US study finds OOH delivers $7.97 in marginal profit ROI as DOOH adoption triples

New research shows that OOH media delivers strong bottom-line results, with 89% of investing brands seeing profitable returns. Driven by digital out-of-home (DOOH) adoption tripling over the past year, the channel continues to expand its advertiser base, proving its value as an essential, high-return component of the modern marketing mix. 

These findings published by next-generation marketing mix SaaS platform Keen Decision Systems, and OOH data and technology platform Accretive, show that while OOH accounts for a small portion of overall media investment, marginal ROI (mROI) indicates that it offers the greatest return on the next dollar spent, with profits posting stronger returns even from last year’s report.  

Over the last year, optimized marginal profit ROI for OOH is $7.97, up from $7.58 in 2025. This metric reflects what the next dollar spent will return in the most optimal week for investment. Looking at just profit ROI, OOH generated $1.48, coming in higher than social, display and partnerships.  

Digital Drives Adoption Growth  

Broader OOH adoption has increased in the past year, growing from 21.3% to 25.2%, fueled by a larger pool of advertisers and DOOH-specific adoption rising from 1.1% to 3.4%.  

On average, DOOH performed similarly to OOH as a whole, with the median ROI from DOOH coming in at $1.76 compared to $1.78 for the broader channel. However, it comes with a wider range of efficiency as advertisers navigate how best to execute in this channel. The 75th percentile of DOOH advertisers sees ROI of $3.37 versus under a dollar for the 25th percentile.   

“The rapid acceleration of DOOH proves brands recognize the power of real-world exposure, yet the wide range in returns shows that execution strategy largely determines success,” said Craig Benner, Chief Executive Officer at Accretive. “Treating out-of-home as a nice-to-have tacked onto a generic omnichannel DSP strategy, buying it like a cheap impression on the open web, severely diminishes its impact. Proper DOOH execution requires real audience planning, purpose-built data, and rigorous outcomes measurement.”  

Large Enterprises Lead Adoption Curves 

The analysis also found that OOH’s share of total media spend rose from 1.3% to 1.6%, with a pronounced divide in adoption by company size. 

Fifty-eight percent of brands generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue leverage OOH in their media mix. Conversely, only 10% of businesses under $50 million in revenue currently invest in the channel, pointing to substantial untapped opportunity for mid-market and emerging brands to capture market share. 

“Concentrating marketing dollars entirely within saturated digital inventory creates diminishing returns and inflates acquisition costs,” said Justin Jefferson, VP of Insights at Keen Decision Systems. “Enterprise leaders already understand that real-world media diversification provides scalable headroom for profit. Expanding the media mix to include channels like out-of-home delivers the balance brands need to drive sustained, incremental growth.”