Key takeaways
- You have 3–5 seconds of glance time: one message, one image, one action.
- Design for distance — if text isn't readable from 3–5 metres on a phone-sized preview, it's invisible on the wall.
- Assume no sound, ever. Screens in venues are effectively silent film.
- High contrast beats beautiful: bold type on a strong background outperforms subtle palettes in bright rooms.
- Match the moment — the same gym screen wants different creative at 7am than at 7pm.
Screens are a glance medium
Nobody stands in a café studying the screen. Your ad gets a glance — three to five seconds, often mid-conversation, from across the room. Every rule below follows from that one fact: design for the glance, and anything that survives it is a bonus.
One message per ad
The most common failure is the ad that says everything: logo, tagline, three offers, a website, a QR code, opening hours. On a glance medium the viewer keeps precisely one thing. Choose it. "Lunch deal £6.95" is a campaign; your whole menu is wallpaper. If you have three things to say, make three creatives — rotating them costs nothing on a pay-per-display model.
Design for distance
- Text size: your headline should occupy a substantial share of the frame. A practical test: view your creative on a phone held at arm's length — that approximates a wall screen from across a room. If you squint, it's too small.
- Word count: aim for seven words or fewer visible at any moment.
- Contrast: venues are bright and screens compete with daylight. Dark-on-light or light-on-dark with real contrast; avoid mid-tone text on mid-tone photos.
- Safe margins: keep critical content away from the edges — screens vary, and edge-cropped phone numbers help nobody.
Assume silence
Venue screens almost never play advertiser audio. If your video only makes sense with sound — a voiceover punchline, spoken pricing — it doesn't make sense. Design as silent film: let the visuals carry the message and use on-screen text for anything essential.
Motion: earn it, don't decorate with it
Motion attracts the eye, which is exactly why it must be purposeful. One strong movement — a price sliding in, a product rotating — outperforms constant busy animation, which reads as visual noise and gets filtered out. And always end on a stable "poster frame" holding your message and action, so even a late glance catches the point. On Admitt, 10-second creatives are the base unit (20s and 30s cost proportionally more — see how pricing works), and a sharp 10 seconds usually beats a padded 20.
Match the venue and the moment
Context is DOOH's superpower — use it in the creative, not just the media plan. Protein snacks look different on a gym screen at 7am ("earned it?") than a generic brand ad does. Screens can be booked by venue type and time of day, so speak to where the viewer is standing and what they're doing. Ads that acknowledge their setting consistently out-pull generic creative.
Make the action effortless
Nobody types a URL from across a café. Give people something rememberable — a short brand name, a simple offer to mention at the till — or a QR code only where the screen is within reach (waiting rooms and tills yes, high shelves no). "Show this screen for 10% off" turns the ad itself into the coupon and makes redemption measurable.
The pre-flight checklist
One message · readable at arm's length on a phone · seven words or fewer · works with zero sound · one purposeful movement · ends on a poster frame · action a distracted person can actually take. Pass all seven and your creative is ready for a wall.