DOOH Marketing
DOOH Advertising in Columbia, SC
Nielsen DMA #76 · 450,440 TV homes. A live 30-mile plan around downtown Columbia — South Carolina's capital and the Midlands' commercial hub — carries 1,497 active digital screens delivering over 235 million monthly impressions.
New to Out-of-Home?
DOOH Marketing Platform: Plan, Buy & Measure Digital Out-of-Home Campaigns
A screen at the gas pump on your way to work. Another over the checkout line at the grocery store. One more in the office lobby elevator bank. Stack those moments up across a single day and that's digital out-of-home (DOOH) — advertising on the actual screens people pass in their day, in a format nobody can skip, mute, or scroll past.
Goldfish Ads runs that whole loop end to end: plan, buy, and measure DOOH across 100+ US markets and 35+ venue types, live in under 24 hours instead of the weeks traditional out-of-home takes. Run it yourself in the self-serve platform, or hand it to our team to plan and manage for you — either way you get precise activation across every market, publisher, and inventory source, with measurement built in so you can prove what your spend delivered.
Plan
Search real inventory by market, venue type, and audience, then build a media plan in seconds.
Buy
Activate programmatically across every screen — run it yourself or let our team manage it, with no insertion-order back-and-forth.
Measure
Foot-traffic attribution, website lift, and brand studies close the loop on every campaign.
Here's that platform zoomed into one market — exactly what's bookable in Columbia right now.
Why Columbia Matters
Two things anchor the Midlands economy, and neither one is going anywhere: state government and the U.S. Army. Columbia has been South Carolina's capital for well over two centuries, and just east of downtown, Fort Jackson trains roughly half of everyone who enters the Army each year — about 35,000 basic-training soldiers and 8,000 more in advanced training, annually[5]. Layer in Columbia-headquartered insurers BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina[6] and Colonial Life[7] — a subsidiary of Fortune 500 insurer Unum Group, itself headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee[8] — and a downtown office population shows up on the same screens weekday after weekday.
It's a college town on top of all that: the University of South Carolina's Columbia campus crossed 40,000 enrolled students for the first time this past fall[10], and on Gamecocks football Saturdays, Williams-Brice Stadium's 77,559 seats empty straight into Five Points and the Vista[9][13][14]. The city itself sits where the Saluda and Broad rivers meet to form the Congaree, at a population of roughly 137,000 inside the city line and 858,000 across the metro[3].
Two civic draws keep foot traffic steady year-round: Riverbanks Zoo and Garden, South Carolina's largest gated attraction, pulls more than a million visitors a year[11], and the Soda City Market shuts down four blocks of Main Street every Saturday for roughly 200 vendors and up to 7,000 visitors[12].
Most of that population drives to get where it's going — 63% commute alone by car, with a mean trip of just 17.7 minutes[4], one of the shorter average commutes of any market this size. Short commutes mean more repeat passes past the same gas station, office lobby, and grocery screen inside a single week, not fewer.
Live Screen Map
Every dot is a bookable digital screen in the live 30-mile Columbia plan[1]. Pan, zoom, and click any marker for venue type and impressions, or use the filter to isolate a single format. Pulled directly from the Goldfish API — no static screenshot.
See the Actual Boards
Real Google Street View of the roadside bulletins in the Columbia plan[1] — the same corners you drive past on I-20, I-26, and I-77. Drag inside any panel to look around the intersection. Imagery is Google Street View; screens are live and bookable.
