DOOH Marketing
DOOH Advertising in Columbus, OH
Nielsen DMA #35 · 1,018,390 TV homes · city population 905,748, the 15th-largest in the U.S. A live 30-mile plan around downtown Columbus reaches 4,677 active digital screens delivering 973.7 million monthly impressions.
New to Out-of-Home?
DOOH Marketing Platform: Plan, Buy & Measure Digital Out-of-Home Campaigns
Same city, two completely different crowds: on a Blue Jackets night the Arena District fills with bar and restaurant traffic packed shoulder to shoulder, and on an ordinary Tuesday morning that same few downtown blocks fill instead with the office workforce behind Nationwide, American Electric Power, and Huntington Bancshares. A few miles north, Ohio State's campus adds a fresh wave of 60,000-plus students to the daily mix every fall.
Every one of those moments has a screen sitting in it — the bar TV, the office-lobby display, the gas-pump screen on the drive home. That's digital out-of-home (DOOH): advertising built into places people already go, not a tab they can close or a channel they can mute. Goldfish Ads plans, buys, and measures that inventory across 100+ US markets and 35+ venue types — run it yourself in the self-serve platform and launch in under 24 hours, or hand the whole thing to our team to manage.
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 exactly what's bookable across the Columbus metro right now.
Why Columbus Matters
Two calendar moments pull the whole city downtown. Red, White & BOOM! — which self-describes as the Midwest's largest fireworks festival — brings more than 400,000 people to the riverfront and Arena District every year[7], and the Ohio State Fair, one of the largest state fairs in the country, set a 12-day attendance record of 1,006,228 visitors at the Ohio Expo Center in 2023[8]. Both put dense foot traffic directly past bar, restaurant, and urban-panel screens for days at a stretch.
The rest of the year, the economy runs on finance, insurance, and utilities headquartered right downtown: Nationwide, a Fortune 500 (#72 in 2025) mutual insurer based at One Nationwide Plaza[4], and American Electric Power, an S&P 500 utility that moved its headquarters here from New York City in the 1980s[5]. Huntington Bancshares, another S&P 500 name, keeps its headquarters downtown as well[15]. A few miles north, Ohio State enrolled a record 61,326 students on its Columbus campus this fall[3] — a second, constantly renewing population moving through the city on top of the workforce downtown.
Columbus is a driving city more than most peer metros — 67.7% of workers drive alone to work, with a comparatively short average commute of 21.5 minutes[11], which keeps gas-station and grocery-anchored screens working efficiently across a metro that sprawls well past the I-270 outerbelt.
Live Screen Map
Every dot is a bookable digital screen in the live 30-mile Columbus 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 Columbus plan[1] — the same corners you drive past on I-70, I-71, and the outerbelt commercial corridors. 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 Columbus plan on 2026-07-03[1], with every screen counted once. The plan carries 4,677 active digital screens delivering 973,718,137 monthly impressions across the metro.
| Venue Type | Screens | Monthly Impressions |
|---|---|---|
| Bars | 812 | 257,606,262 |
| Grocery | 551 | 126,364,941 |
| Gas Stations | 443 | 23,090,464 |
| Casual Dining | 416 | 162,151,377 |
| Office Buildings | 368 | 11,110,262 |
| Rideshare / Taxi TV | 351 | 1,127,232 |
| Movie Theaters | 344 | 16,746,937 |
| Convenience Stores | 332 | 18,676,982 |
| Doctor Offices | 227 | 4,084,698 |
| Apartment Buildings | 161 | 4,098,830 |
| Sports Venues | 138 | 25,669,371 |
| Urban Panels | 100 | 159,889,390 |
| Digital Billboards | 96 | 99,171,184 |
| Pharmacies | 69 | 4,562,941 |
| QSR | 64 | 9,946,000 |
| Gyms | 63 | 11,133,346 |
| Liquor Stores | 39 | 1,687,569 |
| Malls | 27 | 8,859,876 |
| Airports | 26 | 23,544,121 |
| Colleges | 16 | 566,864 |
| Recreational Venues | 12 | 1,825,965 |
| Other venue types | 22 | 1,803,525 |
| Total | 4,677 | 973,718,137 |
Venue types are mutually exclusive and sum to the plan total. Figures reflect the 30-mile radius around downtown Columbus within the 1,018,390-home DMA.
