Place Exchange Raises $20 Million to Support Spinoff From Intersection

After its industry struggled through a socially-distant year where fewer people than usual encountered outdoor billboards and digital displays, out of home ad sales platform Place Exchange is prepping for a spark of triple-digit growth by closing a $20 million series A funding as it prepares for its new status as a standalone company. Created in 2018 as a programmatic tool for sellers as a subsidiary under OOH media and tech company Intersection, Place Exchange will use the round’s proceeds to complete its spinout. The separation of Intersection and Place Exchange also entails some changes at the among the two companies’ leadership. Ari Buchalter, who has served as CEO for both entities, is leaving the parent to dedicate himself to the newly independent company as Place Exchange’s CEO. At the same time, Chris Grosso is being promoted from Intersection’s COO to CEO. “Place Exchange was founded on the vision of making the OOH channel truly programmatic, with the same workflows, targeting and measurement capabilities as other programmatic media,” said Buchalter in a statement. “Our unique, patented approach stands apart from other platforms in the industry that treat the OOH channel as a silo and lack many key programmatic capabilities critical to omnichannel buyers. Breaking that silo has been the key to opening up demand, and the vast majority of our growth has been driven by programmatic buyers that have never purchased OOH before.” As Out of Home Has a ‘Renaissance,’ Adspace Networks Relaunches as Lightbox OOH The funding was co-managed by Revolution Ventures and Tribe Capital. The timing of the round, as well as the split between Intersection and Place Exchange, couldn’t have come at better a better time for the category. As for the company's expectation of triple-digit gains in 2021, Place Exchange didn't reveal revenue numbers from last year. "Despite the pandemic, monthly spend on Place Exchange grew by over 12x over the course the course of 2020, as marketers looking for flexibility and performance were drawn to the distinct benefits of programmatic OOH-activated through Place Exchange and its DSP partners," a Place Exchange representative told Adweek. Out of home’s emerging revival Out-of-home advertising dropped by 29% last year, according to IPG’s Magna Global. The category was affected by the decline in consumer mobility, traffic and audience, in addition to the fall in demand from local and national advertisers. But signs of a return are clear. The appearance of back to school shopping ads in OOH placements are offering the sign the industry was looking to. That currently remains true even as the transition from the worst period of the pandemic appears increasingly uneven across the country, with many states in the South, West and Midwest still struggling with rising caseloads of unvaccinated citizens. About 53% of Americans say OOH advertising is playing a role in restoring their confidence as they prepare for the next school year, according to a recent OAAA. As a supply-side platform focused on outdoor ads, Place Exchange is also expected to benefit from the changes the industry at large has started to embrace. Programmatic on display In May, the OAAA revised its measurement standards, which involved shifting from estimating exposures to counting impressions. The change was designed to spur greater spending by putting the oldest form of mass advertising on par with digital media buying standards. “Programmatic out of home is now reaching a tipping point, and as it scales into the mainstream, we believe it is critically important to have open supply-side platforms that are fully aligned with the interests of media owners,” said Buchalter. Digital OOH is also propelling ad spending. And as Barry Frey, president and CEO of the DPAA, the trade group promoting digital OOH advertising and media, told Adweek, the challenges of Covid-19 that accelerated so much change in the way advertisers reach consumers generally, is also shaping the tools associated with outdoor media buying and selling processes. “During the past 15 months, our global industry has demonstrated tremendous resilience, re-invention and now strong revitalization,” Frey told Adweek. “This is due to a variety of factors, yet we can largely point to the industry’s digitization as the primary growth driver.” Digital accelerated during the pandemic For its part, Place Exchange pointed to the pandemic as spurring OOH media buyers to book placements programmatically. While most ad sales systems for the oldest form of mass media have turned to electronic formats to complete a transaction—it wasn’t many years ago when faxing orders and invoices were still the norm—the promise of contextually and demographically targeting ads on billboards in downtown areas or across highways or in office tower elevators was still science fiction to a large extent. “Many of our members formed new alliances working closely together to fill complementary needs as Covid challenged everything,” said Frey. “New ad sales representation partnerships, innovative equity relationships and new programmatic ‘pipes' all were introduced, created and completed amongst our membership during this period. All of this has enabled OOH advertising to not only persevere during this period but to grow in 2021 as most agency holding companies project mid double-digit increases for the year.” Why OOH Is Essential for Ad Strategies in 2021 as Brands Recover From the Pandemic