In advertising, trust isn’t a soft metric – it’s the currency that keeps the industry moving. Yet in digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising, trust has been steadily devaluing. As the sector races toward $55bn by 2030, a fundamental question remains unanswered: How do we know what we’re actually buying?
Advertisers approve budgets based on promised impressions. Screens display content. Reports are generated. Invoices are paid. But somewhere in that chain, doubt creeps in. The uncomfortable truth is that DOOH, despite its digital sophistication, still operates largely on trust and delayed verification. This realisation is what drove us at SignX to tackle the verification challenge head-on – not because we saw a market opportunity, but because we experienced the problem ourselves as media buyers and planners.
The problem hiding in plain sight
The DOOH industry faces a verification/ trust gap that would be unthinkable in other digital channels. Imagine running a programmatic display campaign where you couldn’t verify impressions until weeks after delivery, or where multiple vendors reported the same metrics differently.
The challenges are structural. Fragmented measurement standards mean comparing performance across media owners is like comparing currencies without an exchange rate. Delayed verification creates accountability gaps – advertisers often discover delivery issues only after campaigns conclude. Ad fraud takes subtle forms: phantom impressions from malfunctioning screens, inflated traffic counts, ads that play partially or not at all.
In building verification systems, we’ve discovered that the problem runs deeper than technology – it’s institutional inertia.
What the industry actually needs
The solution isn’t more data – it’s verifiable data.
Real-time verification should be standard, not premium. Advertisers need to know, during campaign flight, whether their content is displaying as planned. This enables optimisation when it actually matters – while the campaign is still running.
Standardised measurement protocols would transform how the industry operates. When every impression is counted the same way, the market becomes more efficient. Complete delivery tracking addresses the most basic question: Did my ad actually play? Technologies such as VAST protocols can track content from initiation to completion. The question is whether the industry has the will to implement them universally.
The role of emerging technologies
Artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain aren’t silver bullets, but they offer practical solutions.
AI-powered fraud detection identifies anomalies that human reviewers miss – irregular traffic patterns, impossible delivery scenarios, and statistical outliers. Through our work developing AI monitoring systems, we’ve seen algorithms flag deviations within minutes that would otherwise go unnoticed for weeks. Predictive analytics help advertisers plan with confidence, shifting from educated guessing to data-informed forecasting. In our testing, predictive models have achieved accuracy rates near 90 per cent.
Blockchain’s value is straightforward: immutable record-keeping. When impression data is recorded on a blockchain ledger, it creates an auditable trail that all parties can verify independently. Trust becomes less about believing and more about verifying.
The challenge isn’t technical – it’s adoption. Transparent, immutable records only work when all stakeholders participate.
What this means for the region
The Middle East has an opportunity to lead on this issue rather than follow. The region’s rapid technology adoption, ambitious digital transformation initiatives and significant DOOH investments create the perfect environment for implementing next-generation verification standards.
Developing solutions here in the Emirates, we’ve benefited from a regulatory environment that encourages innovation and a market willing to experiment. When the region adopts rigorous verification standards, it doesn’t just improve local campaigns – it demonstrates what’s possible globally. The region’s ambition to become a global technology hub includes setting standards, not just following them.
Moving forward
The path to transparent DOOH requires commitment from every stakeholder. Media owners must prioritise verification. Agencies must demand accountability. Advertisers must make transparency a selection criterion.
The technology exists. The business case is clear. What’s needed now is a collective will to make verification the industry standard rather than a competitive advantage.
At SignX, we’re working to make verification accessible, but we’re not naive enough to think one platform solves an industry-wide problem. Real change requires adoption across the ecosystem – from the largest media owners to independent screen operators, from global agencies to regional boutiques.
An industry built on trust but verified through technology is stronger than one built on trust alone. The DOOH industry deserves better than crossed fingers and delayed reports. It’s time we held ourselves to the same verification standards we’ve normalised in every other digital channel.
That’s the future worth building.
By Muneef Khan, CEO, SignX
