Mall-Centric DOOH Network Lightbox Winding Down Business Operations

March 7, 2024 by Dave Haynes

The long-running DOOH screen network Lightbox has started letting ad partners know that it is in the process of winding down business operations, with intentions of only making ads on the shopping mall-focused network available through the end of this month.

The company was known for years as Adspace, and was based primarily on display totems positioned around shopping mall concourses. It rebranded as Lightbox in 2019.

In an email to business partners, the company says it has not been able to overcome the impacts of the COVID-19 period, with malls not seeing normal foot traffic for weeks and months, and ad budgets correspondingly affected. At one point, in the early, scary pre-vaccine stages of the pandemic, mall traffic was down to two percent of normal counts.

Lightbox also attributes its struggles to changing ad market dynamics.

The network involves some 4,000 screens in 300 locations, in 75 metro areas. Lightbox has its main office on Madison Avenue in New York.

I’ve not seen anything official about this, but have a copy of the email sent to business partners. I have a question in to the company. I used to know people there, and been in the offices, but it’s been a while. No answer after several hours, and building social media chatter, so I am feeling comfy this is not just hearsay.

The situation is a good reminder and lesson for anyone who thinks running DOOH networks and selling ads is easy. Adspace was launched in 1998, so they’d  been at it for a quarter-century.