The first few months of this year have been incredibly busy for the team at Vistar and we’ve been thrilled with the results so far.
In February we had our first full-company gathering in over 2 years! For the two-day event, we got all 85 people together in NYC where we had a number of internal presentations and panel discussions, as well as some great team-building outings. There was a particularly interesting discussion between folks representing different sides of the DOOH ecosystem - media owner, agency and trading desk - and you can read the highlights of that session here.
As we looked at what 2018 held in store for the DOOH industry and Vistar’s place in it, two main themes stood out: international expansion and supply side growth.
Our global vision for 2018 was an eye opener to most of our teams, as sometimes it’s easy to forget how large the global market for OOH is in comparison to the U.S. While the total OOH revenue in the U.S. in 2017 was $7.7 billion, total global OOH revenue is expected to grow 4.6% to reach $45 billion by 2019. In 2017 we began our international expansion with Canada, and with the success in that market, it makes sense to take that model and apply it to a few of the largest OOH markets outside of North America. We are actively hiring in EMEA and APAC regions with Matt (our CRO) and myself spearheading the business in the meantime. I’m sure we will have more to share on adventures internationally throughout the year, so stay tuned!
In regards to supply side growth, we have been seeing a consistent growth curve in media owners that are joining our platform, and we expect this to continue throughout 2018.
More importantly, from 2015 through 2017 programmatic revenue doubled year over year for existing media owners working with Vistar. Considering that the overall growth of the U.S. OOH industry is about 2%, seeing this strong growth rate for programmatic DOOH is pretty awesome!
In order to support this revenue and partner growth, we are aggressively expanding our supply team in the first half of 2018. This is across all aspects including sales, client services, technical support and international expansion. If you know of anyone who might be a good fit, send them over!
With such a major focus on recruiting - it’s a big part of many of my days - I am reminded of our core values as a business. Vistar has always been a “people first” organization. From the very beginning of the company we have operated with a prioritization of 1) People, 2) Product, and 3) Revenue. This has proved to be a successful framework for scaling our business. We are confident that if we continue to put the right team in place, build the right products and then focus on revenue, we’ll be able to scale globally - hopefully with fewer growing pains than many corporate growth stories.
We are excited to be setting such large goals for ourselves this year and look forward to exceeding these goals for all of our clients, partners and team members.
Originally posted on LinkedIn
