2022 was a special year for many reasons. We reinforced our commitment to global expansion, evolved our core products and solutions, and celebrated 10 years of Vistar Media with the remarkable people who make this company what it is. I want to highlight some things Vistar is most proud of from 2022:

Accelerating growth around the globe:

• 2022 was jam-packed with growth for Vistar across all facets of our business. We acquired Sage+Archer to accelerate the growth of programmatic across Europe with the best team in that region, combining global scale with deep local expertise. We’ve expanded our footprint in APAC by launching capabilities in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Hong Kong, and continued to double down in Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Last year brought unprecedented growth in Canada across the buyer and seller side, and the U.S. revenue broke new records and delivered award-winning work (more on that later!).

• Looking ahead into 2023 and beyond, we will continue our expansion across Southeast Asia, dive deeper into our capabilities and relationships in new countries within Europe, and are in the process of building exciting partnerships in Latin America. Along with this geographic expansion, we’re building new capabilities to streamline multinational campaigns and elevate data capabilities regionally. Our goal is simple: execute our vision of being a truly global marketplace for digital out-of-home (DOOH).

Unlocking critical capabilities for advertisers:

• Advertisers have invested heavily in online media over the years, in part thanks to the attribution and personalization possible online. We want to bring those same qualities to life for out-of-home (OOH). Last year, we launched a solution to connect OOH campaigns with online conversions. Our partnership with Reveal Media (formerly Mira), a location intelligence and attribution provider for OOH, helps marketers measure the impact of their programmatic DOOH campaigns on lower funnel KPIs, like online conversions and acquisition, and was among the first for our industry.

• We also released dynamic creative capabilities for pretty much any DOOH screen connected to our SSP. The move unlocks personalization at scale for marketers, allowing them to activate dynamic campaigns involving live sports scores, weather and traffic updates, directions, countdowns and so much more. This year we will be building out a full suite of templates and use cases to make it easy to bring data-driven creatives to life.

Optimizing yield for media owners through mediation:

• Over the past few years, the programmatic landscape for OOH has grown and become more crowded and complex. While we welcome the growth, we recognized that our media owners needed a solution to navigate the complexity. In particular, programmatic auctions were fractured across multiple supply-side platforms (SSPs). To solve this, Vistar released our mediation solution, providing media owners with a streamlined connection to the programmatic marketplace and a way to maximize yield across that marketplace.

• Mediation connects Vistar’s ad server to multiple SSPs and hosts a unified auction for each available ad spot, ensuring that ad impressions are sold at the best possible price – ensuring media owners are maximizing their own revenue. We have also built sophisticated auction analytics tools, and will be working throughout this year to arm media owners with the data and insights to take control of their yield operations.  

Celebrating Vistar’s 10-year anniversary:

• We celebrated Vistar’s 10-year anniversary in December - a milestone that many startups don’t reach, much less with a healthy financial trajectory - so naturally we had to go big! We hosted a dinner to say thank you to the core clients and partners that have been with us along the journey so far. It was amazing to see so many industry leaders in one place, and to share our gratitude for the trust, business and relationships that have been built over the years. 

• The company also brought our people together from all over the world to celebrate 10 years of Vistar driving the DOOH space forward. We closed out the year by nearly doubling our employee count in 2022. So, we had plenty to celebrate! 

Receiving industry-wide recognition:

• Last but certainly not least, Vistar, in collaboration with our amazing clients and agency partners, was recognized with a total of 20+ nominations and awards for our DOOH campaigns in 2022. From receiving “Best Programmatic OOH Activation” (Betterment) in the AdExchanger Awards, to “Most Effective Programmatic Media Partnership” (HBF Health Insurance Australia) in the Drum Awards for Digital Advertising APAC, these recognitions serve as a testament to the innovative campaigns our teams are activating every day.

We are very proud of these accomplishments from 2022, and I can tell you that 2023 is shaping up to take that success to new heights. I, along with the entire leadership team at Vistar, are so proud of these achievements from 2022 and look forward to seeing what the next decade holds for our company, clients, partners and DOOH.