Digital out-of-home advertising has spent years chasing the same thing every performance marketer wants: proof. Proof that screen exposure drives real-world behavior. Proof that the upper funnel can generate measurable conversion. Proof that DOOH deserves a permanent seat at the omnichannel table, not just brand budgets.
This week, the industry inched closer to that reality.
ABCS Insights, a fast-rising attribution and incrementality firm, has been named an approved measurement partner by Vistar Media, one of the leading programmatic DOOH platforms. The partnership is designed to finally give advertisers something they’ve been demanding for years—a reliable way to quantify the in-store and e-commerce sales impact of their DOOH campaigns.
For a format often criticized as “hard to measure,” this is not a small deal.
Why This Partnership Matters: DOOH Needs Hard Proof, Not Vibes
Programmatic DOOH adoption is booming. Networks are expanding. Screens are getting smarter. Retail and transit inventory is exploding. But measurement has always been the format’s glaring vulnerability.
Brand studies, exposed-control frameworks, and recall lift surveys have long dominated the DOOH narrative—but they don’t tell advertisers what they actually care about:
Did my DOOH spend actually drive sales?
This is where ABCS Insights steps in.
By fusing geolocation intelligence with consumer sales data at massive scale, the company offers a way to tie DOOH exposure to purchase behavior with experimental precision—linking a device that saw an ad to a timestamped receipt, across both online and offline purchases.
By partnering with Vistar, ABCS brings a next-gen measurement layer to a platform already known for its robust programmatic capabilities.
For advertisers, the formula is powerful:
Vistar for activation + ABCS for sales attribution = a DOOH channel that can finally prove ROI.
What ABCS Insights Actually Measures—and Why It Matters
The value here isn’t just incremental sales lift. It’s the granular breakdown of where the lift came from.
ABCS Insights’ experimental design identifies impact across key behavioral drivers:
- Household penetration — Did more people buy?
- Purchase occasions — Did shoppers buy more often?
- Sales per buying occasion — Did they spend more when they did?
This level of decomposition matters because DOOH is inherently a context-based medium. An airport screen may boost penetration; a grocery-aisle display may increase basket size; a rideshare screen may trigger a mid-week purchase occasion.
Brands can finally see which lever a campaign actually pulled.
And the data powering these insights?
ABCS draws from:
- 70 million location-data panelists
- Mobile device IDs tied to DOOH exposures
- 23 million-member receipt panel with item-level purchase detail
This is the kind of scale required to make incrementality in DOOH statistically credible—not directional.
Connecting Exposure to Behavior: The “Holy Grail” of OOH Measurement
The biggest unlock is ABCS’s ability to link an exposed device to a verified purchase, isolating the incremental impact of the DOOH impression—not just correlation.
The methodology is anchored in:
- Device-level exposure verification
- Time-windowed purchase matching
- Control-group construction
- Incrementality modeling
This is the same measurement rigor used in digital performance channels, applied to DOOH—a sector historically dependent on soft metrics like foot traffic or brand recall.
As ABCS founder and CEO Jerome Shimizu put it:
“With Vistar Media’s market-leading programmatic DOOH solutions, we’re bringing a new level of rigor to how out-of-home exposure connects to real-world sales.”
In an environment where marketers are increasingly pressured to justify spend, that rigor is no longer optional.
The Vistar Media Advantage: Scale + Sophistication + Flexibility
What makes this partnership particularly consequential is Vistar Media’s existing footprint. The company powers one of the largest programmatic DOOH marketplaces across:
- Retail screens
- Urban panels
- Transit networks
- Cinema
- Gas stations
- Lifestyle & venue screens
Vistar has been developing toward smarter targeting, stronger data integrations, and omnichannel alignment. What it hasn’t had—at least not at this level—is a best-in-class sales-lift measurement engine capable of tying exposure to SKU-level commerce outcomes.
Now it does.
Advertisers running campaigns through Vistar will be able to benchmark lift, understand what worked, diagnose where performance came from, and optimize toward the environments driving the strongest return.
For DOOH planners, this moves the channel beyond awareness metrics and into true full-funnel accountability.
Industry-Wide Implications: A More Measurable, More Competitive DOOH Market
This partnership signals a larger shift hitting the DOOH ecosystem:
1. Incrementality Is Becoming the Currency of DOOH Success
Footfall is useful. Exposure is table stakes. But incremental sales lift is the KPI that moves budgets.
Expect this to become the standard for serious retail, CPG, and performance-driven DOOH buyers.
2. DOOH is entering the same measurement era as paid search and retail media
For years, DOOH has been the least-measured channel in omnichannel plans. That gap is closing quickly.
The ability to tie DOOH exposure to revenue makes the medium competitive with CTV, social, search, and RMNs.
3. The pressure is now on other DOOH SSPs and networks
With Vistar raising the measurement bar, rivals will face increasing pressure to adopt comparable attribution partners or risk being viewed as “brand-only” channels.
4. Better measurement = smarter activation
Once advertisers can see which venues, dayparts, and audiences drive incremental sales, DOOH buying becomes dramatically more optimized—and budgets become more defensible.
5. CPG and non-CPG sectors both benefit
CPG brands have long sought DOOH-to-retail attribution. But the partnership explicitly supports non-CPG categories as well—meaning apparel, QSR, electronics, and specialty retail will get new visibility too.
A Step Toward True Omnichannel Attribution
Connecting DOOH to actual retail outcomes has long been the missing link in full-funnel media strategies. As advertisers shift dollars toward measurable, lower-funnel channels, DOOH needs to prove its role in the outcome mix—not just the exposure mix.
With this partnership, Vistar Media and ABCS Insights are making that proof both accessible and actionable.
For a space hungry for credibility, this isn’t just welcome—it’s transformational.
