TikTok adds to out-of-home push by letting brands “reformat and reimagine” ads for billboards

TikTok is inviting advertisers to expand their focus beyond the For You Page. The app is extending its partnership with Vistar Media to bring custom creative to out-of-home campaigns that live on digital billboards.

In TikTok’s parlance, billboard ads and other real-world spots are known as “Out Of Phone” campaigns. TikTok’s partners have had access to that format since 2023, when the app first brought its ads to locations like airports, gas stations, and movie theaters.

Those campaigns have plenty of potential. Creators love to see themselves on billboards, so it makes sense that brands engaged in influencer marketing would want to take advantage of any and all IRL bumps.

Out Of Phone campaigns, however, come with unique challenges. TikTok encourages its ad partners to tailor their spots to fit the vertical orientation of the For You Page. The TikTok for Business hub is filled with tools that resize and optimize ads to best fit social media formats.

What happens when those vertically oriented ads need to be ported over to a horizontal screen, such as a digital billboard? That’s where Vistar Media comes in. The out-of-home tech company has been a TikTok partner since 2024, offers a Creative Studio

that advertisers can use to tailor their campaigns for out-of-home presentation. Vistar then delivers the refitted ads at scale across a variety of real-world locations.

“OOH has become a natural extension of mobile,” said Vistar Media SVP and GM of Americas Marketplace Lucy Markowitz in a statement. “Brands can take the ideas they are already investing in and extend them into moments of real-world attention, whether that’s a commute, a store visit, or time spent out with friends. When mobile and out-of-home work together like this, awareness does not just scale, it sticks.”

TikTok Global Head of Media and Licensing Partnerships Dan Page said that the app works with a limited pool of partners on its Out Of Phone campaigns. “When agencies or brands are creating really compelling campaigns on platform, they are vertical,” Page told Digiday. “We need great partners to be able to reformat and reimagine these TikTok ads for screens of all different shapes and sizes.”

Those partners have more options than ever before when it comes to reaching consumers through TikTok. If Out Of Phone campaigns don’t meet a brand’s needs, there are always plenty of on-platform formats to consider — and more of them are added every year.