StackAdapt vs Blindspot: one channel of eight

The verdict: who each is for

StackAdapt is a multi-channel demand-side platform. Out-of-home is one of eight channels, offered across three format families its own pages describe as high-impact and large format, place-based, and point-of-purchase, with supply from named media owners including JCDecaux, Clear Channel, Outfront, Lamar Global and oOh! Media, and targeting by location, time of day and weather. Blindspot is a marketplace rather than a DSP: 3M+ digital screens in 50+ countries, one named screen booked for one named hour, priced per play from $0.23 and shown before you book.

A fair comparison has to concede something first: StackAdapt's out-of-home tooling is stronger than the average omnichannel DSP's. Weather and time-of-day targeting, a visual planner you can validate a buy in before launch, venue-level reporting and footfall attribution are all real, and its own published CPM range is the figure this site already cites when quoting industry benchmarks.

The difference is still structural. StackAdapt targets: you describe location, daypart and conditions, and the platform delivers across the supply that matches. Blindspot sells: you pick the screen, read what one play costs, and set that screen's hours. So a team running out-of-home as one line of an eight-channel plan is better served by the DSP, and a team whose brief is a named corridor at named hours is better served by the marketplace. Where the two are not like-for-like this guide says so rather than forcing a single scoreboard.

StackAdapt vs Blindspot, line by line

The dimensions that decide the choice, scoped to out-of-home rather than the whole platform. Blindspot figures are from live platform data, Q3 2026. StackAdapt is described from its own DOOH page and its own published CPM range.

Blindspot figures are from live platform data, Q3 2026. StackAdapt's format families, supply partners, targeting and measurement claims are from its own DOOH page, read August 2026; the $2 to $15 CPM range is StackAdapt's own published figure from its DOOH costs article of October 2024, the same figure cited on our CPM benchmarks page. Its DOOH page publishes no minimum or fee, so that row describes the buying model rather than a quoted number. See also the wider platform comparison.

Pricing: the unit, worked

StackAdapt is the one platform in this cluster that publishes a DOOH price range, and it is worth citing precisely: its own DOOH costs article puts programmatic out-of-home at $2 to $15 CPM, the cost per thousand modelled impressions. Blindspot does not sell CPM at all. It prices the screen: one play, one appearance on one named screen, from about $0.23 on urban screens, shown before you commit.

The two units are not convertible without a number neither platform publishes: how many people one play on a given screen reaches. A CPM divided by a thousand is a modelled cost per impression; a play is one real appearance that may be seen by several people. Anyone who converts between them without that ratio is comparing two different things.

A worked example. Take a two-week test on one commuter corridor. Through StackAdapt you set the location, the dayparts and the weather condition, validate the plan on the map, and delivery spreads across matching supply at a CPM that lands somewhere in that published range. On Blindspot you pick the corridor's screens by name, set 7am to 10am on one and 5pm to 8pm on another, and read the per-play price first: at about $0.23 a play, $500 buys on the order of 2,000 plays placed only in those windows. Both run the corridor. One optimises across a pool; the other lets you name the screen, the hour and the price.

If your reporting has to put out-of-home on the same line as connected TV and native, a shared CPM is the practical language and a DSP is the right home for it. If the plan is places and times, per-play buying is, and skipping the hours nobody is out typically removes 30% or more of the waste at any budget. See the billboard cost guide and CPM vs per play.

Attribution: what you can measure

StackAdapt is genuinely competitive here and it would be dishonest to wave it away. Its own pages describe venue-level, geo-level and media-owner reporting, footfall attribution connecting in-person visits to campaigns, a cross-channel dashboard, and the ability to retarget audiences exposed to a screen across other channels. That last capability is something a pure out-of-home marketplace does not offer, and for a performance team it can be the deciding feature.

Blindspot starts from a receipt rather than a model: verified plays logged with a screen, a time and a place, then measured lift on top. Outcomes have been measured against a control group at around $0.82 per incremental store visit, $0.80 per incremental web visit and $5.75 per incremental online purchase. Set that against paid-social costs per action that often run from $15 to $40, and a well-scheduled digital out-of-home campaign competes on cost per outcome, not just on reach.

That loop is also what makes hourly buying pay off. Because Blindspot knows which plays ran and can tie delivery to foot-traffic and web lift, it can concentrate a budget into the windows that convert. A worldwide tourism campaign did exactly that, delivering 87% more plays than planned on the same budget, which is the clearest proof that this is an efficiency argument at any size rather than a small-budget one.

When to choose StackAdapt

There are real briefs where StackAdapt is the better tool. Choose StackAdapt when:

Out-of-home is one line of a multi-channel plan. If the same campaign runs native, display, video, connected TV and audio, having out-of-home in the same platform with shared frequency, shared audiences and one dashboard is worth more than per-screen control. Blindspot does not pretend to be that platform.

You want to retarget the audience exposed to a screen. StackAdapt's own pages describe retargeting audiences exposed to out-of-home across other digital channels. That is a genuine cross-channel capability a marketplace cannot replicate, and if it is central to your funnel, choose accordingly.

You would rather target a daypart than choose screens. Setting location, time of day and weather and letting the platform find matching supply is fewer decisions than picking screens one by one. For a broad market push where the exact screen does not matter, that is an advantage rather than a compromise.

If your brief looks like any of those, StackAdapt is a sound choice, and plenty of teams run both: the DSP for the multi-channel plan, a marketplace when a client wants named screens at named hours with the price agreed up front.

When to choose Blindspot

Blindspot is the better tool when the screen and the hour are the plan, not a targeting parameter. Choose Blindspot when:

You want a clock on each named screen, not a daypart on the buy. Time-of-day targeting narrows a whole campaign to parts of the day. Blindspot sets hours per screen, so one board runs the morning commute while another runs the evening, and the overnight hours are simply never bought. Cutting those windows typically removes 30% or more of the waste.

You want the price before the demo. Every screen shows its per-play price before you book, from about $0.23, with a Times Square play near $40. There is no demo to book and no quote to wait for, which matters when you are pricing a plan rather than exploring a platform.

You want plays audited rather than impressions modelled. Delivery is logged as verified plays with a screen, a time and a place, and measured lift has come in around $0.82 per store visit, $0.80 per web visit and $5.75 per online purchase against a control group. A CPM is a forecast of views; a play is a fact you paid for.

You need reach beyond one platform's supply. 3M+ digital screens across 50+ countries on one account and one invoice, with 25,000+ advertisers already on it. The same platform runs a single-corridor test and a multi-country flight, which is what makes this an efficiency argument at any budget rather than a small-budget one.

You can open the map, read real prices on a self-serve platform, set an hourly schedule per screen, and have Blinky build a plan from a one-line brief.