Inventory by Venue Type
Pulled live from the saved 30-mile Columbia plan on 2026-07-05[1], with every screen counted once (resold programmatic inventory excluded so no board is double-counted). The plan carries 1,497 active digital screens delivering 235,414,709 monthly impressions across the Midlands.
| Venue Type | Screens | Monthly Impressions |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Billboards | 86 | 69,049,176 |
| Casual Dining | 85 | 38,169,420 |
| Grocery | 219 | 29,315,595 |
| Office Buildings | 177 | 26,492,961 |
| Bars | 71 | 21,368,145 |
| Convenience Stores | 139 | 13,800,415 |
| Movie Theaters | 40 | 6,172,844 |
| Apartment Buildings | 57 | 5,201,737 |
| Gas Stations | 290 | 5,698,806 |
| Gyms | 27 | 4,372,303 |
| Doctor Offices | 101 | 2,330,865 |
| Pharmacies | 28 | 883,240 |
| Rideshare / Taxi TV | 97 | 88,932 |
| Other venue types | 80 | 12,470,270 |
| Total | 1,497 | 235,414,709 |
Venue types are mutually exclusive and sum to the plan total. Figures reflect the 30-mile radius around downtown Columbia within the 450,440-home Columbia, SC DMA.
Columbia Billboard Sizes & Creative Formats
These are the actual screen formats running in the live Columbia plan[1], counted as unique screens. You don't build a file per screen — you build one creative per aspect ratio and export it to each resolution below.
| Resolution (px) | Aspect | Orientation | Screens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1920×1080 | 16:9 | Landscape | 1,109 |
| 1280×720 | 16:9 | Landscape | 72 |
| 1400×400 | 7:2 | Landscape | 47 |
| 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Portrait | 44 |
| 840×400 | 21:10 | Landscape | 26 |
| 720×1280 | 9:16 | Portrait | 5 |
1,220 screens
Accept full-motion video (typically 10 or 15 seconds, silent).
1,169 screens
Accept a static image — a single high-res JPG or PNG runs everywhere.
606 screens
Support audio, concentrated in gas-station and point-of-care venues.
A 1920×1080 (16:9) master covers the large majority of the market; ship a 9:16 crop alongside it and you're set for nearly every bookable screen in Columbia.
How Much Does DOOH Cost in Columbia?
There's no rate card and no six-figure minimum to get on Columbia screens. Campaigns start for as little as $50 a day with no long-term commitment — launch, pause, and adjust whenever you want.
Every screen in the plan is sold at one flat, transparent CPM (cost per thousand impressions) — the same rate whether your message runs on a downtown office lobby display, a grocery-aisle screen, a gas-station pump topper, or a Five Points bar. You're never paying extra for "better" inventory; a bigger budget simply earns more impressions across the metro. Scale up or down, market by market, anytime.
Start at $50/day
Enough to put a real message on Columbia screens — test the market before you scale.
No commitment
No annual contract, no minimum term. Run a single week or run all year.
One flat CPM
Every venue type priced the same — your budget buys impressions, not access tiers.
Ready to put your brand on Columbia screens?
Live on Columbia screens in under 24 hours. Run it yourself or let our team handle it. No rate card, no long-term commitment.
Screens Near the Places You Know
The same 1,497 screens, zoomed in on the Columbia landmarks you actually drive past. Each map shows the bookable digital screens within 1.5 miles of the spot[1] — around Williams-Brice Stadium, Five Points, the Vista, Soda City Market on Main Street, Riverbanks Zoo, and out to Fort Jackson.
Couldn't load the per-store maps. Try refreshing.
Target Screens Along Any Route, Not Just a Radius
A radius is a blunt instrument. Give Goldfish an actual road instead — a commute, a highway, a delivery run between stores — and we trace it with the Mapbox routing engine[17], then geofence every bookable screen within reach of that path: the billboards, gas stations, office buildings, and grocery stops a driver actually passes end to end.
Columbia sits at the junction of three interstates. Pick one below to see the screens hugging it and the venue mix along the whole corridor — every dot is a live, bookable screen from the same 30-mile plan[1].
0 bookable screens sit within 0.75 miles of I-20 East-West Corridor (Lexington, SC → Elgin, SC, 35.4 route miles). The mix along this corridor:
Corridor screens are filtered live from the 30-mile Columbia plan [1] against Mapbox driving geometry [17], counting each screen within the listed buffer of the route.
