Media owner spotlight: LUMO

For this month’s Media Owner Spotlight, Vistar spoke to Jack Plowright, GM of Platform and Partner Strategy at LUMO. This interview spotlights the unique value proposition their digital network brings to the out-of-home (OOH) industry and how LUMO’s partnership with Vistar Media is enhancing digital advertising experiences in New Zealand.

Please describe your network in 2 sentences.

LUMO is a proudly New Zealand-owned digital out of home (DOOH) network built to power smarter, more connected solutions for brands looking to reach people in the world around them. Since 2017, we’ve been on a mission to reshape OOH's potential - leading with innovation, creativity, transparency, a genuine commitment to collaboration, and a promise to never compromise on quality.

What types of screens do you have / contexts they can be found in?

Our network has grown to over 100 premium digital billboards across New Zealand’s main city precincts and suburbs, giving brands the chance to connect with people in the moments that make up daily life. You’ll see LUMO in the places people move and gather - along busy commuter routes connecting suburbs and feeding into the CBD, in shopping precincts, leaving airports, joining motorways, and around venues and stadiums. Reaching people as they move and experience the places they go.

What regions do you operate in?

We operate across key regions in New Zealand, including: Northland (Whangarei), Auckland (Auckland City, Manukau City, Waitakere City, North Shore City), Waikato (Hamilton), Bay of Plenty (Tauranga, Rotorua), Wellington (Wellington City), and Canterbury (Christchurch).

What audiences do you reach?

LUMO reaches over 2 million Kiwis every week - a broad, diverse audience across cities and communities throughout the country. Our digital billboards connect with people in all kinds of moments: commuters heading into the city, parents on the school run, people out shopping, grabbing lunch, or catching up with friends after work. By evening, it’s crowds heading to concerts, restaurants, and the big game. The beauty of a well-spread DOOH network like ours is that the audience we can reach moves as the context does - constantly shifting with what’s happening, and where it’s happening.

What sets you apart from other digital channels?

Unlike online digital environments, DOOH connects with audiences in trusted, brand-safe public spaces – offering tangible brand presence where people are present. It’s this tie to time and place, where the environment adds weight, immediacy, and credibility, especially when creative taps into local context to better capture the moment. Where other channels fight for attention, DOOH exists as part of the real world.

But sometimes, what makes DOOH powerful isn’t just what can be measured. It’s something inherent to the medium itself. DOOH’s physicality can entertain, inform, and announce in ways that go beyond the impression. Unlike personal screens, DOOH is experienced in public, where audiences encounter it together. Even strangers share the same moment, and that shared brand experience can amplify cultural impact and word-of-mouth in ways solitary media simply can’t.

What is your network's main value proposition to a brand?

Reliability, quality, and innovation are at the heart of what makes LUMO different.

We’ve built a reliable network that goes beyond uptime or technical performance. For us it’s about being a partner brands can trust to activate ideas seamlessly and deliver exactly what’s promised. LUMO operates within a live and open ecosystem, giving buyers access to our network when and where they need it. Our fibre-connected screens provide real-time responsiveness, near-perfect uptime and the foundation for live data integrations and dynamic creative optimisation that work without interruption.

Quality is embedded in everything we do. From screen technology and location selection to creative flexibility and continuous investment in innovation, we make sure brands not only show up in the right places but look their best when they do.

As a locally owned network, we’re driven by what more we can do. We lean into collaboration with partners who share our genuine commitment to helping brands connect with people where life happens. Innovation keeps us moving forward - constantly finding new ways to make our network easier to activate, smarter at reaching audiences, and more creative in how we deliver value for every brand that chooses to work with us.

What do you wish more digital buyers knew about OOH?

Not all CPMs are created equal. The true value of DOOH inventory lies in its context - the quality, size and presence of the DOOH asset, and the environment in which a message is seen. The impact of an impression depends on where it happens, how it’s experienced, and who it reaches in that moment. Quality of screen hardware varies considerably, and it's something that really does matter. The placement, visibility, and credibility of each screen directly influence how well a brand is seen in the channel.