Columbus Billboard Sizes & Creative Formats
These are the actual creative dimensions accepted across the live Columbus plan[1]. A single screen can accept more than one aspect ratio — a 16:9 landscape master plus a 9:16 portrait crop for gas-pump or elevator units, for example — so the counts below are format instances, not unique screens. The market is dominated by 16:9 landscape, with a solid block of 9:16 portrait and a wide-format row built for digital billboards.
| Resolution (px) | Aspect | Orientation | Format Instances |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1920×1080 | 16:9 | Landscape | 6,682 |
| 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Portrait | 1,017 |
| 1024×768 | 4:3 | Landscape | 361 |
| 1024×555 | 1.85:1 | Landscape (wide-format digital billboard) | 330 |
| 1280×720 | 16:9 | Landscape | 239 |
| 1400×400 | 3.5:1 | Landscape (billboard bulletin) | 132 |
8,716 format instances
Accept full-motion video (typically 10 or 15 seconds, silent).
7,978 format instances
Accept a static image — a single high-res JPG or PNG runs everywhere.
3,235 format instances
Support audio, concentrated in bar, gas-station, and point-of-care venues.
Ship a 16:9 and a 9:16 master and you cover nearly the entire Columbus market.
How Much Does DOOH Cost in Columbus?
You don't need a national media budget or an agency contract to put a message in front of Columbus. Campaigns start for as little as $50 a day, with no long-term commitment attached — launch, pause, and adjust on your own schedule.
Every screen in the plan sells at one flat, transparent CPM (cost per thousand impressions): grocery, gas station, bar, or downtown digital billboard, all the same price. A bigger budget simply buys more impressions across the metro, never access to a different, "better" tier of inventory. Scale up before a Blue Jackets home game or the Ohio State Fair, and scale back down whenever you want.
Start at $50/day
Enough to put a real message on Columbus 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 Columbus screens?
Live on Columbus 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 4,677 screens, zoomed in on the Columbus landmarks you actually drive past. Each map shows the bookable digital screens within 1.5 miles of the spot[1] — the Arena District's two stadiums, the Short North, German Village, Ohio State's campus, and out to the airport.
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Target Screens Along Any Route, Not Just a Radius
A radius treats every screen inside the circle the same. A route is different: hand us a real drive — a highway, a daily commute, a delivery loop — and Goldfish traces it with the Mapbox routing engine[14], then geofences every bookable screen within reach of that exact path, end to end.
Columbus is built around three defining arteries: the I-70 spine running east-west through downtown, the I-71 corridor connecting the north suburbs to the south side, and the eastern arc of the I-270 outerbelt that rings the city. Pick one 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-70 East-West Spine (West Jefferson, OH → Reynoldsburg, OH, 30.1 route miles). The mix along this corridor:
Corridor screens are filtered live from the 30-mile Columbus plan [1] against Mapbox driving geometry [14], counting each screen within the listed buffer of the route.
Screen Formats Active in Columbus
Real photos of the screen formats running in the Columbus 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
Short North Arts District[2]
The gallery-and-restaurant stretch of High Street between downtown and Ohio State, home to the monthly Gallery Hop and one of the densest concentrations of independent boutiques and murals in the city.
German Village[2]
A brick-sidewalk, 19th-century historic district just south of downtown — cobblestone streets, restored rowhouses, and a run of cafes and beer halls that draw both residents and visitors.
Arena District[2]
The mixed-use downtown neighborhood built around Nationwide Arena and Huntington Park, packed with bars and restaurants that fill up on Blue Jackets and Clippers game nights.
