JCDecaux Launches Automated Planning and Trading Platform

VIOOH platform by JCDecaux will accelerate growth of Out-of-Home advertising and will be led by Jean-Christophe Conti

JCDecaux, an outdoor advertising company, announced the launch of VIOOH – a global independent automated planning and trading platform designed to accelerate the growth of Out-of-Home advertising and connect the industry to the programmatic digital ecosystem.

The capital of VIOOH – pronounced View – is currently owned 93.5% by JCDecaux and 6.5% by Veltys, a data specialist and modelling company.

VIOOH’s purpose is to grow Out-of-Home advertising spend globally by offering an integrated platform to provide automation and offer programmatic trading for media sellers and buyers. Whilst Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) is expected to be the second fastest growing medium between 2017 and 2020, the platform will strengthen the company’s capacity to meet the new expectations of its clients, brands and agencies, and enlarge the Group ecosystem.

The company is convinced that Out-of-Home can compete with digital advertising (mobile, search, display, etc) by transforming its whole offering through optimised campaigns using data and technology. This is why the Group decided to create VIOOH organically on a worldwide footprint and to open it to Out-of-Home media owners.

VIOOH has developed a best-in-class planning and trading platform for the Out-of-Home industry. The platform has been in development for over two years, and provides a full stack for automated trading, data management, content serving and ad exchange functionality. The new business is based in London and VIOOH already employs a team of over 65 developers, coders, commercial and support staff.

VIOOH is able to incorporate many data sources and relies on machine learning algorithms to improve the targeting and the effectiveness of the advertising campaigns. Out-of-Home being by nature a “one to many” media, VIOOH is almost natively GDPR compliant and therefore will always comply strictly with personal data protection rules to safeguard citizens and users.

Starting in the UK and the USA, the platform will soon be deployed in Belgium, Spain, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Singapore, Dubai, Norway and the Netherlands amongst other markets.

The company also announced that the new CEO of VIOOH is Jean-Christophe Conti. He brings a wealth of experience to the business, having been the Vice President Global Partnerships at Yahoo from 2010-14 and the Vice President EMEA at AppNexus from 2014-17. He will be responsible for the global development with a remit to develop the leading edge trading platform for Out-of-Home.

Jean-Charles Decaux, Chairman of the Executive Board and Co-CEO of JCDecaux, said: “JCDecaux is delighted to have initiated the launch of VIOOH, a best in class global automated planning and trading platform for the benefit of the whole sector. Independent, this new entity will see its shareholding structure evolve depending on discussions within the industry.

“The platform will provide advertisers and agencies with an enhanced value proposition for Out-of-Home allowing audience led planning and trading including the ability to plan the OOH digital screen alongside the mobile screen.”

Philippe Février, CEO of Veltys, said: “Leveraging the best data with the best algorithms is at the heart of the VIOOH platform. Veltys is very proud to be part of this initiative to transform the Out-of-Home market and create this worldwide platform for the industry. This is a unique and very exciting project for our whole team.”

Jean-Christophe Conti, CEO of VIOOH, said: “The opportunity to join a future-facing business that is committed to the development of a global digital Out-of-Home platform was too good an offer to turn down. The VIOOH independent platform will offer existing buyers and new advertisers a frictionless and transparent experience for automated Out-of-Home and programmatic Digital Out-of-Home transactions.

“The future for Out-of-Home is tremendously exciting and the VIOOH platform will contribute to accelerate the growth of the medium. In this context, and in order to position VIOOH as the industry preference, we welcome all media owners to join the platform.”