We’ve come a long way from simply dropping ads into a playlist and letting them rotate through the week. Ad servers and programmatic technology have given DOOH a whole new level of flexibility, allowing brands to connect more meaningfully with context at the point of reach. It’s no longer just about having a spot on a screen; it’s about knowing when and where to serve an ad for maximum impact.

Context is still undervalued as a signal for reaching audiences. Behavioural and first-party data will always play a role, but the physical and environmental context.  What’s happening in that place, at that moment, often tells a richer story about how people actually behave and what they’re ready to engage with.

How do you see DOOH evolving over the next year?

I think we’ll see the divide between the old world and the new continue to widen, but also some real convergence in the areas that will fuel the channel’s growth. Traditional, manual approaches will start to feel increasingly out of step with where the industry is heading, while more progressive players will drive momentum through cross–buy-type CPM trading, standardisation, and platform-managed activation.

Markets will become more unified around measurement, and buyers will shift their focus away from value as simply the price they pay, toward delivery, context, and the outcomes the channel can offer.

AI will start to appear gradually, beginning with practical uses like adjusting creative assets to manage specification volumes across the market, supporting internal agents for planning, and improving yield and pricing management. We may also start to see the first signs of agentic solutions, systems that streamline workflows and begin to enable automated transactions between our systems and buyers’ platforms. It’s an early step, but within the next year, we could see meaningful progress as long as the foundations around inventory, data, and system integration are in place.

Is there anything else you'd like to highlight about your network?

Over the next 12 to 18 months, LUMO will lean further into the creative and programmatic potential of the channel. We will explore the activation of both first and third-party data signals and building programmatic deals that prioritise context and relevance. Our focus will be on smarter deal prioritisation, easier access to audiences and integrations with our data and DSP partners to help brands connect more meaningfully and efficiently with our network. 

We’re also exploring how to blend custom triggers and dynamic creatives to better align with real moments of reach. The goal is simple: to put more meaningful, more useful ads in front of Kiwis at the right time and place. It’s about making creativity work harder in context, so campaigns feel relevant, responsive, and genuinely part of people’s everyday lives.

Why did you choose Vistar as a partner?

Vistar was an early pioneer in programmatic DOOH, and their technology aligns perfectly with our vision for a more connected, live and data-driven OOH ecosystem. We wanted a partner that could enable automation, compatibility with our systems, useful features and access to regional and Australian demand while supporting innovation and growth at a local level.

What has been Vistar's most valuable contribution to your business?

Over more than five years of partnership, Vistar has helped us strengthen our programmatic capabilities and expand access to new sources of demand. Their technology has supported the growth of our network, and demonstrated the depth of what’s possible through better data, targeting, and creative activation in DOOH.

What software capabilities do you find most useful?

Vistar is one of our core SSP partners and a big part of how we make our network accessible to programmatic buyers. Their platform provides us visibility into how our inventory performs - from network insights and auction analytics to diagnostics that help us understand what’s really happening under the hood. The range of deal and auction types, plus the depth of their audience taxonomy and point-of-interest suite, really stand out. Altogether, it gives us the flexibility to trade smarter, optimise yield, and give buyers more transparent, data-driven access to our network.

What benefits have you been able to leverage by working with Vistar?

Beyond the benefits of Vistar’s technology, we’ve been able to lean on the strength of their team and their deep understanding of the demand side. Their marketplace team is particularly impressive - proactive, knowledgeable, and always looking for ways to drive growth for our business. They’ve been a crucial partner in helping us adapt quickly, tap into new opportunities, and keep building momentum as programmatic adoption continues to grow here in New Zealand.

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

The direction and investment from Vistar in our part of the world is really encouraging. There’s a genuine drive to ensure the product keeps up with the calibre of the team they’ve built. What stands out most is their understanding of the opportunity - the value in carefully curating systems that bridge buyers and sellers in a way that feels useful and built for growth.