you scroll down to more geo targets, you can type in or scroll and find the DMA. Let’s use a popular one: Los Angeles, California. Go ahead and type that in and select the name, and it will pop up in my geographic areas. If I wanted to choose multiple, I could do the same thing. You can use multiple strategies at once, so you don’t have to stick with DMAs only. For this example, we’re going to stay on the DMA target. Let’s say New York would be another option if I wanted to add more.
Every time I select something, you can see the key metrics bars loading. We’re going to stick with one specific location today just for this example, but please feel free to explore and mix and match. I’m going to remove New York by selecting the X on the right.
Right now this is showing me the key metrics information for all of Los Angeles and the DMA. If I go to the map, you’ll see it will take me to Los Angeles. All the dots are going to be in the Los Angeles DMA. It covers a pretty large space and there are definitely a lot of screens.
It’s really great to be able to narrow down a campaign as best as possible, keeping it focused on delivering impactful impressions instead of spreading across many devices at a very low frequency. A lot of campaign planning is balancing the budget and flight dates with the amount of devices. We like to say the more narrow and focused the campaign, the better the results.
That being said, I’m going to remove the map view for now and go back down. The way to narrow that down further is by selecting a couple venue types or just one. For this example, we’ll stick with one or two venue types popular in digital out of home, such as digital billboards. You can scroll or type it in, and once you select it, it will pop up in the selected venue types.
Another example we can use is urban panels. I’ll type that in and add it as well. Once I scroll up, I can see the key metrics bar has changed to reflect all the information I’ve input so far.
If you click the Details button for more information, you’ll see the name of both venue types, the amount of screens available for each, the average CPM, max spend per month, and max impressions per month. The same applies to geofence or geo targets, showing the breakdown by geotarget and all the different media owners in the campaign.
You might come across system messages while planning campaigns that give you additional insight. This message says 102 screens are temporarily unavailable and may not play your content. Being programmatic, devices may not always be available. You’ll always get a notification if some are not currently active.
You can choose to exclude these, which is what we recommend if your flight starts soon. If your flight starts further out, like a month or a quarter, it’s fine to leave them in since they may come back online. For this example, I’ll exclude them. You can see the number of targetable screens went down.
Now moving along from the key metrics dropdown, I’ll go back to the main view. Now that we’ve selected our geo targets and venue types, we can move on to the next step, which is campaign details.
Whenever you reach a good stopping point in planning, I always recommend hitting the Save button so your work isn’t lost due to internet issues or accidentally exiting. It’s just good practice.
Now that the campaign is saved, we’ll move on to the budget and schedule. To add a budget, you must add a schedule first. Select Add Schedule. For this example, we’ll do a standard month, but you can be as specific as you’d like: one day, one week, a full year, anything in between.
Let’s select a month in the future. I’ll navigate to April and select April 1st as the start date, then April 30th as the end date. The number of campaign days updates accordingly.
You can also add a start time and end time. For monthly campaigns, the system automatically ends a little earlier to avoid billing and reporting crossing into the next month due to time zones. You can adjust this if needed, such as starting at 10:00 AM. You can also change the end time if needed.
You can add multiple schedules if you have a break in your flight. For this example, I’ll remove the extra schedule.
Next, we’ll add the budget. You can change the currency if needed. For this example, we’ll use $100,000. You can be as specific as needed, including cents. The system automatically calculates the daily budget based on the number of days in your flight, and the metrics bar updates.
Once the budget is entered, additional scheduling features unlock, such as dayparting. Dayparting allows you to choose exactly when your ad plays and prevents it from running outside of those times. This helps avoid wasting spend during low-impact hours.
For digital billboards, a common setup is something like 7:00 or 8:00 AM through 8:00 PM. You can get as granular as you want, including multiple time ranges per day, and you can select or deselect days of the week. For this example, we’ll keep it simple and run all days from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM.
This selection is currently applied only to digital billboards. Urban panels still show all days, all times. If you want the same settings across all venue types, you can apply the settings to all. You can also customize them per venue type if needed.
You can also choose the target plays per hour and confirm the time zone. The system defaults to your local time zone, but since this campaign is in Los Angeles, I’ll switch to Pacific Time. If your campaign spans multiple time zones, this is mainly for billing; dayparting still applies locally per device.
The system may prompt you to confirm time zone adjustments to prevent spend spilling into the next month. I’ll accept that, and the system adjusts automatically.
The key metrics bar reloads with the updated data. This is another good time to save the campaign.
If you want to assign specific budgets to markets, media owners, venue types, or even individual devices, you can do that in the budget allocation section. Because this is programmatic DOOH, the campaign typically distributes spend fluidly across available devices, similar to social campaigns. Budget allocation is optional and used for more advanced strategies such as soft targets or not-to-exceed limits. For this example, we won’t use it.
Next is target audiences. Coca-Cola is a broad brand, but if you have specific audience types, you can select them here. For example, we might target moms with young children and lower household income. You can type to search or browse categories such as demographics, age ranges, children in home, household income, and food and drink preferences.
You can get as granular as you want, or you can leave this section empty. It’s completely optional. All selected audiences appear on the right, and you can remove any by clicking the X.
One thing to note is that audience targeting does not reduce the number of devices. Instead, it prioritizes devices that index higher for your selected audience when bidding.
Next is strategy and tactics. These optional fields allow you to write out your campaign strategy and tactics, which will appear on the campaign plan and share page. You can enter as much detail as you’d like. I’ll add a brief sample just to demonstrate.
Moving on to ad content, there’s not much required during planning. We recommend keeping condensed content sizes selected, which reduces the number of creative sizes needed without affecting aspect ratios. You can see how many ad sizes are required and how many screens support each format.
Lastly are PMP deals. This section is mainly for managed services, where private marketplace deals may be assigned based on budget and negotiations. It’s not required during planning.
I’ll save the campaign one more time. All of our preliminary selections are now complete.
From here, we can view the map to see all selected screens. If you notice a device you don’t want, you can select it and exclude it. Excluded devices appear in the excluded inventory list, and you can always add them back if you change your mind.
You can also select devices to view more details or download a device list showing latitude, longitude, device name, and performance metrics for all devices in the campaign.
This campaign is a basic overview of planning a campaign using DMA targeting, flexible dates, and budget. Planning a campaign is always a balancing act between dates, budget, location, and number of devices. You don’t want so many devices that your budget can’t support effective frequency.
If you have questions about strategy, tactics, or feasibility, please reach out.
Now that the campaign is saved, if we exit the campaign, you’ll see summary information like dates, budget, and estimated CPM. You can select the three dots and choose View Campaign Plan.
This brings up the campaign plan, which is the client-facing view. It’s non-editable and shows the campaign details, strategy, and an interactive map. You can also view images of the screens.
This is what we call the campaign share page. It’s what we share with clients so they can review campaigns without edit access. The link stays the same even if you revise the campaign; clients just need to refresh to see updates.
That was our first simple campaign build. If you have any questions, please reach out. We’ll continue creating more videos covering additional topics.