Stop treating display media like a broken performance channel

It’s time we stopped treating display media like a broken performance channel and started treating it like out-of-home advertising.

Display isn’t search. It isn’t paid social. And it was never meant to behave like either.

At its best, display media operates in the periphery of people’s attention as they go about their daily journey. Scrolling, reading, browsing, passing time.

The only difference between display and out-of-home is the screen: one lives on streets and bus stops, the other on mobile and desktop.

The role is the same.

Presence. Repetition. Context.

Yet somewhere along the way, we decided to measure display as if it were a conversion engine. Just because we can track clicks, impressions and post-view conversions to the nth degree, we assume that we should. And in doing so, we’ve fundamentally misunderstood the job the channel is meant to do.

We don’t expect last-look attribution from a billboard. We don’t demand CPA parity between a roadside poster and a brand search ad. We accept that out-of-home works cumulatively, subtly, over time. It shapes memory, creates familiarity and preference. Display should be held to the same standard.

The industry’s obsession with deterministic measurement has warped expectations. Display is routinely judged on last-touch conversions, short-term ROAS and its ability to compete directly with channels designed to capture existing demand. When it doesn’t perform to those metrics, it’s labelled inefficient, when in reality it’s being measured against the wrong outcome.

That doesn’t mean display shouldn’t be measured at all. It absolutely should. But measurement should align with intent.

Presence in the right environments. Repetition against relevant moments. Attention, viewability, reach, frequency. Assisted impact. Brand search lift. Incrementality.

These are not “soft” metrics, they are simply more honest reflections of how people actually experience advertising.

Which brings us to planning.

Consumers now spend about 60% of their time on the open internet, as in outside of Meta, Google, TikTok etc.

If display is OOH, then environment matters more than audience lists scraped into oblivion. Premium publishers. Editorial context. Cultural relevance. The mood someone is in when they encounter the message. Just as location defines the effectiveness of a poster, context defines the effectiveness of a display impression.

Buying display purely on audience data while ignoring where it shows up is like buying every billboard in the country but refusing to look at the roads they’re on.

We don’t need better attribution models to fix display. We need a better mental model.

Until we stop forcing display to justify itself like a performance channel, we’ll continue to undervalue it, underinvest in quality environments and misunderstand one of the few remaining channels built for sustained brand presence in a fragmented digital world.