The retail media craze often creates the impression that in-store networks operate by an entirely different logic from OoH. Broadsign argues otherwise. In this invidis interview, CRO Maarten Dollevoet explains why the two worlds are more alike than many assume – and how Broadsign has positioned itself to claim market leadership in both.
Broadsign: “People Often Link Us Back Solely to Out-of-Home”
With the acquisition of Place Exchange, Broadsign has made one of the most important moves in the DooH market in recent years. The deal significantly increased Broadsign’s footprint in media and brought together two of the largest independent players in the Programmatic Out-of-Home (OoH) landscape.
Today, Broadsign has around 370 employees. The company, headquartered in Montreal, manages 2.9 million OoH assets worldwide, including static inventory. Of these, 1.8 million screens are programmatically connected, creating the largest aggregation of demand and supply globally.
While Broadsign has always had a strong business in Europe, the Place Exchange acquisition added a large market share in North America, where Place Exchange has been especially strong. The supply side platform is known for its technology and partnerships with global omnichannel platforms – like The Trade Desk, Google, and Yahoo – as well as a wide roster of OoH-specific DSP integrations, which allowed them to scale quickly.
On top of that, Place Exchange has been pioneering data solutions like Perview, which Maarten Dollevoet, Chief Revenue Officer at Broadsign, says has been setting a standard in audience measurement in North America.
Strong ties to omnichannel platforms
“Integration with large omnichannel DSPs is important,” Dollevoet explains. The company wants to make out-of-home and in-store retail media easily accessible within existing omnichannel workflows because this is where demand already sits.
A big move that played into this strategy was Place Exchange’s partnership with Google DV360, which enabled programmatic guaranteed buying within the platform – a major step for DooH within Google’s omnichannel environment, and for the medium in general, as it’s increasingly able to complement other online media channels.
OoH and retail media: more similar than different
Broadsign is widely seen as the de-facto standard for out-of-home. But retail media has become a major part of the business.
“People often link us back solely to out-of home,” says Dollevoet. The market increasingly labels OoH and Retail Media as two fundamentally different mediums. But Broadsign takes a different view: “We see more similarities than differences,” he says.
Both out-of-home and retail media networks (RMNs) are one-to-many channels. Both are data-driven. The big advantage RMNs have is access to the retailers’ first-party data, which helps close the attribution loop for media buyers. Brands can now more directly evaluate the effect of their marketing dollars on sales performances.
From Broadsign’s perspective, while this might distinguish the value proposition of the medium, the underlying technical requirements for in-store media are surprisingly familiar. “OoH has been transitioning into an audience-first, data-driven medium for several years now,” says Dollevoet. The introduction of programmatic has already made the way media owners manage their inventory much more data-centric. Broadsign has taken this further by developing a system that unifies the entire sales workflow across direct and programmatic channels, as well as digital, static and retail environments.
API-first as a strategic foundation
As Broadsign’s presence in retail media grew, Broadsign adapted internally. The company now has dedicated teams focusing on RMNs. At the same time, the tech stack still supports the same goal: helping monetization efforts for OoH media owners, including retailers with in-store media offerings.
Broadsign’s API-first infrastructure is designed to integrate easily with other systems and data streams, which is crucial for RMNs. “Our strategy is to partner with RMN platforms as we understand that in-store is only part of the RMN journey,” says Dollevoet. The goal is to ensure that in-store retail media becomes an inherent part of a retailer’s portfolio.
With Place Exchange, Broadsign is now better positioned at the intersection of both worlds. Independent, deeply embedded in the OoH ecosystem, and increasingly connected to the wider omnichannel and retail media advertising market.
