DOOH Marketing
DOOH Advertising in Madison, WI
Nielsen DMA #77 · 443,220 TV homes. A live 30-mile plan around downtown Madison — Wisconsin's capital, wrapped around an isthmus between two lakes — carries 1,618 active digital screens delivering 277.5 million monthly impressions.
New to Out-of-Home?
DOOH Marketing Platform: Plan, Buy & Measure Digital Out-of-Home Campaigns
Every commute in Madison funnels through the same isthmus, past the same bar TVs, gas pumps, and grocery-aisle screens. That's digital out-of-home (DOOH) at its most efficient: advertising on the real screens people pass in a compact, walkable city, in a format nobody can skip, mute, or scroll past.
Goldfish Ads makes it easy: plan, buy, and measure DOOH across 100+ US markets and 35+ venue types, and launch 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 fast, precise activation across every market, publisher, and inventory source, with built-in measurement 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.
This page zooms that platform into one market — here's exactly what's bookable in Madison right now.
Why Madison Matters
Madison is Wisconsin's capital, and its downtown was built on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona — the Wisconsin State Capitol sits at one end, the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus at the other, with State Street connecting them[3][10]. That geography concentrates the city's daily foot and drive traffic onto a handful of predictable corridors, which is exactly what makes bar, restaurant, and roadside screens efficient here.
The economy runs on state government, a research university, and health care. UW–Madison alone enrolls 51,822 students and counts 28,017 faculty and staff as of fall 2025[6]; American Family Insurance, ranked #202 on the 2025 Fortune 500 with $21.3 billion in revenue, is headquartered downtown[7]; and Epic Systems, the healthcare-software company, employs 13,000 people at its campus in nearby Verona[8]. Together they put a large, well-paid daytime workforce on the same office-lobby and lunch-hour screens every weekday.
Two events reshape reach on the calendar: the Dane County Farmers' Market, America's largest producers-only farmers' market, which has circled Capitol Square every Saturday morning since 1972[9], and the Art Fair on the Square, MMoCA's annual fundraiser that draws an estimated 200,000 visitors downtown each July[14] — both concentrated on the same Capitol Square blocks.
Day to day, Madison is a drive-and-walk city inside a metro of 680,804[4]: 56.7% of workers drive alone, 20.5% work from home, and 7.6% walk, with a short 19.4-minute mean commute[5] — a compact, repeatable pattern that keeps grocery, gas-station, and downtown screens in front of the same people all week.
Live Screen Map
Every dot is a bookable digital screen in the live 30-mile Madison 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 Madison plan[1] — the same corners you drive past on the Beltline, John Nolen Drive, and East Washington Ave. 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 Madison plan on 2026-07-05[1], with every screen counted once. The plan carries 1,618 active digital screens delivering 277,460,044 monthly impressions across the capital region.
| Venue Type | Screens | Monthly Impressions |
|---|---|---|
| Bars | 385 | 71,516,351 |
| Movie Theaters | 320 | 8,568,224 |
| Grocery | 311 | 59,907,286 |
| Gas Stations | 115 | 1,899,125 |
| Casual Dining | 103 | 24,283,841 |
| Rideshare / Taxi TV | 83 | 76,185 |
| Office Buildings | 79 | 10,949,834 |
| Recreational | 41 | 7,616,785 |
| Apartment Buildings | 40 | 3,212,936 |
| Sports Venues | 32 | 37,164,802 |
| Malls | 19 | 9,072,231 |
| Digital Billboards | 17 | 30,014,425 |
| Airports | 17 | 4,595,580 |
| Other venue types | 17 | 4,875,235 |
| Gyms | 15 | 2,626,371 |
| Convenience Stores | 10 | 660,174 |
| Doctor Offices | 7 | 62,772 |
| Pharmacies | 7 | 357,887 |
| Total | 1,618 | 277,460,044 |
Venue types are mutually exclusive and sum to the plan total. Figures reflect the 30-mile radius around downtown Madison within the 443,220-home DMA.
