Catalina, Volta Partnership Propels DOOH at EV Charging Stations

With gas prices rising, electric vehicle sales are at an all-time high, and hundreds of thousands of public and shared chargers are being installed in prime locations to meet changing fuel demands. For savvy digital marketers and agencies, the changes are creating a new opportunity to reach captive audiences at the pump.

A newly announced partnership between the real-time shopper intelligence platform Catalina and ​​Volta, an EV charging network, is set to boost digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising at EV stations across more than two dozen states. The new offering connects Catalina’s retailer network with Volta’s EV charging stations, so brand advertisers and agencies can unlock insights and measure sales lift as a result of their DOOH displays.

Volta’s EV charging stations are located at the entrances to popular retail, grocery, and entertainment venues, and they feature large digital display screens for DOOH advertising. With the new partnership between Catalina and Volta in place, advertisers that run DOOH campaigns on Volta’s screens will be able to track incremental sales lift at the store level for retailers on Catalina’s ad platform, including national multi-location retailers like Walgreens and Ahold Delhaize, the company behind grocery chains like Stop & Shop and Food Lion.

“Our initial conversations with Volta centered on data. They developed their Essential Business Network during the pandemic, which included screens in front of grocery stores, and they were interested in our ability to measure the effectiveness of their advertising,” says Tiffany Southwell, Catalina’s vice president of OOH media. “As the conversations unfolded, we found additional opportunities to partner on media sales, as we had recently begun selling out-of-home as part of our omnichannel campaigns.”

DOOH is on the rise in the U.S., with the market projected to reach $5.21 billion this year. By 2027, that figure could be as high as $8.65 billion. According to one recent study by the Out of Home Advertising Association of America, DOOH experienced a 57% increase in advertising spend in the first quarter of 2022 over 2021. 

With the Biden administration proposing the development of a national network of 500,000 EV charging stations by 2030, digital display screens like Volta’s present a major opportunity for advertisers.

Volta’s network currently creates more than 900 million monthly impressions on nearly 5,000 digital ad screens across 26 states. With a close proximity to supermarkets and other retail locations, the screens present an opportunity for brands to target consumers with shoppable products in the moments before they enter a store. 

Catalina’s measurement service uses location data to determine who is exposed to an ad, and then leverages the company’s identity graph to understand, of those exposed, who made a purchase.

“It’s clear that DOOH is on a rapid growth trajectory. From programmatic buying to new measurement capabilities, advertisers’ barriers to investment in out-of-home are coming down,” Southwell says. “More tools than ever before are available for brand marketers to efficiently plan, buy, measure, and optimize their out-of-home advertising spend in the same manner as other media channels, enabling DOOH to be a vital part of an advertiser’s media mix.”

With a more detailed view of DOOH performance, advertisers will have a greater understanding of how the Volta Media Network impacts conversions and increases shoppers’ spend. Southwell anticipates that advertisers will take advantage of this new trove of data to inform their broader digital media strategies.

“​​Understanding incremental return on ad spend has become table stakes for CPG advertisers, but hasn’t been widely available in out-of-home until recently,” Southwell says. “The Catalina, Volta partnership will help advertisers understand the impact of their investment with metrics that they are accustomed to seeing in digital media and CTV. This makes it easier for Volta to be incorporated into an advertiser’s media mix.”

Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.