In a challenging market environment Visual Art is looking back on a very successful 2023. With a turnover of almost 30 million euros, the Swedes were able to increase sales by 30 percent – and have performed significantly better than the overall market.
“Last year was very good for Visual Art, even if the momentum slowed in the second half of the year,” says CEO Pontus Meijer to invidis. The international customer portfolio with customers such as McDonalds, Subway, Lego, Circle K, 7-Eleven and Ocean Outdoor enabled the high growth. In addition to new business, the full-service integrator grew particularly with existing customers in new regions. The company also plans to grow between 20 and 25 percent in 2024.
The most important development last year was the launch of the newly developed Visual Art Signage Player. The fully cloud-native CMS platform runs on all major digital signage hardware platforms and gives Visual Art – a longtime Samsung partner – more freedom of choice. The Signage Player installed base of more than 75,000 displays is expected to be migrated to the new platform by the end of 2024.
Outside Europe, Visual Art cooperates with third party integrators who use the CMS platform in their markets. With the cloud native tech-stack, global projects will be much easier to roll out
Focus on retail media networks
At the beginning of the year, Visual Art surprised with a personnel announcement: the former CEO Andreas Lind rejoined as Retail Media Strategist. The DooH specialist left the integrator in 2019 with the curve-out of Visual Arts’ DooH business and sale to Ocean Outdoor. In his new role, Andreas Lind will advise visual art customers as a retail media expert.
Retail media is in Visual Art’s DNA.
Sweden’s largest and most innovative supermarket chain has been one of Visual Arts most important customers for more than ten years: ICA was one of the first European retailers to display dynamic, data-driven digital signage content on large in-store displays right next to the goods. Opening up additional revenue streams for the retailer. A foretaste of what is now called Retail Media Networks.
“Our new CMS platform with programmatic connection enables retailers to measure customer behavior and the effectiveness of retail media campaigns at the POS in conjunction with checkout data,” explains Pontus Meijer. With detailed reporting, a precise return on investment can be measured for CPG brands.
Retail Media and DooH only share the same tech platform, the business cases differ completely
Although Instore DooH and Retail Media are based on the same digital signage technology, they are based on two different revenue models. “Our friends at Ocean Outdoor are the experts in audience marketing aka DooH. Visual Art will not sell DooH campaigns,” emphasizes Pontus Meijer. “Retail media on the other hand is transaction based and connects to first party data e.g. check out-data. We see ourselves as a trusted advisor for retailers who do not have the retail media know-how inhouse.”
Visual Art already counts retailers, convenience stores and ski resorts among its technology customers which have implemented or are in the process of deploying retail media networks. With Andreas Lind, Fredrik Holmvik, Pelle Mets Höök and Andrew Jarder Visual Art has an experienced consulting team that supports customers with conception, implementation and monetization.
For Pontus Meijer, Retail Media is not only a strategic growth area for the integrator, but a driver for the entire industry – both for integration and for the CMS business. “I am convinced that retail media will become a strategically important revenue generator for Visual Art.”
Further expansion in Europe
Visual Art is firmly established in Scandinavia and has been represented in Germany for more than 10 years. Additional European markets are now to be opened up in 2024. With the goal of double-digit growth, Visual Art sees itself well positioned in the new year to attract new customers with large projects.