Vistar Media EMEA ends 2024 with substantial team expansion, new partnerships and market achievements across the region, setting the stage for continued success in 2025.
This year, the EMEA team welcomed 24 new hires, growing to 55 members—a 77% year-over-year increase. Highlights included hiring EMEA’s first Data Strategy Manager and building complete teams in both France and the UK.
Regional highlights
This year marked significant progress across Vistar’s regional teams in EMEA, driven by new leadership and strategic growth initiatives. In France, under Max Noizat’s leadership, we opened our first office in Paris and grew the team to five members, focusing on supply partnerships, sales and client success. Notable achievements included securing nine media owner partnerships, launching campaigns for brands like Decathlon, MACSF, and winning an award for Lastminute.com’s multi-country campaign. Similarly, under Karan Singh’s leadership, the UK team grew to six members, spanning roles from Director of Supply, Director of Sales and Client Success Manager. The team onboarded new media owners and established a major strategic partnership with Haleon. Karan also brought industry voices together by hosting the Inside Outside podcast in collaboration with The Drum.
In the Nordics, Bart Boogaard ’s leadership oversaw the opening of Vistar’s Stockholm office and new team members joining the fold. The region made strides with seven new media owner partnerships and hosted the first Vistar Connects event in Oslo. Campaigns with brands like BMW and Biltema highlighted growing momentum in the market. Meanwhile, in the Benelux region, Gido Andriessen’s team strengthened their presence by bringing on five new media owners and delivering impactful campaigns for brands such as HBO Max’s House of the Dragon and KFC Belgium The team represented the DOOH industry at events like Digital First in Belgium and Emerce Digital Marketing Live in the Netherlands.
The DACH region, led by Ravi Ahluwalia, focused on strengthening Vistar’s footprint through a mix of partnerships and participation in key industry events. The team onboarded two new media owners, collaborated with Senozon Switzerland on a strategic data partnership, and had significant engagements at events such as OMR and DMEXCO.
Creative Studio highlights
Dynamic creative has been recognized as a key driver of programmatic DOOH, according to a recent survey by VIOOH. While Vistar’s Dutch market has consistently led the way in DCO innovation, the Nordic countries have shown impressive momentum this year. Notable campaigns include a dynamic product feed for Kamux in Finland, distance-to-dealership messaging for BMW in Norway, real-time energy pricing for Fortum in Norway and a countdown-to-sale activation for Lyko in Sweden.
2024 also saw the rise of sports campaigns, with live score integrations such as McDonald’s in Switzerland. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, New Balance made a splash with Femke Bol creatives, which, though non-dynamic, benefited from Vistar’s Creative Studio. As the interest in 3D DOOH surged, we teamed up with bella by MADE BY GATHER to create cutting-edge 3D creatives for their latest DOOH campaign in the heart of Times Square.
Reflection on 2024 and our vision for 2025
“2024 was an incredible year for us. We have done really well in all our regions with some incredible hires and great partnerships. In 2024 we onboarded almost all media owners in Europe on our SSP. We really changed from a DSP only proposition to a full stack offering this year. This is increasingly important as Digital OOH has grown significantly and with it the part programmatic plays in the market. For some markets it is clear this year, programmatic accounted for a substantial share of DOOH revenue in key markets—50% in Germany, 35% in the Netherlands, and 26% in Belgium. We expect more and more markets to get to similar percentages in 2025. When programmatic plays such an important role, we need to supply more variations in the way tech can be used to buy and sell DOOH ads. Guaranteed transactions, prioritization in deal IDs, using various levels of transparency, open exchange setups, Curation and measurement options. Programmatic has developed into a bunch of variations vs. it being a channel and with it has become more relevant for agencies and media owners.
Looking ahead to 2025, our goal is to close the gap between technical possibilities and the commercial realities our clients face. We will build further on the organisation we have set up across 5 offices in Europe with local knowledge and support for buyers and sellers. We want to be able to next to offering the best tech in the ecosystem to also be able to truly support that tech with phenomenal service and education. This way we will empower the entire ecosystem to thrive.” Diederick Ubels, Managing Director, EMEA.
