Why Out-Of-Home Advertising Continues To Succeed In The Age Of AI

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Last week, the Forbes CMO newsletter featured an interview with Adobe’s President of Digital Experience Business Anil Chakravarthy, where he talked about the importance of balancing AI-powered consumer experience with human intervention. A new report released last week from Press Ganey Forsta puts some hard numbers behind that advice, and shows that using too much AI and a deceptive customer experience can burn customer trust—an important commodity that can be easily lost.

The report found that nearly seven out of 10 U.S. customers are willing to share personal data with a brand to get better CX, and about the same number would pay more for a brand they trust. But that trust is fragile: 63% say they would walk away from a brand after just a couple of bad experiences.

While there’s no universal definition of what would turn off a customer, Press Ganey Forsta found that balancing human touchpoints and AI to improve service is important to retaining their trust. AI can quickly assemble customer data, and an AI-powered chatbot can also help talk through customer issues, but that isn’t necessarily what people want. The study found that more than half of people in the U.S. sought human interaction with their bank in the last three months. Customers also want to know when the interactions they have and the recommendations they receive are a result of AI. Nearly two out of five people said if they found out an e-commerce site used AI without disclosing it, they would either stop trusting it or stop shopping there altogether.

Trust, according to Press Ganey Forsta, implies that a website tells consumers how it’s using AI. It discloses all the ways it implements the technology, and tells customers how their data is being used. Trustworthy companies also personalize interactions in a way that makes sense, going farther than just putting a customer’s first name on an email. And service consistency across different touchpoints also helps customers know they can trust a brand—and come back again.

AI has forced many marketers to take another look at their playbooks, sometimes making drastic changes. But while AI chatbots scramble what brands have traditionally done to make customers notice them online, out-of-home advertising—things like billboards, bus ads and building murals—are always there. Out-of-home advertising has seen consistent growth since the pandemic, and I talked to Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA) President and CEO Anna Bager about its success story. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

This is the published version of Forbes’ CMO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief marketing officers and other messaging-focused leaders. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.

IN THE NEWS

Google has to share search data with its rivals and cannot make exclusive deals to be the default search engine on any devices or browsers, but the tech giant does not have to sell its Chrome browser, a federal judge ruled yesterday. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta handed down the punishment, after he ruled last year that Google had an illegal monopoly on online search.

Many analysts, critics and pundits believe that the decision—the first involving an online monopoly since a similar case against Microsoft 25 years ago—let Google get away with its illegal behavior. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said on X, “It’s like a defendant robbed a series of banks and the court verdict found them guilty, then sentenced them to probation under which they may continue robbing banks but must share data on how they rob banks with competing bank robbers.” Google’s shares surged more than 8% as investors cheered the ruling.

Mehta’s opinion states that the order was crafted based on the current situation. In the months since he ruled on the illegal monopoly, he wrote, generative AI has changed the way many people search for information. Google’s overwhelming search dominance may be eroded by itself, as more gen AI players come on the scene. In a statement, Google says the decision shows the drastic changes that are occurring: “This underlines what we’ve been saying since this case was filed in 2020: Competition is intense and people can easily choose the services they want.”

It’s unlikely that there will be many immediate changes to the use of tech in the wake of this order. Chrome remains in Google’s hands, and it’s not clear what data sharing will do for other traditional search companies. Existing deals between Google and devices and browsers still exist, and while the company may no longer have exclusivity, it can be in a premium place. The biggest changes to online behavior are what is to come—and Google’s dominance may fade in the generative AI world without any court-ordered changes.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

It’s somewhat ironic that the celebrity who unwittingly became the star of the unofficial test of AI video quality now has his own AI video scandal. Two years ago, a somewhat disturbing AI-generated video of Will Smith eating a bowl of spaghetti—which showed AI’s inability to make a convincing moving person or mimic how pasta looks—went viral. Today’s AI video generators can do a much better job, but a trained eye can still notice odd movements, unnatural lighting and glitches in these videos.

Fast-forward to the present, and Smith recently posted videos from his summer concert tour to YouTube that appear to have an AI-generated audience, writes Forbes senior contributor Edward Segal. A number of fans in the background are moving with a uniform motion, and some of the faces have noticeable distortions. The backlash to the videos was swift, with some people noting that Smith—who was a rap powerhouse decades ago, though is now more well-known as an actor—might not have the audience draw he assumed. PR pros told Segal the video looks inauthentic, which could damage trust in Smith moving forward.

Smith hasn’t directly responded to the accusations over the AI-generated concert videos yet. So far, the only response is a definitely-AI-generated concert video he posted to Instagram, in which the audience members all turn into cats.

STREAMING

Cable is the broadcast frontier of decades ago. Today’s most lucrative and desired deals are all with streaming services. But streaming is quickly going from an inexpensive way to get only what you want to a series of more pricey subscriptions. Because of the way contracts are negotiated, this year, a die-hard NFL fan who wants to see every game will have to pay more than $750 in streaming subscriptions, writes Forbes’ Mary Roeloffs. The NFL Sunday Ticket service will have many games, but Thursday Night Football is only available on Amazon Prime Video. Netflix will exclusively stream two games on Christmas, and a number of games will only be available on ESPN.

