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At Vistar Media, we team up with a variety of companies to help brands and marketers realize the possibilities of out-of-home (OOH) advertising. One of our strategic partners is Swiftly, which leverages its retail AI and audience capabilities to execute data-driven, measurable digital out-of-home (DOOH) campaigns through our platform.
To highlight this partnership, we recently connected with Seth Whitaker, Director of Advertising Strategy & Operations at Swiftly. Continue reading to learn more about Swiftly and how they leverage DOOH as a performance-focused channel, helping brands reach the right audiences and maximize impact across their media mix.
Can you tell us about Swiftly and the solutions you offer the out-of-home industry?
Swiftly is a retail AI company that helps retailers and CPG brands create more personalized shopping experiences through audience insights, retail media and measurement. At the core of the platform is Audience Optimizer™, which uses AI to match the right promotion to the right shopper across every channel, driving more store visits and sales.
Swiftly's marketing solutions reach shoppers across news, social, connected TV and other digital channels, making digital out-of-home a natural extension. One of Swiftly's biggest strengths is measurement; every campaign, including CPG-funded retail media, ties back to a real receipt, so you see the actual sales impact of each impression.
Can you describe your role as a channel partner and how you work with clients to achieve their OOH goals?
Swiftly's role is to give retailers, and the brands that advertise with them, the technology and first-party shopper insight to run smarter, more personalized media. Digital out-of-home is one of the channels we brought into that mix. Swiftly provides the audience intelligence and creative, while Vistar provides the programmatic infrastructure to activate those audiences across digital out-of-home.
We start with the client's goal, anything from an awareness campaign around a new store opening to a seasonal tentpole campaign, and develop a plan that leverages our cross-channel touchpoints enriched with the retailer’s own data. Using this shopper data, we activate audiences across the purchasing journey, from outdoor DOOH billboard ads to personalized grocery promotions on display. The result is a campaign that is connected from screen to shelf, a continuous experience from awareness to purchase to loyalty.
What’s your approach to guiding clients through OOH campaign planning and execution?
We start with the client's goals and work backward. Once the KPIs are defined, we build audience strategies around factors like geography, venue type, day of week, time of day and even local weather. One advantage of partnering with Vistar is the ability to activate retailer first-party audiences across programmatic DOOH with a high level of precision.
We generally recommend DOOH as part of a broader omnichannel strategy rather than as a standalone channel. It works alongside programmatic, paid search, social and connected TV to reinforce messaging throughout the customer journey. And because we manage execution end to end, clients get the reach and flexibility of programmatic out-of-home without needing the expertise.
Why did you choose Vistar Media as a partner? What benefits have you gained from partnering with Vistar Media?
Vistar and Swiftly both focus on connecting digital marketing with real-world experiences. Our key challenge when working with a DOOH vendor was to avoid the “spray and pray” that are common among 1 to many media like billboards and street signs. Vistar empowers us to leverage real data to target the right user with the right message at the right moment.
We chose Vistar for scale, independence and flexibility. Vistar gives us access to a broad range of inventory across grocery and convenience stores, gyms, malls, transit, billboards and other environments, all through a single platform to plan, buy and measure.
Just as important, Vistar's programmatic approach lets us bring our 1st party audiences in a way that no other DOOH vendor was able to. Vistar’s unique combination of nationwide inventory and hyper-local targeted activation is exactly what makes it possible to extend our clients' audiences off the phone and onto the street.
How do you collaborate with Vistar Media to help brands maximize the impact of their digital out-of-home campaigns?
The strengths of our platforms are highly complementary. Swiftly brings first-party retail audiences, while Vistar brings national reach with precise targeting overlays.
This targeting algorithm enables us to focus on outcomes: converting competitive shoppers, upselling category and brand buyers, inviting lapsed shoppers back into their store for a second look. We then coordinate those placements with the rest of the campaign so DOOH amplifies everything else in the mix. For brands, that means relevant messaging delivered close to the point of purchase, at a scale that would be hard to achieve any other way.
What has been your favorite campaign that we've collaborated on, and what made it particularly memorable or successful for you?
One that stands out is our Chobani campaign in the summer of 2026. Chobani had recently come on as a U.S. Soccer partner, and the goal was to show up in a genuine cultural moment: the USA vs. Paraguay match — the U.S. team's World Cup opener, played on home soil in Los Angeles. They wanted the brand tied to the energy already building around that game.
That's exactly where DOOH earned its place in the surround. LA's game-day traffic meant enormous audiences moving through the city and toward the stadium, and out-of-home let us meet those fans in the real world — along their routes and in the moments leading up to kickoff — rather than only on screen. It carried Chobani's presence into the physical journey to the match, complementing the rest of the campaign.
What made it memorable was the scale of the moment we got to be part of: the first men's World Cup match on U.S. soil in over three decades, a packed stadium, and a brand that fit the occasion naturally. Putting Chobani in front of that audience, at that time, in that city is exactly the kind of real-world timing this partnership does best.
The advertising landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements and shifting consumer behaviors. Why do you believe DOOH is particularly effective today?
In the past, billboards and outdoor media provided reach with no precision. Everyone passing by saw the same ad, no matter their age, household income, shopping preferences or past purchase behavior.
Now, using privacy-safe tools to create shopper cohorts, we can find our audiences and speak to them in the moments that matter. We find our sports enthusiasts at bars and brew pubs after work and target them with deals for wings and bbq sauce. We can message our fitness cohorts with high protein products and charcuterie boards at the gym. Shoppers who we haven’t seen in a while can be reached within a radius of our retailers’ competitors. We can offer current deals and QR codes to join the loyalty program while budget conscious shoppers are checking out at their local convenience store.
Targeted digital out-of-home is the awareness engine that expands and activates our funnel: after seeing it, large shares of consumers go on to search online, visit a brand's website to sign up for the loyalty program, or make a purchase in the store. DOOH makes the entire media mix work harder.
What key trends do you predict will shape the DOOH landscape in the coming years?
A few stand out. First, the continued shift to programmatic and data-driven buying, which is making out-of-home as addressable and flexible as any digital channel. Second, better measurement—moving from impressions toward real-world outcomes like store visits and sales lift, so buyers can see what their spend actually delivers. Third, deeper omnichannel integration, with DOOH planned as one connected part of a full digital surround rather than a standalone buy. And finally, smarter, more dynamic creative that adapts in real time to location, audience and context. Together, these trends are turning out-of-home into one of the most accountable, data-rich channels in the mix.
What is the one thing that you wish more digital buyers knew about out-of-home?
That out-of-home is no longer just a billboard. It's addressable, data-driven and increasingly measurable—you can reach real audiences, activate quickly and connect exposure to real-world action. And it doesn't only stand on its own: DOOH lifts the performance of the rest of your digital campaign, because shoppers who see it are more likely to engage everywhere else.
