The Led wants to become a reference in retail media (without competing with OOH)

The Led has spent 16 years building a screen infrastructure for shopping malls, retailers, and out-of-home media companies such as Eletromidia and NEOOH. Now, it wants to turn these assets into media. To do this, the company founded by Richard Albanesi does not want to compete with its customers in OOH, but rather leverage retailers' retail media operations.

The potential is huge. Retail media is expected to account for 16.3% of all digital advertising in Brazil this year, up from 2.3% in 2020, according to consultancy eMarketer. By 2030, this share is expected to reach 22.2%. To grab a share of this, The Led has just acquired TailyAds, founded only two years ago by advertiser Heitor Pontes, who becomes the company's new business director.

TailyAds mainly strengthens the commercial layer: prospecting, relationships with brands and retailers, and opening new networks. The deal complements another M&A made last year: the acquisition of Retail Media, a company that already sold advertising space inside stores and brought a team, inventory, and relationships with advertisers into The Led.

The move opened up a new business arm for The Led: now, in addition to installing screens, the company also started selling and monetizing the advertising displayed on them. “Our future is to put as many digital panels as possible across Brazil and help our customers monetize them even more,” Albanesi told Brazil Journal. This is a major turnaround for a company that was born in 2010 renting LED panels for shows, fairs, and corporate events, when the cost of fixed LED installations was still too high in Brazil.

Albanesi discovered this market when he first went to China at the age of 13, accompanying his mother, Alcione, who founded FLC Lâmpadas and was looking for new products. (Alcione is now better known for her transformative work at the NGO Amigos do Bem.) But back to The Led: when technology costs fell, the company started making fixed installations, delivering end-to-end projects – from metal structure and assembly to software, content, and maintenance.

Along the way, Albanesi accumulated projects that became a showcase for the company, such as the LED tunnel at Shopping Cidade Jardim, and projects for companies like Riachuelo, Galeria Magalu, and the current Nubank Parque – some of which even won advertising awards. Now, the founder's plan is to accelerate. At the end of last year, The Led received a R$ 150 million investment from Kinea – the first significant contribution to accelerate the company's new growth phase.

Today, the company has 15.5 thousand screens in around 5.5 thousand stores and is expected to reach 20 thousand screens by the end of the year. According to the founder, the company spends between R$ 80 million and R$ 100 million on capex per year, grows its top line by more than 30% per year, and wants to double in size in three years.

And that's where retail media comes in. Today, around 80% of revenue comes from the core screen and infrastructure business, while the other 20% comes from media monetization – with Grupo Pão de Açúcar being The Led's main asset in this vertical. The bet is that this proportion will gradually change, not because the screen business will shrink, but because Albanesi believes media will grow faster.

One thing the founder is certain of is that he does not want to compete with the OOH companies he has been serving for years – such as Eletromidia, NEOOH, and RZK. He says that The Led will continue to provide infrastructure, installation, and maintenance for these customers and does not intend to compete for urban furniture tenders or in subways and airports, for example.

“We are competitors of any media vehicle, since we are fighting for that advertising budget,” Albanesi said. “But we are not competitors in the OOH market.”