Executive Summary

• Standardize exposure measurement and metadata to enable reliable programmatic transactions.
• Implement an integration pattern that isolates vendor-specific adapters and centralizes signal quality checks.
• Align commercial models with measurement guarantees and operational SLAs to reduce friction for buyers.

Applicability

This playbook is intended for product, operations, and engineering teams at DOOH publishers, networks, and DSP/SSP partners pursuing programmatic enablement, measurement standardization, or industry adoption efforts.

Problems Addressed and Desired Outcomes

• Inconsistent exposure metrics and metadata — objective: a common measurement schema enabling cross-vendor comparability.
• Fragmented integration patterns — objective: a repeatable adapter-based integration architecture.
• Buyer hesitation due to measurement uncertainty — objective: operational SLAs (PoP timeliness) and transparent validation.

Playbook: Six-Step Approach

1. Define Measurement Baseline — adopt or reference an industry measurement standard (see DOOH Exposure Methodology Standard), explicitly document how "plays" convert to impressions (Impression Multipliers), and map to OpenRTB 2.6 DOOH fields where applicable.
2. Inventory & Metadata Audit — catalogue inventory fields, timestamps, geolocation fidelity, and device identifiers required for measurement and bidding.
3. Creative Workflow Strategy — define how creatives are ingested, transcoded, approved, and scheduled so that programmatic bids produce playable ads on target devices (see appendix for manifest and webhook examples).
   • Ingest formats & manifest: supported formats (HTML5, MP4, WebM, JPEG/PNG/AVIF), required metadata (creative_id, advertiser_id, duration, loop, safe_zones, aspect, target_devices).
   • Transcoding rules: target resolution buckets, bitrate recommendations, aspect-ratio rules, and automated fallback generation (MP4 + poster image).
   • Device capability matrix: map CMS/vendor capabilities (e.g., Broadsign, Daktronics) to supported formats and fallbacks.
   • Creative validation: automated checks (file type, duration, dimensions, safe-zone margins, basic legibility/contrast heuristics) with machine-readable rejection reasons.
   • Approval workflow: publish-before-bid flow where creative_id + manifest are submitted to a publisher approval API and only "approved" creatives are eligible in auctions.
   • Ops tooling: dashboard views for creative rejections, remediation steps, and certification badges for operational readiness.
   • Scheduling & TTL: ensure creatives include max-play-duration, regional exclusions, and deterministic fallbacks for unsupported displays.
4. Step 4 — Adapter-Based Integration — implement vendor adapters that normalize delivery into a central schema and surface error budgets to downstream systems.
5. Step 5 — Validation and QA — instrument a validation pipeline that checks sample impressions, match rates, and attribution signals before accepting inventory for programmatic sale.
6. Step 6 — Commercial Alignment — develop commercial terms that focus on SLAs (uptime, Proof-of-Play timeliness), data delivery guarantees, and dispute resolution processes; avoid direct financial liability tied to third-party audience counts unless measurement providers are contractually in scope.
7. Step 7 — Enablement and Adoption — create clear onboarding docs, test suites, and a certification process to accelerate buyer and partner adoption.

Integration & Measurement Checklist

• Publish schema documentation and example payloads for each inventory type.
• Provide a sample dataset for buyers to validate matching and attribution workflows.
• Define an error budget and a remediation SLA for data quality incidents.
• Implement automated nightly validations and summary dashboards for signal health.
• Create a certification badge that indicates readiness for programmatic trading.
• Include creative manifest examples and an approval webhook spec so buyers and ops teams can validate creative playability before auctioning inventory.

Appendix: Creative Manifest & Approval Webhook (Examples)

Use these as minimal examples to standardize creative ingestion, approval, and playability checks.

Sample Creative Manifest (JSON)

{
  "creative_id": "cr-12345",
  "advertiser_id": "adv-678",
  "title": "Spring Sale 30%",
  "formats": [
    { "type": "mp4", "src": "https://cdn.example.com/cr-12345-1080p.mp4", "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "bitrate_kbps": 3500 },
    { "type": "poster", "src": "https://cdn.example.com/cr-12345.jpg", "width": 1920, "height": 1080 }
  ],
  "duration_seconds": 15,
  "loop": false,
  "safe_zones": { "top_px": 120, "bottom_px": 120, "left_px": 80, "right_px": 80 },
  "target_devices": ["broadsign:linux_v2","generic:mp4_only"],
  "created_at": "2025-12-11T12:00:00Z"
}

Approval Webhook (Minimal API Spec)

Publishers should expose or accept a webhook that returns an approval state. Example request/response:

POST /api/creative/approval
Request JSON:
{
  "creative_id": "cr-12345",
  "manifest_url": "https://cdn.example.com/cr-12345-manifest.json",
  "submitted_by": "partner-system"
}

200 OK Response:
{
  "creative_id": "cr-12345",
  "status": "approved",    // approved | rejected | pending
  "approved_at": "2025-12-11T12:05:00Z",
  "reason": null
}

If rejected, return status: "rejected" with a machine-readable "reason_code" and human "reason" for ops remediation.

Illustrative Example

Example: A network standardized impression metadata and introduced a validation pipeline that reduced integration incidents by 60% and increased buyer conversion for programmatic deals by 35%. The standardized measurement approach also enabled cross-network comparability that supported higher CPMs for certified inventory.

Related research and standards are available on the Research page.

Resources and Next Steps

• DOOH Exposure Methodology Standard — measurement baseline and references.
• Return to Playbooks — overview and related playbooks.
• Contact — for bespoke implementation support.

Engagement

To discuss programmatic enablement, measurement standardization, or a pilot implementation, please contact [email protected] or schedule a meeting.