Where the store locator sits on the ad matters

On 23 September 2026, Vistar Media published “The store locator effect”, a study run by its Creative Studio with Omnicom Media and Annalect. It asks a small question that most programmatic DOOH campaigns answer by habit: when a creative tells people where the nearest shop is, does that line do anything, and does it matter where it sits? The answer, from 7,200 consumers in the Netherlands, is yes on both counts. The top and bottom of the ad worked; the middle did not. A familiar location pin and high contrast added lift on top.

The finding that matters most for beauty is a quieter one. When the locator named another brand (a supermarket, a dealership, a retailer), recognition of the advertised brand sometimes fell even while intent held up. Most beauty brands are sold through someone else’s shelf.

What the study found

Method: forced exposure, 7,200 consumers aged 18–59 in the Netherlands, February to April 2026. Each person saw an image of an outdoor scene with a vertical 1080×1920 screen showing either a control creative (no locator) or one of three versions with the locator at the top, middle or bottom (Vistar press release, 23 Sep 2026 — primary for method).
Categories and metrics: Retail and QSR measured on visit intent, CPG on purchase intent, plus brand recognition, brand appreciation and ad appreciation (Vistar, 23 Sep 2026 — primary for method).
Placement: top and bottom consistently beat the middle, where the locator competed with headline and imagery. Overall, top placement lifted CPG purchase intent 20% vs control; bottom placement gave Retail and QSR the strongest visit intent, 9% vs control (Vistar press release, 23 Sep 2026 — directional, vendor-run study).
By category: bottom placement lifted visit intent 35% for Retail and 24% for QSR; for impulse CPG (sweets, chocolate) purchase intent rose 116% with the locator at the bottom and 110% at the top (Vistar report page, Sep 2026 — directional).
Design: a location pin icon lifted visit intent 16%; high contrast between the locator and the rest of the creative lifted visit or purchase intent 10% (Vistar, 23 Sep 2026 — directional).
Reseller branding: a locator that prominently named another brand “appeared to divide attention”, and brand recognition sometimes declined while intent stayed strong. Vistar flags this for newer or emerging brands (Vistar report page — directional; no figure published).

What happened

The store locator is the most common use of dynamic creative optimization in pDOOH: the creative pulls in the nearest store for each screen. Vistar’s own framing is that the feature is widely used but little measured, and this study tests placement against a no-locator control. It is a creative study, not a media study. The screen, the scene and the brand stay fixed; only the strip of store information moves.

The full write-up is a web page on Vistar’s site rather than a downloadable PDF. It adds the per-category numbers that the press release leaves out, and it states that adding a locator did not hurt brand or ad appreciation. It also says, to its credit, that the results reflect “the specific screen format, creative executions and advertising environments tested” and should not be read as “a universal rule for every DOOH format or screen”.

What it means for beauty

The canvas is the salon canvas. The test creative was a portrait 1080×1920 panel, which is the master size we recommend for mirror and styling-station screens. A beauty buyer can apply the placement lesson to that format without translating between aspect ratios. The creative guide for salon and mirror screens already asks for a safe area, because one asset gets cropped and letterboxed across networks. Top and bottom are exactly where cropping bites, so a locator in either spot needs to sit inside it.
The reseller split is the beauty problem. A skincare or haircare brand on a street screen or a salon screen usually sends people to Sephora, Boots, a pharmacy chain or the salon’s own retail shelf. The study suggests a prominent retailer name can buy intent at the cost of recognition. An established brand may accept that trade. A newer indie brand that is still building recognition, which is exactly the advertiser a salon network often courts, may not. The practical read is to keep the advertiser’s brand dominant and treat the stockist as a small, high-contrast line with a pin, not a co-brand.
Inside the venue, the nearest stockist can be the venue. On a salon screen the “store” may be the reception shelf a few metres away. That is a locator with no third brand in it, and it is a natural place for a QR code with a reason to scan, because a seated client has the time a passer-by does not.
Impulse is not the beauty buying mode for most products. The biggest lifts came from sweets and chocolate, which are bought on the spot. Some beauty purchases behave like that (a lipstick, a travel size), but many are considered. We would not carry the 110% figures across to beauty at all.

The caveat that keeps us honest

This measured stated intent after a forced look at a picture, not store visits after a real walk past a real screen. In a live street or salon, the ad competes with everything else in view and most exposures are glances. Compare our note on Intersport’s proximity campaign, which measured actual footfall against control groups: a different and harder kind of evidence. The study is vendor-run, in one country, and the published pages give no cell sizes, confidence intervals or per-category base sizes. We also could not reconcile the overall Retail and QSR figure (9% for bottom placement) with the separate Retail (35%) and QSR (24%) lifts from the published text alone, since the overall chart is an image without its basis stated. Treat all lift figures as directional. No beauty-specific benchmark is drawn from this study; the beauty read-across is analytical and rests on the linked Research and Guides.

Sources

Vistar Media, press release “Vistar Media research finds inclusion of store locators in DOOH advertising directly impacts visit and purchase intent” (Amsterdam, 23 Sep 2026): primary for the method (7,200 consumers, 18–59, Netherlands, Feb–Apr 2026, forced exposure, 1080×1920 vertical creative, control plus three placements, metrics by category) and the Roos Goesz (Omnicom NL) quote; directional for the overall lifts (CPG top +20%, Retail/QSR bottom +9%), the over-110% impulse CPG lift, the pin (+16%) and contrast (+10%) effects and the reseller-branding finding. Vistar Media, report page “The store locator effect: how store information moves audiences from screen to store” (published with the release, Sep 2026): directional for the per-category lifts (Retail +35%, QSR +24%, impulse CPG +116% bottom / +110% top), the “no negative impact on brand or ad appreciation” takeaway, the recognition decline with reseller branding and Vistar’s own scope caveat. No PDF was found. The study is vendor-run with agency partners and has not been independently published. No beauty benchmark is asserted.