Madison Billboard Sizes & Creative Formats
These are the actual screen sizes running in the live Madison plan[1]. You don't build a file per screen — you build one creative per aspect ratio and export it to each resolution. The market is overwhelmingly 16:9 landscape, with a smaller block of 9:16 portrait for gas-pump and lobby screens.
| Resolution (px) | Aspect | Orientation | Screens |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1920×1080 | 16:9 | Landscape | 1,358 |
| 1080×1920 | 9:16 | Portrait | 163 |
| 1400×400 | 7:2 | Landscape (spectacular) | 13 |
| 728×90 | 364:45 | Landscape (banner strip) | 8 |
| 1280×720 | 16:9 | Landscape | 8 |
| 840×400 | 21:10 | Landscape | 5 |
1,506 screens
Accept full-motion video (typically 10 or 15 seconds, silent).
1,156 screens
Accept a static image — a single high-res JPG or PNG runs everywhere.
620 screens
Support audio, concentrated in bar and gas-station venues.
Listed formats cover 1,555 of the 1,618 screens; the balance run small banner units or publisher-defined sizes. Ship a 16:9 and a 9:16 master and you cover nearly the entire market.
How Much Does DOOH Cost in Madison?
You don't need a rate card or a six-figure budget to run out-of-home in Madison. 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 bar TV, a movie-theater lobby, a grocery-aisle screen, or a roadside bulletin. You're never charged a premium 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 Madison 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 Madison screens?
Live on Madison 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 1,618 screens, zoomed in on the Madison landmarks you actually drive past. Each map shows the bookable digital screens within 1.5 miles of the spot[1] — around the Capitol, Camp Randall, the Kohl Center, State Street, Hilldale, and out to the airport.
Couldn't load the per-store maps. Try refreshing.
Target Screens Along Any Route, Not Just a Radius
Most out-of-home tools stop at a radius or a market boundary. Goldfish plans along the actual roads people drive. Hand us a route — a daily commute, a highway, a store-to-store delivery corridor — and we trace it with the Mapbox routing engine[15], then geofence every bookable screen within reach of that path: the billboards, bar and casual-dining screens, grocery and gas-station inventory, and office-building lobbies a driver actually passes end to end.
Here are three of Madison's major arteries. 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-39/90/94 North-South Spine (Portage, WI → Janesville, WI, 71.4 route miles). The mix along this corridor:
Corridor screens are filtered live from the 30-mile Madison plan [1] against Mapbox driving geometry [15], counting each screen within the listed buffer of the route.
Screen Formats Active in Madison
Real photos of the screen formats running in the Madison 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
Downtown / Capitol Square[13]
The isthmus core wrapped around the Wisconsin State Capitol — museums, live music, and award-winning restaurants ring the square that also hosts the Dane County Farmers' Market and Art Fair on the Square, concentrating downtown foot traffic on event weekends.
Williamson Street (Willy Street)[13]
Madison's first neighborhood association (formed 1959), still the East Side's most eclectic corridor — the Willy Street Co-op anchors a strip of independent restaurants, bars, and summer music festivals.
Atwood (Schenk-Atwood)[13]
A once blue-collar Eastside district that reinvented itself into a funky, diverse strip along Atwood Avenue — cafes, breweries, and music venues fronting Lake Monona.
Monroe Street[13]
Called Madison's "first suburb," this intellectual, family-friendly Westside strip sits near the UW-Madison Arboretum and Vilas Zoo, drawing a mix of UW faculty and neighborhood shoppers.
Suggested Campaigns for This Market
State-government & healthcare workforce reach
Office-building and doctor-office screens concentrated downtown near the Capitol and state agency buildings, plus point-of-care inventory reaching the UW-Madison and regional healthcare workforce.
Build this plan →
Grocery / CPG drive-to-store
Grocery, gas-station, and convenience-store screens across the AM and PM commute — a mix that reflects Madison's shorter, more walkable commute pattern.
