For over a decade, digital marketers have been casually flexing their Brand Lift Studies (BLS). Run a YouTube or Meta campaign, split your audience into a control group (who sees your standard cat videos) and an exposed group (who sees your glossy ad), ask them if they remember your brand, and boom, you’ve got statistically sound proof of brand recall, consideration, and intent.
But for the longest time, Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising felt like sending a rover to Mars without a return signal. You put up a massive billboard in Times Square or along a bustling highway, it looked majestic, and everybody hoped it worked. You knew people walked past it, but short of standing at the intersection with a clipboard, proving that specific billboard increased brand awareness was a tough nut to crack.
Not anymore.
Enter OOH Brand Lift Studies
Yes, OOH has officially joined the measurement club. You can now run legit, scientific Brand Lift Studies for offline, physical ads.
Why Brand Lift Matters for OOH
The OOH industry is becoming increasingly measurable. Global OOH advertising expenditure reached $54.2 billion in 2025, growing 15% year-on-year, according to the World Out of Home Organization. DOOH continues to be a major growth engine, while programmatic DOOH is also gaining momentum.
In this environment, brands need more than proof that an ad was displayed. They need to understand whether exposure created a meaningful change in consumer perception.
A BLS typically compares responses from an exposed audience with an unexposed control group. The difference between the two groups provides a clearer picture of the campaign’s incremental impact.
What Can BLS Measure?
Depending on the campaign objective, an OOH Brand Lift Study can measure:
- Ad Awareness: Did people notice or remember the campaign?
- Brand Awareness: Is the brand more recognised after exposure?
- Consideration: Are consumers more likely to consider the brand?
- Purchase Intent: Has exposure increased the likelihood of purchase?
- Brand Perception: Has the campaign changed how consumers view the brand?
Making OOH More Accountable
The value of BLS becomes even stronger when combined with DOOH, location intelligence and programmatic buying. Exposure data can help build more robust test and control groups, while campaign-level insights can inform creative, targeting and media planning.
Turning Brand Lift into Business Impact with Lemma
The Google Pixel 10 campaign demonstrates how pDOOH can drive both large-scale reach and measurable brand impact. The two-phase strategy, combining pre-launch teasers with post-launch product creatives, was activated across 28 high-impact screens in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, reaching 10.5 Mn+ people. The campaign also delivered measurable uplifts of 1.31% in brand consideration, 1.20% in brand awareness and 1.10% in purchase intent, highlighting the effectiveness of strategic DOOH placements in influencing consumer perception and intent.
The MG Hector Facelift campaign, executed by Lemma in partnership with Google DV360, used high-impact pDOOH placements to drive awareness and brand recall among affluent SUV audiences. The campaign reached 5M+ people across 35 premium screens in Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram and Mumbai, delivering strong results through a 23% uplift in brand recall, 12% uplift in brand appeal and 9.3% uplift in brand consideration, demonstrating the effectiveness of pDOOH combined with Brand Lift measurement.
For brands, OOH is no longer just about measuring impressions. With Brand Lift Studies (BLS), Lemma helps brands understand how their campaigns influence awareness, ad recall, consideration, perception and purchase intent, giving marketers a clearer view of campaign impact.
With expertise across DOOH, CTV and full-funnel advertising, Lemma combines data, technology and measurement to help brands connect media exposure with meaningful outcomes. From reaching the right audiences to measuring what changed after exposure, Lemma provides best-in-class advertising solutions that help brands make every campaign more measurable and effective.
