Frequently asked questions

Flow City is a London-based self-serve platform for buying digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising. Any business can plan, book and launch campaigns on digital billboards and screens online, with an AI Planner that builds the media plan for you. More than 20,000 campaigns have run on Flow City since 2019, and over £10M in campaigns have been delivered since 2020.

No. Flow City is a technology platform (a DSP) that you use yourself: you choose the screens, budget and dates, and Flow City connects you to media owners’ inventory. If you prefer, Flow City’s team can plan and run the campaign for you as a managed service, for an extra fee.

Flow City has more than 200 users, from small businesses to brands such as Tesco, Boots, Amazon and Pret, public bodies such as the NHS and City of Westminster, and media agencies.

Flow City connects to over 1,000,000 screens in more than 20 countries, including JCDecaux in the UK, Germany and Singapore, Global, and Bauer Media Outdoor UK. Screen types include roadside billboards, rail and transport screens, shopping malls, gyms and offices.

No. Digital screens rotate many ads in a loop, so media owners sell individual plays programmatically instead of whole weeks on a board. On Flow City you buy the same premium screens that large brands use, in smaller amounts.

Sign up at app.flow.city, plan a campaign with the AI Planner, upload your creative and submit it for approval. To talk to the team, email ads@flow.city.

On Flow City, a £1,000 campaign in London typically buys 50,000–100,000 impressions. You pay per impression, and the price depends on the city, screen type, time of day and audience. The AI Planner shows the estimated impressions for your budget before you book.

The minimum campaign budget on Flow City is £1,000.

Flow City has three plans. Pay as You Go has no subscription and includes AI Planning, AI artwork scanning, the AI Campaign Manager and automatic SOV and floor price optimisation. PRO adds guaranteed activity and premium features for users who run campaigns regularly. MULTI is for teams and agencies, with 3 seats, client sub-accounts and invoicing per client.

Share of voice (SOV) is the share of a screen’s ad loop your ad gets. Floor price is the minimum CPM a media owner accepts. Flow City optimises both automatically, so your budget buys the most plays at the lowest winning price.

Flow City’s AI Planner is a conversational planning assistant: you describe your goal, audience, area and budget in plain language, and it suggests screens, schedule and budget split. It combines third-party data, the locations of advertising sites and expert planning knowledge. You can edit the plan before launch.

Yes. On Flow City you can target audiences such as shoppers, corporate workers, travellers and high-net-worth individuals, as well as locations, venue types, days and hours. Audience estimates combine third-party data with Flow City’s own models.

Yes. You can pick individual screens on the map, or let the AI Planner choose them for you.

Yes. Flow City has its own dedicated Planning Agent, built on the open Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol. It is available on Google Cloud Marketplace and can be added to Gemini Enterprise as a subagent, so your team can plan DOOH campaigns (screens, audiences, schedule and budget) by chatting in Gemini Enterprise. Because it uses A2A, other A2A-compatible AI agents can connect to it too.

Flow City accepts static images and MP4 video. Flow City scans your artwork with AI and checks it against each screen format individually.

Yes. On the Flow City homepage you can upload your artwork and preview it on real screen formats (portrait, landscape and rail) before booking.

On Flow City, creative approval takes up to 36 hours, including the legal content check.

Flow City checks your creative against advertising rules, and each media owner gives final approval for its own screens.

Flow City follows the advertising rules of each country and media owner. Restricted categories include HFSS food (high in fat, salt or sugar), alcohol and gambling.

Flow City’s AI creative scanner flags HFSS, alcohol and gambling content in your artwork automatically before you book. It then removes screens that can’t show that kind of ad from your plan, such as sites near schools. Your campaign only runs on screens where the creative is allowed, and each media owner still gives final approval for its own screens.

Flow City’s AI scans your artwork to make sure it meets regulatory requirements. Media owners can still reject artwork they don’t consider appropriate for their screens.

To maximise your chances, plan with the Flow City AI Planner: it scans your artwork and recommends the most suitable sites for it.

If your artwork is ready and approved, a campaign can go live in as little as 15 minutes, because Flow City has a live connection to the screens.

With new artwork, a campaign typically goes live 2–3 business days after creative approval, so about 3–4 business days from booking. Plan your launch dates with that in mind.

It depends on the campaign type you choose. Exact Flow campaigns are bought as programmatic guaranteed, so Flow City delivers the plays and impressions you ordered on the screens and dates you booked. Value Flow campaigns are non-guaranteed. In exchange, Flow City has more flexibility on CPM, can choose screens dynamically and adjust pacing to get the most impressions for your budget.

Yes. You can pause, change or extend a Flow City campaign from the campaign dashboard.

Yes. You can stop a Flow City campaign at any time; any unspent budget stays in your account as credit for future campaigns.

On Flow City, each play is multiplied by the estimated number of people who can see the screen at that time, using audience data from the media owner. You see plays and impressions per screen.

Flow City gives you a live dashboard with plays, impressions and spend per screen, downloadable CSV and PDF reports, and API access to reporting data.

Yes, for Shopify stores. Flow City’s Shopify app attributes online sales to your DOOH campaign.

Yes. Flow City uses aggregated, anonymous audience data and does not collect personal data from people who see the screens.

Yes. Flow City’s MULTI plan is built for agencies and teams: it includes 3 seats, separate sub-accounts for each client and invoicing per client.

Yes. Flow City provides API access to campaign booking and reporting data.

Yes. Flow City’s app in the Shopify App Store lets merchants launch DOOH campaigns from Shopify and see which sales the campaign drove.

Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising is advertising on digital screens in public places, such as roadside billboards, rail stations, shopping centres and airports. Ads rotate in a loop, so many advertisers share one screen and campaigns can change by time of day. Flow City lets any business buy DOOH online.

Programmatic DOOH means buying individual ad plays on digital screens through software, by hour, location and audience, instead of booking whole weeks on a board through a sales team. Flow City is a self-serve platform for programmatic DOOH.

Programmatic lets you buy by the hour and audience, start from a smaller budget and change the campaign while it runs. Direct booking suits long, fixed placements on a single site.

Yes, with a clear local goal. On Flow City a small business can run a campaign from £1,000 on screens near its shop or target area, and track results in the dashboard.

The Trade Desk and DV360 are enterprise DSPs for agencies with trading teams, and usually need a contract and minimum spend. Flow City is built for DOOH only and can be used by any business without a trading desk. Many agencies that use The Trade Desk also use a specialist planning tool like Flow City.

Unlike AdQuick’s focus on large US enterprise clients, Flow City enables SMBs, e-commerce brands and agile teams to run fast, automated DOOH campaigns across global markets using an AI Planner. Key differences:

• Target audience: AdQuick serves large corporate entities, whereas Flow City targets performance marketers, growing businesses and independent agencies.
• Buying model: AdQuick uses manual RFPs and scheduled contracts; Flow City provides automated, self-serve programmatic buying.
• Planning & targeting: Flow City uses dynamic triggers and a conversational AI assistant, compared to AdQuick’s static location geo-targeting and manual plans.
• Blindspot: while Blindspot focuses on self-serve billboard rentals, Flow City provides an integrated AI platform with automated SOV and floor price optimisation, real-time creative compliance scanning and global venue targeting.