Build this plan →
Gameday & downtown event surround
Bar, casual-dining, and movie-theater screens geofenced around Camp Randall and the Kohl Center on gamedays, plus Capitol Square during the Farmers' Market and Art Fair on the Square 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 Madison. Different brands and markets — same platform, same playbook.
+51%
Awareness Lift
Education — Higher Education
Read case study →
$36.83
Return on Ad Spend
Healthcare — OTC Medication
Read case study →
9.9x
Foot Traffic Lift
Foot Traffic — Apparel Retailer
Read case study →
Frequently Asked Questions About Madison DOOH
What is DOOH advertising?
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) is advertising on the digital screens you pass in the real world — bar and restaurant TVs, grocery-aisle screens, gas-pump screens, movie-theater lobbies, 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 Madison?
Madison 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 Madison?
The live 30-mile Madison plan carries 1,618 active digital screens across venue types including bars, movie theaters, grocery, gas stations, casual dining, office buildings, and roadside digital billboards.
How many people can a Madison DOOH campaign reach?
The current Madison plan delivers roughly 277.5 million monthly impressions across the capital region, which sits in Nielsen DMA #77 with 443,220 TV homes.
How fast can a Madison 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 Regional Markets
Plan a Madison Campaign
Sources
- [1] Goldfish DOOH Planning API — live saved plan (code PuDL9-_3dwM), 30-mile radius around downtown Madison (lat/lng points targeting), de-duplicated so each screen is counted once, resold programmatic inventory excluded, pulled 2026-07-05
- [2] ustvdb.com — 2024-25 Nielsen DMA rankings (Madison, WI #77, 443,220 TV homes)
- [3] Wikipedia — Madison, Wisconsin (2020 U.S. Census population 269,840; capital of Wisconsin; downtown sits on an isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona)
- [4] Wikipedia — Madison metropolitan area (2020 U.S. Census MSA population 680,804; Columbia, Dane, Green, and Iowa counties)
- [5] Data USA — Madison, WI (U.S. Census ACS, 2024: drove alone 56.7%, worked at home 20.5%, walked 7.59%, mean commute 19.4 minutes)
- [6] University of Wisconsin–Madison — About: Facts (fall 2025 total enrollment 51,822; 28,017 faculty and staff)
- [7] BizTimes — "American Family makes significant move up Fortune 500" (American Family Insurance ranked #202 on the 2025 Fortune 500, headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, $21.3B revenue)
- [8] Wikipedia — Epic Systems (headquarters moved to Verona, Wisconsin in 2005; 13,000 employees as of 2023)
- [9] Wikipedia — Dane County Farmers' Market (America's largest producers-only farmers' market; founded 1972; held on Capitol Square)
- [10] Wikipedia — Wisconsin State Capitol (located at the southwest end of the Madison Isthmus; state law bars buildings within 1 mile from exceeding its 187-foot columns; the dome is the only granite dome in the U.S.)
- [11] Wikipedia — Camp Randall Stadium (capacity 76,057, 2024–present; home of Wisconsin Badgers football since 1917)
- [12] Wikipedia — Kohl Center (capacity 17,287 for basketball, 15,359 for ice hockey; opened 1998; home of Wisconsin Badgers men's and women's basketball and men's ice hockey)
- [13] Destination Madison — "Neat Neighborhoods" itinerary guide
- [14] Wikipedia — Art Fair on the Square (Madison) (organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on Capitol Square; an estimated 200,000 attendees annually; roughly 500 participating artists)
- [15] Mapbox Directions API — driving route geometry for the I-39/90/94, US-12/18 Beltline, and US-151 corridors, pulled 2026-07-05
Get Your Ad on Madison Screens
Every screen in the Madison market, one place to launch it. Run it yourself or let our team handle it — live in under 24 hours.
Get Your Ad on Madison ScreensLive inventory in this market
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Screens, impressions and flat pricing for Madison — real inventory, no rate card.
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