Franklinton[2]
Columbus's fastest-growing creative district just west of downtown across the Scioto River, known for artist studios, mural walks like Urban Scrawl, and a wave of new entrepreneurial businesses.
Suggested Campaigns for This Market
Finance & insurance decision-maker reach
Office-lobby and downtown urban-panel screens concentrated around the Arena District and the Nationwide, AEP, and Huntington Bancshares HQ towers, reaching the corporate workforce that fills downtown Columbus on weekdays.
Build this plan →
Grocery / CPG drive-to-store
Grocery and gas-station screens geofenced to Columbus's busiest commercial corridors — from the Short North down through German Village and out to the suburban ring roads.
Build this plan →
Gameday & Arena District nightlife surround
Bars and casual-dining screens concentrated in the Arena District and Short North during Blue Jackets and Clippers games, plus Red, White & BOOM! and Ohio State Fair weekends.
Build this plan →
Sports & Entertainment Footprints
What DOOH Delivers
Results from real DOOH campaigns run on the same venue types and audience tactics you can book in Columbus. Different brands and markets — same platform, same playbook.
+130%
Consideration Lift
Banking — Betterment
Read case study →
+51%
Awareness Lift
Education — Higher Education
Read case study →
+53%
Decision-Maker Reach
Venue Types: Office Buildings
Read case study →
Frequently Asked Questions About Columbus DOOH
What is DOOH advertising?
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) is advertising on the digital screens you pass in the real world — bar TVs, gas-pump screens, grocery-aisle displays, and downtown 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 Columbus?
Columbus 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 Columbus?
The live 30-mile Columbus plan carries 4,677 active digital screens across venue types including bars, grocery, gas stations, casual dining, office buildings, movie theaters, convenience stores, and downtown urban panels.
How many people can a Columbus DOOH campaign reach?
The current Columbus plan delivers roughly 973.7 million monthly impressions across the metro, which sits in Nielsen DMA #35 with 1,018,390 TV homes.
How fast can a Columbus 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 Ohio Markets
Plan a Columbus Campaign
Sources
- [1] Goldfish DOOH Planning API — live saved plan (code IS1jfd2I9s8), 30-mile radius around downtown Columbus, de-duplicated so each screen is counted once, pulled 2026-07-03
- [2] Experience Columbus — Neighborhoods (Short North Arts District, German Village, Arena District, Franklinton)
- [3] WOSU Public Media — Fall Enrollment at Ohio State Increases, Number of International Freshmen Drops by a Third (61,326 students, Columbus campus, fall 2025)
- [4] Wikipedia — Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company (headquarters, Fortune 500 #72 in 2025)
- [5] Wikipedia — American Electric Power (headquarters, S&P 500 component)
- [6] Columbus Region — Top Employers (regional employee counts: Nationwide, American Electric Power, JPMorgan Chase, Huntington)
- [7] Red, White & BOOM! — official site (400,000+ annual attendance, self-described "Midwest's Largest Fireworks Festival")
- [8] Wikipedia — Ohio State Fair (2023 attendance record of 1,006,228 at the Ohio Expo Center)
- [9] ustvdb.com — 2024-25 Nielsen DMA rankings
- [10] Wikipedia — Columbus, Ohio (2020 U.S. Census population, city + MSA)
- [11] Data USA — Columbus, OH (U.S. Census ACS commute data)
- [12] Wikipedia — Nationwide Arena
- [13] Wikipedia — Huntington Park (Columbus, Ohio)
- [14] Mapbox Directions API — driving route geometry for the I-70, I-71, and I-270 corridors, pulled 2026-07-03
- [15] Wikipedia — Huntington Bancshares (S&P 500 component, Fortune 500 #466 in 2024, headquartered in Columbus)
Get Your Ad on Columbus Screens
Every screen in the Columbus market, one place to launch it. Run it yourself or let our team handle it — live in under 24 hours.
Get Your Ad on Columbus Screens