Cartology’s Mike Tyquin: Buying an OOH business isn’t just buying an estate of signs
Woolworths Group indicated the strength of its retail media business, Cartology in July with a deal to acquire digital out-of-home business Shopper for $150 million.
Speaking on this week’s Mumbrellacast, managing director of Cartology, Mike Tyquin spoke about the company’s rapid rise, the retail media sector and how the Shopper purchase fits into his plans for the business.
Cartology’s Tyquin
“The first thing to say is we like the business and clearly incredibly respectful of the job that Ben and Ed have done over six or seven years in building our business from scratch, with a great team of people that they’ve now got, and have achieved some incredible success over that period of time.”
Earlier this year, former COO and founding partner Ed Couche moved into the CEO role at Shopper, after the passing of his close friend and co-founder Ben Walker in January this year.
“From that, just to make the point,” he continued. “Yes, we are buying screens, we are buying imagery, but we are buying all the capability that comes with it in the people and the platform. I think a lot of people make the mistake buying out of home businesses that, they think that’s it’s buying an estate of signs, but we’ve certainly got the view that there’s more to this business than that, and there’s more to this opportunity than that.”
Tyquin has a long history in the out-of-home sector, formerly director of the Outdoor Media Association, as well as chief executive of EYE, which was sold to oOh! in 2012, as well as CEO of Adshel, before it was also sold to oOh! in 2018.
“For us really, all going well with the ACCC, it’s a great opportunity we feel to extend our proposition in a very sympathetic way that will be really helpful to clients, particularly FMCG and everyday needs clients. We’ll be able to deploy certain aspects from how we think about our customers in terms of data, that’ll also be really helpful as well.”
Shopper rebranded last year
“So look, it’s still probably a little bit early to go much further than that, but we like the business, we like the team, we look forward to welcoming them to Cartology, all going well well with the ACCC, and we’ll see what plays out on that front and all going well, we can get the clearance and have more to say about our plans down the track.”
Shopper rebranded from Shopper Media Group to simply ‘Shopper’ in 2021 and is a market leader in targeting advertising, currently having over 2,000 screens across 400 shopping centres in Australia. Subject to ACCC approval and the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, the deal is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.
In July, a PwC Media report on retail media valued the sector at around $850 million, adding that over the next five years the figure could bloat past the $2 billion mark.
“The first thing I’d say about the PwC numbers,” said Tyquin. “I’d encourage everyone just to sort of put square brackets around those numbers. I think the key thematic is it’s big and getting bigger.”
“One of the interesting things that we all need to think about, and we are certainly on the front edge of this, being earlier in this market is – what’s the classification, the taxonomy, if you like, of retail media – how do we think about it?”
So, as an example, with our acquisition of Shopper, s that still an out-of-home business? Or is that actually a retail media business? How do we think about that? So I know we all like to in this industry to classify and categorise and put revenue in to buckets and things like that, and that’s helpful because I think it gives us all the sense of size and scale, but I think there are some interesting things we’ve all got to get our head around.”
Tyquin compared the boom to the emergence of digital two decades ago. “There’ll be ways that we need to think about these things and there’ll be sort of norms and frameworks and standards that’ll develop over time.”
“I think we’re really, really early. So for me, the PwC piece is thought-provoking on that front, but I wouldn’t get everyone to get too carried about the specifics in their number, other than to say whatever you believe is in that square brackets number, it’s a pretty big number and it’s gonna get bigger and there’s plenty of opportunity.”
This week, owner of BWS and Dan Murphy’s, Endeavour Group, has launched its retail media arm, MixIn by Endeavour, after its split from Woolworths Group last year. Dan Muphy’s was previously serviced through digital screens by Cartology.
Mumbrella took profiled the retail media industry earlier this year.
Listen to the full conversation with Mike Tyquin on this week’s Mumbrellacast from the 22:49 mark.
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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