Digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens maintain specific geospatial and physical parameters that describe the conditions, environment, and surroundings. In partnership with other programmatic leaders in the OOH space, Vistar has defined and standardized venue types that represent DOOH advertising screens within a programmatic OpenRTB 2.5 context. This helps to provide a mutual understanding of DOOH screens between buyers and sellers. Media owners assign their screens as specific venue types so that you can understand the environment and the consumers near the surrounding area. See Venue types list in this article for details.
View the list of global media owners that partnered with Vistar and made their inventory available in Vistar’s SSP.
Vistar uses two tiers to describe DOOH venue types: parent venue types and child venue types. The following table defines each tier:
| Tier | Description | Example |
| Parent |
The parent venue type provides a high-level description of an environment and a general sense of what might occur at the location. This venue type acts as an umbrella grouping for children venue types, which share characteristics in common. |
Retail Consumers visit this location to make retail purchases. It does not specify the type of purchase, the specific store names, or the format of the screens in the location. |
| Child |
The child venue type provides additional clarity about the parent venue type: the environment and what occurs in the location. All child type venues are assigned to a parent venue type. |
Retail | Malls Consumers visit this location to make retail purchases. However, it provides more detail as to the type of consumers and what they are doing at this retail location. At the same time, it does not specify the type of mall (indoor versus outdoor or luxury versus budget), or the format of the screens (large spectaculars, TV monitors, or kiosks). |
Venue types do not do the following:
- Describe a media format.
- Example: ATM is not a venue type, it is a media format. The ATM may be in a Mall, or a Convenience store, and the venue type reflects that.
- Exception: When the media format cannot be separated from the environment (For example, Outdoor | Bus Shelter).
- Obscure key elements of the environment, or equate environments that serve drastically different purposes.
- Example: Labeling both Marijuana dispensaries and Pharmacies under the Wellness category. These two environments serve very different purposes and audiences, so they are not categorized under the same parent venue type.
Bid requests
Venue type information is passed in the device.ext.dooh.venuetypeids field of an OpenRTB 2.5 bid request. Each venue type, regardless of whether the venue type is a parent or a child, has a unique identifier (ID) that is immutable. The field contains an array of venue type IDs that apply to the requesting venue.
See OpenRTB specification for more information.
| Attribute | Type | Description |
device.ext.dooh.venuetypeids |
Integer array | List of IDs that describe the venue of the requesting screen. |
| Tier | Description | Example |
| Parent | A parent-only venue type is composed of one ID. | To target Retail, the device.ext.dooh.venuetypeids object must contain [2]. |
| Parent-child | A parent-child venue type is composed of two enumerated IDs. | To target Retail | Malls, the device.ext.dooh.venuetypeids object must contain [2, 205]. |
Venue types list
The following taxonomy outlines the venue types being used in Vistar’s SSP: