For this month's media owner spotlight, Vistar spoke to Deon Roberts, National Programmatic Lead at Cartology. This interview spotlights the unique value proposition their retail media network brings to the out-of-home (OOH) industry and how Cartology’s partnership with Vistar Media is enhancing digital advertising experiences in Australia.
Please describe your network in 2 sentences.
Cartology is pioneering retail media across Australia and New Zealand with a network of customer-led media solutions throughout the shopping journey. Our retail out-of-home (ROOH) network connects brands to shoppers with scale, proximity and true customer insight to drive the best results for brands.
What types of screens do you have / contexts can they be found?
Our 100% digital ROOH network boasts over 3,400 screens in high impact, shopping centre environments. Our combination of small and large format assets support brand building and awareness driving activity, combined with 3D and dynamic creative optimisation capabilities to reach Australians in a shopper mindset — at scale.
What’s more, we know that 3/4 of Australians are open to seeing ROOH ads and 1/2 are actively paying attention to ROOH ads*. We see ourselves as a channel of inspiration for shoppers.
What regions do you operate in?
We’ve got the largest ROOH footprint across Australia with over 3,400 screens across +540 metro and regional centres nationwide. You can basically find us everywhere!
What audiences do you reach?
We cover a mix of centre types across Australia’s five capital cities, and some of the largest and fastest growing regional areas in the country. From your local (habitual) centre that you might visit 1-4 times per week for essential shops and services, to your more destination shops with the likes of Australia’s largest shopping centre in Chadstone, we connect with a variety of shoppers and shopping missions across Australia with highly targeted solutions.
What sets you apart from other digital channels?
What truly distinguishes our ROOH network is that we are 100% retail and 100% customer focused. We pride ourselves on being experts and we bring that to ROOH for insight-led planning and better outcomes for brands.
For brands looking to connect with Australian shoppers, we offer a unique opportunity to blend real customer insight and scale to connect with shoppers across multiple points of influence.
What is your network's main value proposition to a brand?
Cartology can connect brands to the right customers, at the right place and time, at scale. We have real customer insight from our connectivity to the Woolworths Group, to meet the right shoppers, driving brand impact and awareness during the critical pre-shop stage, all the way through to conversion.
What do you wish more digital buyers knew about OOH?
That it has the power to work harder beyond reach and frequency to highly targeted campaigns at scale, through first party insight...With the right media partner of course.
How do you see digital out-of-home evolving over the next year?
Programmatic is a big enabler for ROOH, empowering brands to be targeted and reactive to real time insight, across a medium that has traditionally been more rigid. These advancements and uptake of smarter ROOH capabilities are only going to grow.
Is there anything else you'd like to highlight about your network?
What excites me about ROOH is the creative canvas paired with smarter targeting. The walk-by nature of the network engages shoppers, making it the perfect canvas for localised / personalised content, animation and 3D capabilities. It’s the perfect extension of a brand's video campaigns with the creative potential to not only be a brand building medium but also drive awareness, consideration and conversion at scale. We highly implore brands to get in and take full advantage of its capabilities to deliver emotive storytelling through video, animation, 3D and contextualised capabilities. That’s where ROOH gets fun!
Why did you choose Vistar as a partner?
Our collaboration with Vistar has enabled us to power our network with a leading programmatic solution that, in-turn, delivers better experiences for the brands and agencies we partner with.
What has been Vistar's most valuable contribution to your business?
Vistar has provided us with the tools and expertise to get the best out of their supply-side platform (SSP). By providing the means to trade our inventory at scale with remarkable ease and efficiency, we’ve been able to increase access and adoption by brands and agency partners. They have helped us take our programmatic solution to new heights.
What Vistar software capabilities do you find most useful?
Our goal is to empower our partners to achieve the most effective and successful campaigns. The Vistar SSP enables this, allowing us to build custom private marketplace (PMP) deals for brands using true customer insight. This ensures that our partners can reach their target audience, at scale within the retail environment to ultimately make their ROOH activity work harder.
What benefits have you been able to leverage by working with Vistar?
Our partnership offers a valuable opportunity to leverage Vistar’s industry expertise to refine our programmatic offering and effectively serve brands utilising our network.
*Source: SICRO Research (April 2025: ROOH’s impact on Customer Behaviour n=2000 -Auto, Streaming, Movies, QSR, Travel, Finances, Utilities, Insurance, Telco, Home tech/appliances
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