Vistar Media surges in H1 2024 as OOH market continues its ascent
Out-of-home advertising leader demonstrates strong performance across key metrics
Vistar Media, the leading global provider of technology solutions for out-of-home (OOH) media, today announced significant U.S. growth and momentum in the first half of 2024 across several key metrics – most notably a 77% year-over-year jump in campaign billings. This growth performance indicates clients’ significant investment in OOH as an impactful marketing channel.
Vistar’s record H1 is a strong testament to the growth of OOH and DOOH in 2024. According to OAAA, OOH advertising revenue increased 6.8% to $1.94 billion in the first quarter of 2024, marking the highest first-quarter volume in OOH history.
In that time period, Vistar also surpassed several YoY performance metrics including number of campaigns, new supply and demand partners, and company headcount. Vistar also announced major milestones and proprietary research, and was recognized in notable industry awards, demonstrating its continued leadership across OOH advertising.
“Vistar’s growth in the first half of 2024 exemplifies the value our technology brings to both advertisers and media owners, in addition to the overall growing interest and capabilities in OOH,” said Lucy Markowitz, SVP, GM US Marketplace at Vistar Media. “As agencies and brands lean in, campaigns across programmatic OOH are becoming more targeted, creative & eye-catching, and most importantly, are driving real results at both a brand and performance level. Automation has now become table-stakes and clients are truly running more impactful campaigns that encourage future investment in the channel, fostering a whole new group of advocates across the media and advertising landscape.”
Key U.S. highlights & findings from Vistar Media’s H1 2024 performance include:
- A significant surge in overall campaign billings by 77% YoY, which was accompanied by a 31% YoY increase in new advertisers running digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns with Vistar (indicating a growing interest among brands in exploring and testing this channel).
- More specifically, top spending advertiser categories included telecommunications, finance, consumer packaged goods, retail, technology, travel and entertainment, among others.
- An emphasis on personalization at scale, including more than 60% of campaigns leveraging data for targeting and activation, in addition to an uptick in advertisers utilizing dynamic creative.
- The inclusion of audience and point-of-interest (POI) targeting in campaigns achieved an 11.19% conversion rate (vs. 6.30% without)*.
- A remarkable 68% increase in its supply-side platform (SSP) client base brought the total to over 120 media owner partners and more than 730,000 DOOH screens.
- The onboarding of 32 new ad serving customers, including NextGrad and Starlite Media, representing an 89% increase from H2 2023.
- The addition of PulsePoint, Blis, HarmonyAds and Pelmorex as strategic third-party demand-side platform (DSP) partners.
- Company headcount increase of nearly 16% YoY to provide the necessary staffing to support the channel’s growth.
- Recognition as an AdExchanger Programmatic Power Player, and being awarded Gold (client: Travel Texas) and nominated as a finalist (client: JCPenney) in The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas.
Vistar also celebrated several company announcements in H1 2024. This included Vistar’s acquisition of ADstruc, a traditional OOH planning and buying software, from PJX Media; the launch of its global DSP to streamline cross-country DOOH buying; and a significant company rebrand.
According to recent eMarketer reports, programmatic DOOH is expected to surpass a quarter of DOOH ad spending this year, with over $1 billion transacted through programmatic channels by next year. This trend is bolstered by innovations in 3D, anamorphic, AR/VR components and the rise of retail media networks leveraging programmatic OOH.
For more information and to learn how to activate programmatic DOOH campaigns in H2 and beyond, reach out to Vistar Media today.
*Foursquare & Vistar Media 2024 analysis
