Riding the Moment: How Firefly Uses PG to Unlock Event-Based DOOH

In the high-velocity world of digital out-of-home, advertisers are increasingly looking for flexible, responsive, and high-impact ways to connect with their audiences. Firefly is driving this evolution with a national fleet of smart digital screens. Through its integration with Place Exchange and adoption of their Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) capabilities, Firefly is enabling brands to activate impactful campaigns that surround time-sensitive events and short-duration opportunities with confidence, precision, and scale.

Understanding Programmatic Guaranteed

Programmatic Guaranteed combines the automation of programmatic transactions with the certainty of direct deals. Unlike real-time bidding, where ad placements are won through auctions, PG involves a direct agreement between the advertiser and the publisher. This guarantees specific ad inventory at a predetermined price, ensuring that campaigns are delivered as planned without the unpredictability of auction-based buying.​

While still a small portion of overall programmatic spend, Place Exchange reported that spend on PG deals doubled when comparing the second half to the first half of 2024. The model allows buyers to access premium OOH inventory on a guaranteed basis, while still transacting through their preferred DSPs—preserving the agility of programmatic workflows with the reliability of traditional IOs.

Built for the Moment: Firefly’s PG Advantage

Firefly’s award-winning street-level screens move where people move—making them a powerful complement to event-based activations, pop-ups, or product drops. With PG, advertisers can pre-commit to specific timeframes and locations that matter most, such as the days leading up to a festival or the weekend of a major sports championship, ensuring their brand is front and center when attention is at its peak.

Short flight? No problem. PG makes it easy to deploy campaigns with narrow windows of opportunity—without worrying about underdelivery or wasted impressions.

Dynamic Context, Guaranteed Control

Firefly’s market-leading digital tops support contextually-aware creative triggers—think weather, time of day, or proximity to points of interest—so even within guaranteed deals, brands can serve dynamic content tailored to the environment. This kind of contextual precision, paired with the reliability of PG, lets advertisers seize cultural moments with maximum resonance.

Seamless Activation Through Place Exchange

Firefly offers dynamic PMP and Open Exchange capabilities through Place Exchange, while also enabling streamlined PG campaign activation. This means no separate workflows, no heavy lifts—just easy, scalable access to Firefly’s high-impact inventory across top U.S. markets—with over 30,000+ programmatically available screens ready to activate. Advertisers get full transparency, flexible targeting, and reliable delivery—all while using the same tools and platforms they already rely on to buy digital media.