How to price DOOH inventory

Pricing is the hardest recurring decision a digital out-of-home operator makes. Screens are perishable inventory - an unsold day is revenue gone forever - yet racing to the bottom trains advertisers to wait for discounts. This guide walks through the practical pricing structure most working operators land on: a tiered rate card, period-based rates, disciplined discounting, and simple yield rules. (Setting up your first screens? Our roadmap for starting a DOOH screen network comes first.)

Start with the unit: what are you actually selling?

Digital screens sell share of a loop, not the whole screen. A typical setup: the screen runs a repeating loop (say 60 seconds) divided into slots (say 6 slots of 10 seconds). An advertiser buying one slot gets one play per loop cycle - one sixth of the screen's attention.

So your sellable unit is a slot-day: one slot, on one screen, for one day. Everything else - weekly campaigns, network bundles, multi-screen packages - is built from slot-days. When you know how many slot-days a screen has (slots per loop times days) and what each is worth, occupancy and yield stop being vague feelings and become numbers.

The three pricing models

1. Period-based (day / week / month rates)

The default for direct sales, and the right starting point for most independent operators. You quote a price for a slot on a screen per day, per week, or per month. It is easy for a local advertiser to understand, easy to invoice, and does not require audience measurement. Its weakness is that it prices time, not attention - a slot on a busy screen and a quiet one cost the same unless you tier them (see below).

2. CPM (impression-based)

CPM prices per thousand impressions: price = (impressions / 1000) x CPM rate. It is the language of media agencies and programmatic platforms, and it prices attention directly. But it only works if you have credible impression data per screen - from footfall sensors, mobility data, or a measurement partner. Without that data, quoting CPM is guesswork dressed up as precision. Most small and mid-size operators run period-based pricing for direct deals and add CPM only when agencies or programmatic demand it.

3. Share of voice (SOV)

SOV pricing sells a percentage of the loop rather than a fixed slot - "you get 25% of this screen." It is really period pricing expressed differently, and it is useful when advertisers care about dominance ("I want half the screen during December"). Price it as a multiple of your slot rate.

Build a tiered rate card

Uniform pricing across a network is the most common mistake in DOOH. Your best location might be worth five times your weakest, and one price either gives your prime screens away or makes your quiet ones unsellable. The fix is simple tiering:

• Tier A - prime locations: highest footfall, longest dwell, strongest audience. Your anchor rates.
• Tier B - solid everyday locations. Typically priced at 50-70% of Tier A.
• Tier C - developing or low-traffic sites. Priced to sell, and useful as bundle sweeteners.

Set a day rate per slot for each tier (or each screen, once the network is small enough to know intimately). Then derive week and month rates with built-in commitment discounts. A widely used structure:

The exact ratios are yours to choose - the principle is that longer commitments earn a real discount, but a disciplined one that you set once, rather than one negotiated from scratch on every deal.

A worked example

Illustrative numbers, to make the mechanics concrete. Say a Tier A screen runs a 60-second loop with 6 slots, and you set the day rate at 40 per slot:

• Day: 1 slot = 40
• Week: 5.5x day rate = 220 (instead of 280 for 7 separate days)
• Month: 17x day rate = 680 (instead of 1,200 for 30 separate days)
• Full-screen day (all 6 slots, 100% SOV): 6 x 40 = 240, or slightly less as a dominance bundle

The screen's monthly capacity is 6 slots x 30 days = 180 slot-days. If month-long deals average 680 per slot, a fully sold screen yields about 4,080 a month. Now occupancy has a price: every empty slot-day on that screen is roughly 22-40 of unrealised revenue depending on deal length. That is the number that should drive your discounting decisions.

Discounting with discipline

Discounts are a tool, not a reflex. Three rules keep them from eroding your rate card:

1. Discount for commitment, not for asking. Longer durations, multi-screen packages, and prepayment are legitimate reasons. "The client pushed back" is not - that is what Tier B and C inventory is for.
2. Protect the invoice price of Tier A. If you must sweeten a deal, add value (extra screens, bonus days, an upgrade) rather than cutting the headline rate. Advertisers remember prices; they renegotiate from the last one you gave them.
3. Track realised rate versus rate card. If your deals consistently close 30% under card, your card is fiction - either raise your discipline or lower the card and defend it. What matters is that the number on the card means something.

Simple yield rules

You do not need airline-grade revenue management. Two signals cover most decisions:

• High occupancy (screens mostly full): stop discounting, raise Tier A day rates, and let marginal demand spill to B and C. Fullness is pricing power.
• Low occupancy on specific screens: discount those screens (or bundle them free-ish into bigger deals) rather than cutting network-wide rates. Unsold slot-days expire worthless, so late, targeted discounts on specific inventory beat early, broad ones.

Review occupancy and realised rates monthly (our KPI guide covers both, with formulas). The operators who compound are the ones who treat the rate card as a living document - adjusted deliberately a few times a year - rather than something rebuilt ad hoc inside every proposal.

Common mistakes

• One price for every screen. Underprices your best inventory, overprices your worst.
• Quoting CPM without impression data. Agencies will ask where the number comes from; "estimated" is not an answer that survives procurement.
• Negotiating every deal from zero. Without a rate card, every proposal is a fresh argument and your pricing drifts wherever the last conversation went.
• Discounting the headline rate of prime screens. It resets the anchor for every future deal with that advertiser.
• Not knowing your unsold slot-days. If you cannot see open inventory and what it is worth, you cannot decide when a discount is rational.

Frequently asked questions

Should I publish my DOOH rate card?

Most operators keep the full rate card private and quote per proposal, which preserves room to negotiate and to adjust rates by season and demand. Publishing indicative starting prices can still be useful for filtering out advertisers whose budget will never fit.

How big should the discount be for a monthly booking versus a daily rate?

A common structure is to set the weekly rate around 5-6x the day rate and the monthly rate around 15-20x the day rate, so longer commitments earn a meaningful but disciplined discount. The exact ratios should reflect your occupancy: the fuller your screens, the smaller the discount needs to be.

When does CPM pricing make sense for a DOOH operator?

CPM (cost per thousand impressions) makes sense once you have credible audience data per screen, or when you sell through programmatic channels that expect impression-based pricing. For direct sales without audience measurement, period-based pricing (day, week, month) is simpler, easier to explain, and easier to invoice.

Should every screen in my network have the same price?

No. Location quality varies enormously - footfall, dwell time, audience profile, and competition all differ per site. Uniform pricing underprices your best screens and overprices your weakest. Tier your screens (for example A, B, C locations) and set day rates per tier or per screen.