What is a good price per ad slot sold for programmatic DOOH campaigns?

Short answer

A good price per ad slot in programmatic DOOH is $0.20 to $1.00+ for standard urban and transit screens, rising to $20 to $50+ for premium landmark locations. Converted to CPM, most programmatic DOOH inventory falls between $5 and $25, competitive with social and CTV when attention and brand safety are factored in.

What programmatic DOOH actually clears at

EV charging screens have no transacted marketplace volume to report. Roughly a third of DOOH spend on the AdQuick marketplace transacts programmatically.

Source: AdQuick marketplace programmatic transactions (completed plans), July 2025 to June 2026. CPMs are delivered-impression CPMs computed from delivered ad plays, not full-loop traffic, and are not directly comparable to advertiser-share CPMs on directly booked digital inventory.

What per-slot prices actually look like

A price per ad slot, sometimes called a per-play price, is the cost to display one advertisement on a digital screen for a defined duration, typically 10 to 30 seconds. Unlike a static billboard rental, programmatic DOOH lets buyers purchase individual plays with granular targeting and real-time optimization.

Standard urban panels, mall screens, transit displays, and roadside digital boards generally run from $0.20 to $1.00+ per play, depending on location, time of day, and targeting sophistication. Urban panel slots can start as low as approximately $0.23 per play. At the other end of the spectrum, premium or landmark locations command $20 to $50+ per play, reflecting high foot traffic, cultural prominence, and limited supply. Times Square slots, for example, have been reported at around $40 per play.

Several factors push prices toward the higher end of these ranges: city-center locations with dense footfall, peak hours such as rush hour or lunch, large-format or high-resolution screens, and added targeting layers like audience segments, geo-fencing, or weather triggers.

How to convert per-slot prices into CPM equivalents

CPM (cost per mille, or cost per thousand impressions) is the standard unit for comparing media across channels. To translate a per-play price into CPM:

CPM = (Cost per play / Impressions per play) x 1,000

Impressions per play come from audience measurement data: footfall counts, dwell time, and audience profiles supplied by the DOOH platform or a third-party data provider.

Two examples illustrate how the math works:

• A $0.23 slot delivering 1,500 impressions: CPM = (0.23 / 1,500) x 1,000 = $0.15
• A $40 Times Square slot with 40,000 impressions: CPM = (40 / 40,000) x 1,000 = $1.00

These examples show that a high per-play price can translate into a modest CPM when a screen delivers large audiences. The reverse is also true: a cheap slot in a low-traffic location can produce a surprisingly high CPM.

For a full campaign, multiply cost per play by the number of plays to get total spend, multiply impressions per play by the number of plays to get total impressions, then apply the same formula.

How programmatic DOOH CPMs compare to other channels

Placing DOOH CPMs alongside other digital channels helps determine whether a given price is reasonable:

A DOOH CPM in the $10 to $20 range is generally considered competitive, particularly when the buy includes verified playbacks and the ability to measure offline outcomes. Unlike open-web display, DOOH carries no ad fraud risk and no viewability uncertainty: a verified play is a real impression on a physical screen.

For performance-oriented campaigns, CPM is often secondary to cost per incremental outcome. Reported benchmarks put the cost per incremental store visit at approximately $0.82 and the cost per incremental purchase at approximately $5.75. These figures compare favorably to typical social media cost-per-acquisition ranges of $15 to $40, suggesting DOOH can deliver efficient business outcomes even when its raw CPM appears higher than display.

Practical benchmarks at a glance

If your campaign's pricing and outcomes align with or improve on these figures, the price per slot is likely sound in the current market. A higher per-slot price in a well-measured, high-traffic environment can be more cost-effective than cheaper inventory with low visibility and no measurement.

How AdQuick handles programmatic DOOH pricing

programmatic DOOH on AdQuick gives buyers access to screens across urban, transit, retail, and landmark environments with transparent CPM-based pricing and audience measurement built into the platform. Campaigns can be planned and activated against verified impression data, making it straightforward to apply the CPM formula above and benchmark a buy against the ranges in this article. Attribution tools let performance marketers track incremental store visits and conversions, so the cost-per-outcome metrics that matter most are available alongside raw CPM figures.