T-Mobile grows ads business with $600M Vistar Media acquisition

• T-Mobile has entered an agreement to amass digital-out-of-home media company Vistar Media for about $600 million through its T-Mobile Advertising Solutions business, per an organization announcement. The transaction is anticipated to shut in the primary quarter of 2025.
• The acquisition will include all of Vistar’s capabilities including its intelligent marketplace and technology for purchasing, selling and managing campaigns across a network of greater than 1.1 million digital screens.
• The move comes at an opportune time: One-third of the $10 billion in expected out-of-home ad spending within the U.S. over the subsequent three years can be dedicated to digital OOH platforms, in accordance with eMarketer.

T-Mobile’s latest move is an illustration of the corporate’s commitment to constructing its Advertising Solutions unit as a viable and sustainable revenue source. Last 12 months, the carrier unveiled its in-store retail media network (that included its T Life app) and partnered with Plex as a connected TV provider. The telecom also partnered with Uber to offer the ride-hailing company’s JourneyTV on T-Mobile phone screens when a ride is in process.

The Vistar acquisition gives T-Mobile one other platform to increase its Advertising Solutions unit’s reach significantly. Vistar’s technology powers screens provided by nearly 370 OOH media owners that serve greater than 3,000 advertisers. According to T-Mobile, the mix of Vistar’s scale and T-Mobile’s customer insights and data will “transform the DOOH industry” by helping advertisers create addressable and measurable campaigns with greater efficiency, ROI and more meaningful and interesting content.

“T-Mobile is at all times envisioning recent ways to deliver for consumers and we see an incredible opportunity to offer more relevant and personalized promoting,” said JP Colaco, senior vp and chief T-Ads officer at T-Mobile, in a release. “Combining T-Mobile’s customer-centric approach and its expertise as one among the nations most scaled marketers, with Vistar’s leading out-of-home technology means advertisers can easily place their ads where they know their audience can be, improving every step of the client journey.”

The acquisition comes months after Vistar appointed Sean Cheyney as its head of retail media, a brand new role for the corporate. In that role, Cheney was tasked with leading the corporate’s retail media strategy and integrating Vistar’s OOH solutions into the retail media ecosystem. It’s unclear how the acquisition could affect that role.