Specs and best-practice guides only get you so far. At some point it's more useful to look at what brands have actually done with programmatic DOOH, what tactics they used, and what results they reported, rather than reading another list of features to look for. The seven campaigns below span retail, fintech, travel, sports nutrition, and public safety, pulled from published case studies across the industry.
Hellmann's (Unilever) - Buenos Aires
Unilever ran a two-month programmatic DOOH campaign across Buenos Aires for its Hellmann's mayonnaise lineup, partnering with Kinesso and Taggify to place creative across LED billboards, totems, and shopping displays in high-traffic areas. By extending the campaign's duration and concentrating placements where audiences actually spent time, the brand reportedly generated 11 million impressions, one of the more frequently cited examples of programmatic DOOH used at scale for a mainstream consumer packaged goods brand rather than a tech or luxury advertiser.
Michael Kors - Berlin and Hamburg
Michael Kors placed premium DOOH creative across airports, malls, and luxury shopping districts in two German cities, targeting shoppers in exactly the kind of high-dwell-time, high-intent environments premium retail brands look for. The campaign reportedly generated 14 million impressions alongside measurable brand lift, an example of using placement quality over sheer volume of screens, the same principle we cover in our piece on common programmatic DOOH campaign mistakes, specifically the mistake of buying reach instead of buying a moment.
Brex - San Francisco Product Launch
Fintech company Brex launched a new product with a hyper-targeted OOH campaign concentrated in San Francisco, combining digital panels, transit shelters, and unusual creative stunts rather than a broad citywide buy. The reported result was a 312% over-goal signup rate, a reminder that a tightly scoped, creatively distinctive local campaign can outperform a much larger, more generic one, particularly for a product launch aimed at a specific, geographically concentrated audience.
Delta Air Lines and Equinox - Los Angeles
Delta partnered with Equinox gyms in Los Angeles to promote a jet lag recovery workout program aimed at frequent travelers, combining static digital billboards with programmatic DOOH placements. Beyond the direct campaign metrics, the partnership generated substantial earned media coverage, illustrating a secondary benefit of a well-targeted, well-conceived DOOH campaign: press and social pickup that extends reach well beyond the paid media buy itself.
MilkPEP - NYC Marathon
The dairy industry's marketing arm sponsored female marathon runners during the NYC Marathon, pairing geotargeted OOH with digital activations to position milk as a performance recovery drink. The campaign reportedly lifted ad recall by five percentage points, a useful example of tying DOOH placement to a real, time-bound event rather than running static creative on an ordinary rotation. Event-tied campaigns like this depend heavily on precise dynamic creative optimization to make sure the right message shows during the right window.
The Weather-Triggered Beverage Campaign
One of the more frequently referenced examples of conditional DOOH creative involved a major beverage brand configuring its programmatic buy so that ads only appeared in specific locations, and only once the air temperature climbed above roughly 19°C. The logic is straightforward and effective: a cold drink advertised on a cold day is wasted budget, while the same creative shown the moment conditions actually call for it meets the audience at a genuinely relevant point rather than an arbitrary one. This is the exact mechanism behind trigger-based creative we cover in more depth in our guide to weather and time-triggered dynamic creative.
FBI Fugitive Alert — Texas
Not every notable DOOH use case is commercial. The FBI used digital billboards to support a high-profile fugitive search in Texas, and the real-time messaging reportedly contributed to a quick arrest through community tips. It's an unusual entry on a list otherwise built from brand campaigns, but it's a genuine demonstration of what digital screens make possible that static print never could: creative that updates within hours in response to a real, unfolding situation, not weeks later once new posters are printed and installed.
What These Campaigns Actually Have in Common
None of these results came from simply buying more impressions. Each one paired a specific, well-chosen placement strategy (event timing, weather conditions, hyperlocal geography, premium dwell-time locations) with creative built for that specific context, and each one had a clear way to report what happened afterward. That last part matters more than it might seem: a campaign that can't demonstrate its own result, through proper attribution and measurement, doesn't get to become a case study anyone points to later, regardless of how well it actually performed. If you're planning your own campaign and want the creative side to hold up under the same kind of scrutiny, it's worth reviewing our creative specs and ad formats guide before your first placement goes live.
For more published case studies across a wider range of industries and markets, MW's case study library and AdQuick's breakdown of high-performing programmatic DOOH campaigns are both worth reading in full.