The Canadian Out-of-Home Marketing and Measurement Bureau (COMMB) has added a new OOH category – moving billboards – to its membership roster through Hilite Outdoor, the organization’s newest member. Hilite is a Toronto-based operator of programmatic digital car-top signs on ride share and food delivery vehicles in major markets across Canada, including Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary and Vancouver. 

The company is able to serve national advertising, including smaller markets and rural areas, for specific campaigns. Advertisers have the option to run static or video creative with the average duration being 10 to 15 seconds. The high-resolution 5G digital screens use proximity and contextual targeting to reach demographic segments.

The company’s hyper-local messaging allows advertisers to reach consumers in neighborhoods where other DOOH offerings are limited. Ads can be bought programmatically through Hivestack and Vistar and targeted to neighborhoods that have been mapped out within key markets for demographic, lifestyle and behavioral impression delivery – with a seamless real-time GPS feed that COMMB leverages to produce audited impression calculations. 

Solomon Misghina, Hilite founder and CEO, says it was important for the young company to become a member of COMMB. “COMMB is the professional standard in outdoor media in Canada, so it was quite an important point in our agenda to be part of and accredited by COMMB. When speaking with media planners and buyers, measurement is always at the forefront of the conversation. Having our measurement approved by COMMB – especially because we were the first to do it in Canada – was something of paramount importance to us and we’re so happy that we’ve been accepted.”

Misghina says the company does have expansion plans and is currently working on another mobile digital project with massive scale using a public utility. Hilite Outdoor receives exclusive access to COMMB data, platforms, tools and member-only services. COMMB research shows that Hilite signs have 100% viewability from 30 meters and are 50% viewable from 30 up to 75 meters.

Hilite Outdoor, founded in 2019 and launched in 2020, is the first company in Canada to bring street-level programmatic mobile billboards to market.