Screen Formats Active in Columbia
Real photos of the screen formats running in the Columbia plan[1], ranked by how many screens of each are bookable here. Each format is matched to the venue types actually booking in the market — representative venue photography, not location-specific shots.
Neighborhoods & Trade Areas
Five Points[13]
Named for the intersection of Harden, Devine, and Santee streets, this was Columbia's original neighborhood shopping district and still pulls its crowd from the University of South Carolina next door. It's home to the city's annual St. Patrick's Day Festival and earned a National Register of Historic Places listing in 2019.
Congaree Vista[14]
Downtown's old cotton-warehouse and railroad-terminal district, wedged between the Congaree River and the central business district. A late-1990s/early-2000s revitalization turned the brick warehouses into the restaurant, bar, and gallery strip locals just call "The Vista."
Old Shandon[15]
Columbia's first planned suburban community, laid out in the 1890s and briefly its own incorporated town before Columbia annexed it in 1913. A National Register historic district today, it's the kind of tree-lined, walkable neighborhood where lawn signs and porch lights actually get noticed.
Rosewood[16]
A south-side district near USC and downtown that's grown well past its residential roots — City Roots urban farm, Hunter-Gatherer Brewery & Alehouse, and Owens Field park now draw a steady weekend crowd of families, students, and regulars.
Suggested Campaigns for This Market
State government & healthcare workforce reach
Office-building and doctor-office screens across downtown and the BlueCross BlueShield / Colonial Life corridor, where a dense cluster of insurance, healthcare, and state-government employees hit the same commute every weekday.
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Grocery / CPG drive-to-store
Grocery, gas-station, and convenience-store screens across the AM and PM commute — the largest venue categories in this plan, spread across the Midlands' neighborhood corridors and I-20/I-26/I-77 approaches.
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Gameday & downtown nightlife surround
Bar, casual-dining, and billboard screens geofenced around Williams-Brice Stadium on Gamecocks Saturdays, plus Five Points and Congaree Vista for weekday and weekend nightlife traffic.
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Sports & Entertainment Footprints
Williams-Brice Stadium[9]
77,559-seat stadium since a 2020 club-level renovation — home of the South Carolina Gamecocks football team and the single biggest gameday audience in the Midlands, eight-plus Saturdays a year.
University of South Carolina[10]
The state's flagship university, with Columbia-campus enrollment topping 40,000 students for the first time in fall 2025.
What DOOH Delivers
Results from real DOOH campaigns run on the same venue types and audience tactics you can book in Columbia. Different brands and markets — same platform, same playbook.
$36.83
Return on Ad Spend
Healthcare — OTC Medication
Read case study →
9.9x
Foot Traffic Lift
Foot Traffic — Apparel Retailer
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+33%
Dine-In Traffic Lift
Restaurants
Read case study →
Frequently Asked Questions About Columbia DOOH
What is DOOH advertising?
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) is advertising on the digital screens you pass in the real world — office-lobby displays, grocery-aisle screens, gas-pump screens, gyms, bars, and roadside digital billboards. It's a format viewers cannot skip, block, or mute, and it reaches people while they're already out in the city.
How much does DOOH advertising cost in Columbia?
Columbia DOOH campaigns start for as little as $50 a day with no long-term commitment. Every screen is sold at one flat, transparent CPM (cost per thousand impressions) — the same rate across every venue type — so a larger budget simply earns more impressions across the metro rather than access to different inventory.
What types of screens can I book in Columbia?
The live 30-mile Columbia plan carries 1,497 active digital screens across venue types including digital billboards, casual dining, grocery, office buildings, bars, convenience stores, and gas stations.
How many people can a Columbia DOOH campaign reach?
The current Columbia plan delivers roughly 235 million monthly impressions across the Midlands, which sits in Nielsen DMA #76 (Columbia, SC) with 450,440 TV homes.
