Out of Home Is Effective, and Chris Grosso of Intersection Has the Receipts

By Becky Johnson, Advertising Week Writer & Podcast Host

It is getting harder to reach a large audience in one local market. People can choose what to watch, skip what they do not want to see, and spend less time with the media that once reached nearly everyone. But a bus moving through the city or a screen beside a train platform is still part of the trip.

In this episode of Modern Marketing and Measurement, we talk with Chris Grosso, CEO of Intersection, about making out-of-home advertising easier to buy and easier to measure. We get into programmatic buying, what an impression estimate can actually tell a marketer, and why Chris thinks better reporting on delivered impressions could change how out-of-home performs in media mix models.

Five Key Takeaways

1. Useful screens give people a reason to look. Intersection’s transit screens carry advertising, but they also show content people want, from train arrival times to live sports. Chris points out that someone waiting on a platform is likely to check when the next train is coming. That attention creates an opportunity for an advertiser, too.
2. Header bidding opens the same inventory to more buyers. Intersection helped start Place Exchange to make out-of-home inventory available through digital buying platforms. More recently, it introduced a form of header bidding that sends its inventory to multiple supply platforms at once. For buyers, that makes the channel easier to access through familiar tools; for Intersection, it brings more demand to the available screens.
3. An estimated impression and a measured result answer different questions. Chris explains how industry measurement uses traffic, pedestrian, ridership, and mobile panel data to estimate who is likely to pass an ad. Separate attribution studies can then look at outcomes such as visits to a nearby store or an advertiser’s website. Marketers need to know which question each number answers.
4. Delivered impressions could make out-of-home easier to compare with other channels. Chris says the industry’s standard reporting has largely centered on forecasts. A measurement program being piloted with Ipsos aims to report what was delivered as well. He sees that as a useful input for agencies trying to evaluate out-of-home alongside television and other media in their media mix models.
5. The location and the creative still matter. Automation can help plan a complicated buy across bus shelters, screens, and formats. Chris sees AI helping with that work and adapting creative to different placements. But choosing the idea and understanding where it belongs still take human judgment, especially when a brand wants to be part of a moment people are experiencing together.

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