OOH Just Had Its Biggest Quarter Ever. The Next Era Will Be Experiential.

Digital out-of-home advertising and holographic AI experiences representing the next era of OOH

U.S. OOH revenue has crossed $3 billion in a single quarter for the first time. The bigger story is what brands are increasingly demanding from physical media.

Out-of-home advertising has just crossed a significant milestone.

In the second quarter of 2026, U.S. OOH advertising revenue reached a record $3.16 billion, increasing 10.7% year over year and passing the $3 billion mark in a single quarter for the first time, according to the Out of Home Advertising Association of America.

The growth was not isolated to one category or advertiser. It was broad, technology-led and increasingly digital. More importantly, it points towards a future in which OOH is not simply a screen or a billboard, but a more dynamic, interactive and experiential medium.

The Numbers Behind OOH's Record Quarter

The headline figure is impressive, but the detail beneath it is even more revealing.

Digital OOH grew 18.5% year over year
DOOH now represents 38.4% of total U.S. OOH revenue
Transit advertising grew 23.9%
Place-based advertising grew 19.3%
Spending by the Computers, Software & Internet category increased 149.8%
73% of the top 100 OOH advertisers increased their spending
Technology and direct-to-consumer companies accounted for 30% of the top 100 advertisers

Apple, T-Mobile, Verizon, OpenAI and Amazon were all among the quarter's leading OOH advertisers. The medium is not merely holding onto legacy advertising budgets. Some of the world's most sophisticated technology businesses are actively increasing their investment in it.

Why Are Digital Companies Spending So Much Money in the Physical World?

There is an interesting contradiction at the centre of the latest figures. Some of the companies investing most aggressively in physical advertising are businesses built almost entirely around digital technology.

OpenAI is advertising outside the home. Apple is advertising outside the home. Amazon is advertising outside the home. Software and internet companies increased their OOH expenditure by almost 150% in a single year.

One reason is that reaching people digitally has become increasingly difficult. Consumers can scroll past sponsored posts, skip video advertisements, close pop-ups, mute brands, unsubscribe, install ad blockers and pay for premium subscriptions specifically to remove advertising.

The internet offers extraordinary targeting capabilities, but it also places brands inside one of the most competitive environments ever created for human attention. OOH changes the equation because it exists in the physical world around the consumer.

OOH Is Becoming a Technology Platform

For decades, most people associated out-of-home advertising with a relatively simple format: a large image, a short headline and a billboard. That model still works, but it now represents only part of what OOH can become.

Digital OOH allows campaigns to use motion, animation, live information, dynamic creative, changing messages and increasingly sophisticated audience strategies.

The numbers show how quickly advertisers are embracing that capability. Digital OOH grew 18.5% in Q2 2026, considerably faster than the 10.7% growth of the overall OOH market, and now generates 38.4% of total OOH revenue.

For comparison, digital represented 36.3% of OOH revenue in 2025. The direction is clear. OOH is becoming more dynamic, measurable, programmable and responsive.

From Digital OOH to Experiential OOH

If the first stage of OOH was static advertising, and the second stage was digital advertising, the next stage could increasingly be experiential advertising.

Instead of simply displaying a video on a screen, brands can create physical installations designed to make people stop. A product can appear holographically inside a display. A digital human can introduce a campaign. An AI avatar can answer questions about a product. A customer can interact with an experience rather than simply watching it.

That changes the role of the advertising surface. It is no longer simply somewhere to place an advertisement. It becomes an experience.

Attention Is Becoming the Real Currency

The fundamental challenge facing advertisers is increasingly not distribution. It is attention.

Almost any brand can publish a video, launch a social campaign or buy digital impressions. The difficult part is persuading someone to stop and pay attention.

Physical environments provide opportunities that digital-only channels cannot easily replicate. Scale matters. Movement matters. Location matters. Novelty matters. Increasingly, interaction matters too.

This is particularly relevant in shopping centres, airports, railway stations, retail destinations, exhibitions and entertainment venues, where audiences are already moving through environments in which brands want to influence behaviour.

It is notable that some of the strongest growth in OAAA's latest figures came from precisely these environments. Transit advertising increased 23.9%, making it the fastest-growing major OOH format during the quarter, while place-based advertising grew 19.3%.

AI Brands Are Discovering the Power of the Real World

There is another important signal inside the numbers. AI companies themselves are becoming major OOH advertisers.

OpenAI was among the leading technology brands investing in the medium during Q2, while companies including OpenAI and Genspark more than doubled their OOH investment compared with the previous year.

The trend was already visible earlier in the year. During Q1 2026, spending from Computers, Software and Internet Services advertisers increased 139% year over year, while AI companies including OpenAI, Genspark and Lambda emerged among the fastest-growing OOH advertisers.

The lesson is important. The more digital our economy becomes, the more valuable memorable physical experiences may become. AI and software products can be difficult to demonstrate because there is often no physical product to hold. A holographic or interactive installation can give an intangible technology a real-world presence.

What This Means for Retail Media

Retail environments could be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this transition. Retail media has traditionally been built around proximity to the point of purchase. A consumer sees a message while already inside an environment where they can act on it.

Add holographic displays, interactive content and AI into that equation and the possibilities expand significantly.

Imagine walking into a shopping centre and seeing a life-sized digital ambassador introducing a new product, an AI avatar answering questions about a launch, a holographic product demonstration running across multiple locations, or a campaign changing according to the time of day, location or promotion.

For advertisers, this creates something between advertising, retail media and brand experience. For property owners and media operators, it potentially creates new premium advertising inventory.

Nearly three quarters of America's 100 biggest OOH advertisers spent more in Q2 2026 than they had a year earlier. The money is entering the channel. The question becomes what the industry does with it.

Miirage and the Next Generation of OOH

At Miirage, we believe the opportunity is not simply to build another digital screen. It is to rethink what a physical advertising medium can actually do.

Miirage's holographic display technology can combine high-impact visual content with interactive experiences and AI-powered digital avatars, creating installations for shopping centres, retail locations, airports, exhibitions and other high-footfall destinations.

For brands, the objective is attention. For audiences, the experience should feel interesting enough to stop for. For location owners and media operators, the technology creates the possibility of adding a new type of premium digital inventory to physical locations.

This is why the latest OOH numbers matter beyond the advertising industry itself. They demonstrate that brands are increasing investment in physical media at the same time that physical media is becoming capable of doing substantially more.

OOH Is Not Going Backwards. It Is Evolving.

U.S. out-of-home advertising generated a record $9.46 billion during 2025. Then Q1 2026 reached a record $2.12 billion. Now Q2 has reached $3.16 billion, taking year-to-date OOH growth to 9.2%.

This is not the trajectory of an advertising medium becoming obsolete. It is the trajectory of one being reinvented.

Static OOH became digital OOH. Digital OOH is becoming data-driven, dynamic and increasingly programmatic. The next transition could be from displaying advertising to creating physical experiences around it.

Holographic displays. Interactive installations. AI avatars. Dynamic content. Connected retail experiences. Advertising that people do not simply see, but actively engage with.

The future of out-of-home advertising will not necessarily be defined by putting more screens into more places. It will be defined by making those physical spaces more valuable, more interactive and more memorable.

OOH just had the biggest quarter in its history. The most exciting part may be what comes next.