• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 3, 2020

Vistar Media CEO Michael Provenzano briefly worked at Google during his career after the search engine acquired DSP Invite Media, which he co-founded with Zachary Weinberg, Nathaniel Turner, and Scott Becker.

Invite Media’s technology became the bid manager for DoubleClick, followed by pieces eventually being integrated into Display & Video 360, he said.

The sale of Invite Media led Provenzano to programmatic out-of-home media and the creation of Vistar Media.

Provenzano said the company experienced some impressive growth in 2019. The number of media-owned networks available on the Vistar platform rose by 86% in 2019. Unique brands buying through the platform rose 76%, while the number of campaigns running through its platform rose by 84%, and overall programmatic OOH spend through the platform rose by 80%.

Historically, out-of-home has not been considered a driver of ROI, but that is changing. The company now predicts another 80% YoY increase in revenue running through the platform globally in 2020.

Provenzano attributes part of that growth to attribution and the ability to measure return on ad spend. He specifically pointed to the measurement of store visits based on someone viewing an OOH campaign.

In 2019, the IAB and PwC UK partnered, with the support of Broadsign, to understand the state of audience data and programmatic trading in DOOH across Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, and U.S. About 48 interviews were conducted, with 21 of those in the U.S. and Canada. The findings show that lack of independent, verified attribution data and analytics are some of the major roadblocks to adoption.

Excerpts from Data & Programmatic Insider’s conversation with Provenzano follow.

Data & Programmatic Insider:  Do you think analytics is driving the increase in OOH spend by advertisers?

Provenzano:  Absolutely. It has been a big focus of ours to get analytics companies to apply CPG sales lift and lift from digital TV ads to out-of-home media. We provided them with some ideas to help them build out a solution to take to the out-of-home industry based on client requests.

D&PI:  Did it take a lot of convincing?

Provenzano:  It took a long time. In some cases we had to guarantee budgets. In the early days when we were small it was $1 million here and $1 million there, which is not exciting for companies bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars. We had to convince companies that the space was growing and measurement matters.

D&PI:  Anything else attracting new advertisers to digital out-of-home?

Provenzano:  Programmatic has been an integral piece of the growth. So many channels of advertising are seeing growth from programmatic and automation.

D&PI:  What's the biggest challenge for Vistar this year?

Provenzano:  We’ve seen a lot of competitors entering the space, but we have been building a pretty healthy ecosystem -- continuing to be a thought leader and educate clients on the facts of how measurement and other things work.