ON MESSAGE

Why Out-Of-Home Advertising Thrives In The Age Of AI

Out-of-home advertising has posted constant, significant growth since the Covid-19 pandemic (as well as in the years before that). According to the Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), out-of-home advertising revenue in Q2 2025 was $2.86 billion, representing 3% growth. I talked to OAAA President and CEO Anna Bager about why out-of-home is so successful—especially in today’s world of digital transition. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.

What makes an effective out-of-home ad right now?

Bager: It depends. With digital and programmatic, it’s the ability to be in the right place, at the right time, in front of the right audience. With digital, you can do that much faster. You can use data to better inform the messaging, and optimize and change things if they don’t work.

But you have to be in the right place at the right time, and that’s our expertise. We show up everywhere. It’s on the highway, it’s roadside, it’s in the subway, it’s on the buses or outside of the buses traveling through the city. It’s in the airport. It really depends what the advertiser is trying to do. But with smart thinking around out-of-home and location and context, that will help you be more efficient.

Creative is very important. No ad, no matter how well-placed, is ever going to be efficient if the creative isn’t right. For out-of-home, it’s especially important because it’s usually a larger message. It’s very eye-catching, therefore it has to be good. There shouldn’t be too many words. It should be something that’s interesting—ideally something that you want to share, which is another reason that out-of-home is a very strong platform. It’s very shareable and quickly can go viral. Then you get some free media through that: You just paid for one ad format, but you’ll see it explode in other platforms, too.

Technology has helped us, too. There’s incredible technological developments around better screens, better signage, anamorphic billboards—really cool, fun executions that stand out and are bigger and bolder than anything else. That’s something—depending on what it is that you want to say—that will help your ad be successful.

There are a lot of different things that you can do with out-of-home, and I think that’s the strength of the medium.

You said AI is more of an opportunity for out-of-home than other kinds of advertising. How does out-of-home work with AI?

The ability to use AI technology to process large data sets so we can better understand where our audiences are and when, and more sources to do better measurement is one area. I think it’s helping effectivize, it’s helping better understand our clients as we’re selling. It’s very interesting what you can do with it creatively. We’re still early days in figuring out all the areas we can apply it to, but it’s for sales, it’s for finance, it’s for all the different functions that a company has.

We don’t have as much of an issue as other types of publishers [and] platforms. If you look at TikTok and Instagram, they seem like they’re so visible and successful, and we think that those are the leaders in advertising. Whereas on the LLM [large language model], they don’t really show up. They’re not as visible. Today, it’s probably more a platform like Reddit or influencers that we might not even have heard of who have figured out how to program and game the system so that they get the name out.

It’s all about recommendation and influence, and we have that inherently because we’re location-based and contextual. We’re close to the store or the pharmacy or the hospital or the school, just in peoples’ everyday lives. We can do that without using technology and in a very safe and understandable way that I think most brands and agencies can relate to. So [AI] is a very different thing for us, and it’s more like how do we use it in the best way to become more efficient.

What are things that CMOs don’t know about out-of-home advertising that they should?

First of all, you can transact it programmatically. It’s not that hard to buy. You can use your own data to inform campaigns. It works really well when you combine it with other media formats. Let’s say you buy CTV ads. You may not know who they were served to, but you know where they were served. You can use out-of-home to retarget consumers, amplify and make your campaigns stronger.

There’s a great connection between mobile, social media and out-of-home, which means that you could get a lot more bang for the buck being in out-of-home.

And, more than anything else, consumers like out-of-home. They see the ads. They’re being influenced by them, they take action: either finding out more about the brand or actually making a purchase. The consumers who don’t like the ad, they just don’t pay attention to it.

One important thing: In a very polarized world that we live in today, consumers just go to and are just being served what they like. They’re not interested in learning about other things. If you like CNN, you’re going to go to CNN. You’re definitely not going to watch Fox. We are the one medium that just shows up, and it’s not really clear what we stand for. We can actually influence and move the “movable middle.” The consumers in the middle that sometimes can be really hard to reach, but that you still can influence and derive growth with, they pay attention to out-of-home.

COMINGS + GOINGS

  • Toy manufacturer Mattel promoted Roberto Stanichi as its first executive vice president and chief global brand officer, as part of a significant overhaul of brand and marketing operations. Stanichi has been with the firm for 20 years, most recently as head of vehicles and building sets. His transition coincides with the departure of EVP and Chief Brand Officer Lisa McKnight, who is leaving after 26 years with Mattel.
  • Battery distributor Continental Battery Systems named John Rauco as chief commercial officer. Rauco joined the company in 2020, and most recently worked as senior vice president of sales.
  • Restaurant chain Sweetgreen appointed Zipporah Allen as chief commercial officer, effective September 2. Allen most recently worked as chief business officer at Strava, and she’s also held leadership roles at Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

STRATEGIES + ADVICE

Labubus, the little collectable “ugly-cute” stuffed toys are everywhere this summer, and they are one of the clear success stories of 2025. There’s a lot that other brands can learn from the Labubu success story.

Today, algorithms do much of the message delivery work online. In order to truly target the audience you want to find, you need to shift gears and get into culture-first marketing.

QUIZ

Which popular video game will be developed into a major movie, according to an announcement this week?

A. Fortnite

B. Call of Duty

C. Metroid

D. Donkey Kong

See if you got it right here.

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