Vertiseit has grown from a small Swedish digital signage provider to one of Europe’s leading ISVs. In 2024, the acquisition of Visual Art doubled its revenue to more than 60 million Euros. invidis spoke to CEO Johan Lind about his multi-brand strategy, managing the balance between software, consulting and systems, and the impact of AI.
Many ISE visitors missed Johan Lind in Barcelona last week. The CEO and team have been busy integrating Visual Art into the Vertiseit group, merging software development teams and refining the positioning of Vertiseit’s three digital signage brands. Constant change defines Vertiseit, and Johan Lind and Deputy CEO Jonas Lagerqvist are managing an extremely fast-growing and successful digital signage market leader.
Many market players and Dise partners have been curious about how Vertiseit will position its three brands (Dise, Grassfish, and Visual Art) in the market. A main part of the group’s unifying strategy will be the IXM Grid, the group’s shared platform backend. This aims to realize synergies among the platform development teams. With a platform-first approach, the goal is to become the world’s leading in-store experience management platform and to reach an ARR exceeding 1 billion SEK (90 million EUR) in 2032. Vertiseit originated as a system integrator in the Nordics, and now operates through the three market brands Dise, Grassfish, and Visual Art, all with a strong partner focus.
All three brands work in some form or another with partners – only their roles differ:
· Through partners: Dise
· Side-by-side: Grassfish
· With partners: Visual Art
Johan Lind believes that “a strong global partner community is necessary. Not a single digital signage provider in the world can offer all services alone worldwide.” However, different system integrators and end-customers need different forms of services and support. According to CEO Johan Lind, Vertiseit is positioned to properly serve various customer groups with the right offering, everything based on a market-leading IXM platform on the latest Azure tech stack. “Every part of our offering must meet global scalability needs and for this we build global partnerships.”
Dise
Dise is a pure SaaS platform company, offering its digital signage CMS platform, or in-store experience platform in Vertiseit lingo, solely through a global community of certified partners. Partners like JLS (CH), Pixel Inspiration, and First Impression resell, integrate, and support Dise directly with full responsibility towards their customers.
Grassfish
Grassfish is positioned as an enterprise-grade in-store experience management platform, offered together with consulting expertise. With the go-to-market strategy, working side-by-side with partners, the company mainly targets global brands. “Customers like global automotive brands require a much more flexible ecosystem. For these customers, digital signage is often business-critical, and they don’t want to outsource. They aim to build an internal competence center with strong digital in-store know-how. Grassfish provides a modern platform and consulting teams to constantly iterate and evolve their solutions over time.
Visual Art
Last but not least, Visual Art designs ready to deploy digital signage concepts and communication to drive the business objectives for retailers and QSR brands. The deployment outside the Nordics is primarily provided by system integration partners. A typical project setup is the recently announced KFC UK project, which was fully developed and planned by Visual Art and deployed by Pioneer Group for 1.000 restaurants. The aim is to take full responsibility by reducing the complexity of implementing and operating large digital signage networks.
Vertiseit: One billion SEK in SaaS sales by 2032
Vertiseit CEO Johan Lind is staying true to himself and setting new ambitious sales targets. After taking over Visual Art last fall, Vertiseit is aiming for one billion SEK (equivalent to 89 million euros) in sales from recurring software subscriptions by the end of 2032. In the past year, 2024, the Vertiseit Group achieved sales equivalent to 62.5 million euros.
Exciting times at Vertiseit – with the spectacular takeover of Visual Art last October, the Swedes doubled their revenue in 2024 to the equivalent of EUR 62.5 million (of which EUR 24.5 million was SaaS). Vertiseit’s SaaS sales (excluding acquisitions) grew organically by 19 percent.
Challenge of product mix
With the acquisition, the product mix at Vertiseit has shifted. Until now, the focus and the stock market story were on recurring software sales. The consolidated Vertiseit Group, now twice as large with Visual Art, generated almost half of its sales (EUR 30.5 million) in 2024 with integration services (systems) and 38 percent with software sales (EUR 24 million).
Vertiseit integrates quickly
As Vertiseit has already completed a number of acquisitions in recent years and integrated a new group-wide ERP and IT platform, Visual Art was able to be integrated into the new systems within a few weeks. As one of the few listed digital signage companies and with a new financial investor as anchor shareholder, the requirements for management systems and financial reporting are much higher than for private companies.
Enabling national champions – connecting with global platforms
While the industry loves to shine with global projects, the vast majority of the digital signage market is comprised of national projects. The sweet spot is to provide an excellent platform to leading national integrators. “We see very good traction in this market with Dise where national Full Service Integrators are growing rapidly. In reality, many global customers, such as QSR brands, are built on national concepts, implemented by strong local partners.”
Johan Lind is happy with Vertiseit’s current setup. Even though the revenue has slightly shifted toward systems with the acquisition of Visual Art. This is to gradually change, as SaaS and consulting revenues grow. Today, Vertiseit also announced the divestment of Visual Art’s own LED import business in favor for a partner model, similar to selling MultiQ’s display manufacturing activities to Journeo after its acquisition in 2022. Further sell-offs are not currently planned.
According to Johan Lind, Vertiseit is also well positioned to serve the diverse requirements of global brands today and tomorrow – digital signage and in-store experience is a platform game, in which Vertiseit is well positioned. “Everything is based on data” and scale matters. “The digital signage market will be a platform play like ERP or CRM. In 2032, we will have five dominant platforms in digital signage – similar as in other industries”.
The consolidation process has just started to gain momentum, and Vertiseit wants to continue driving this trend. “Consolidation will benefit the market.” But Lind knows the industry’s limits. “We won’t compete with Adobe or Salesforce; we will partner. Many of our clients use Adobe platforms, to which we connect.”
When asked if Adobe and Co. will replace Vertiseit in the future, Johan Lind remains confident: “They don’t have the know-how of digital in-store and retail operations – as it’s not in line with their strategy. The tools they provide are open to any channel. They don’t strive to own a channel. Instead, they want to support the creative process and provide the glue between content, data, and digital touchpoints regardless of channel. They enhance the flow of automated content and data but still need input from human interaction, captured by sensors, triggers, and in-store tech. Vertiseit is upbeat about the future and its leading role in the in-store experience.
Focus on North America
While Vertiseit has become one of Europe’s leading software providers, future expansion will be mainly in North America. Just recently, Vertiseit’s ISV brand Dise opened an office in Atlanta, complementing Visual Art’s existing presence in Chicago. Business development in the US is gaining momentum, especially Dise expanded its partner network. In addition, Johan Lind and the team are always open to acquisitions to expand Vertiseit’s footprint and offering. In Europe, Vertiseit is looking at Southern Europe for potential acquisitions.
Key benefit of AI is decision-making in real-time
Artificial intelligence is dominating daily business and technology headlines. Digital signage’s impact and disruption are huge. Like most digital signage market players, Vertiseit is testing how AI can benefit in-store experiences. “AI is key to real-time decision-making. For the first time, network owners will be able to continuously play the right content at the right time to the right audience. Delivering personalized and relevant experiences is what our industry should aim for,” explains Johan Lind to invidis.
Content and device management have become core features for digital signage platforms – “but audience management will become just as important in the future.” Dise, Grassfish, and Visual Art aim to AI-enable users to predict and measure actual traffic to enable personalization of content with the use of AI and automation.