How fast can a Columbia DOOH campaign launch?
Campaigns launch in under 24 hours — plan, buy, and go live the same day, instead of the weeks that traditional out-of-home buying takes. Run it yourself in the Goldfish Ads platform, or have our team plan and manage it for you.
Nearby South Carolina Markets
Plan a Columbia Campaign
Sources
- [1] Goldfish DOOH Planning API — live saved plan (code 7Nky9QToaKQ), 30-mile radius around downtown Columbia, SC (lat/lng points targeting), de-duplicated so each screen is counted once, resold programmatic inventory excluded, pulled 2026-07-05
- [2] ustvdb.com — Columbia, SC media market page, 2024-25 Nielsen DMA rankings (76th-biggest media market, 450,440 TV households, up 2% from the 2023-24 season)
- [3] Wikipedia — Columbia, South Carolina (2020 U.S. Census population 136,632, second-most populous city in South Carolina; capital of South Carolina; sits at the confluence of the Saluda and Broad rivers, which join to form the Congaree River; Columbia metropolitan area estimated population 858,302 in 2023)
- [4] Data USA — Columbia, SC (2024 Census ACS commute data: 63% of workers drove alone, 11.6% worked from home, mean commute time 17.7 minutes)
- [5] Wikipedia — Fort Jackson (South Carolina) ("the largest and most active initial entry training center in the U.S. Army, training 50 percent of all soldiers entering the Army each year"; 35,000 basic-training and 8,000 advanced-individual-training soldiers annually)
- [6] Wikipedia — BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina (headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina; 11,000+ employees)
- [7] Wikipedia — Colonial Life & Accident Insurance Company (headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina; wholly owned subsidiary of Unum Group, acquired in 1993, one of Unum's three major business segments)
- [8] Wikipedia — Unum (Fortune 500 insurance company headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee; parent company of Colonial Life)
- [9] Wikipedia — Williams–Brice Stadium (77,559-seat capacity following a 2020 club-level renovation; home of the South Carolina Gamecocks football team)
- [10] USC News & Events — "A Record-Breaking Year for Enrollment" (fall 2025 enrollment announcement): "Overall student enrollment at USC Columbia also has reached a historic high, exceeding 40,000 students, according to preliminary figures"
- [11] Wikipedia — Riverbanks Zoo and Garden (over 2,000 animals; 170 total acres including a 70-acre botanical garden that opened in 1995; "South Carolina's largest gated attraction, averaging over one million visitors each year")
- [12] Soda City Market (sodacitysc.com) — weekly Saturday street market on the 1300-1700 blocks of Main Street, Columbia, year-round 9am-1pm, averaging roughly 200 vendors weekly (400+ unique vendors annually) and up to 7,000 visitors on a regular Saturday (10,000 on special-event weekends)
- [13] Wikipedia — Five Points (Columbia, South Carolina) (named for the intersection of Harden, Devine, and Santee streets; added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019; center of the city's annual St. Patrick's Day Festival)
- [14] Wikipedia — Congaree Vista (a section of downtown Columbia between the Congaree River and the central business district; former cotton-warehouse and railroad-terminal district revitalized in the late 1990s and early 2000s into a restaurant, bar, and gallery district)
- [15] Wikipedia — Old Shandon Historic District (Columbia's first planned suburban community; incorporated as its own town in 1904 and annexed into the city in 1913; added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2003)
- [16] Experience Columbia SC — Rosewood neighborhood guide (south-side district near USC and downtown; home to City Roots urban farm, Hunter-Gatherer Brewery & Alehouse, and Owens Field park)
- [17] Mapbox Directions API — driving route geometry for the I-20, I-26, and I-77 corridors, pulled 2026-07-05
Get Your Ad on Columbia Screens
Every screen in the Columbia market, one place to launch it. Run it yourself or let our team handle it — live in under 24 hours.
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