Insignia Capital Bets on Campus Advertising with Trooh Media Investment

The race to capture Gen Z's attention has led Insignia Capital Group to the college quad. The Walnut Creek, California-based private equity firm announced Tuesday a strategic investment in Trooh Media, a digital out-of-home advertising platform that has built a network of premium screens across more than 1,000 college campuses in the United States.

The deal, announced January 7, 2026, positions Insignia to capitalize on the convergence of two powerful trends: the explosive growth of digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising and brands' intensifying pursuit of Gen Z consumers in brand-safe environments. For Trooh, the partnership provides the capital and operational expertise to accelerate expansion at a critical inflection point for campus media.

Financial terms were not disclosed, though the transaction structure keeps founder Martin Poitras in place as Chief Executive Officer, suggesting a growth equity investment rather than a full buyout. Canaccord Genuity served as exclusive financial advisor to Trooh, with Aird & Berlis LLP providing legal counsel. DLA Piper advised Insignia on the transaction.

Founded in 2016 by Martin Poitras, Trooh has spent nearly a decade constructing what it describes as a proprietary network of premium digital screens embedded within high-traffic, brand-safe campus environments nationwide. The company's value proposition centers on solving a vexing challenge for advertisers: reaching college students—a notoriously elusive demographic—at scale while ensuring brand safety and measurability.

The platform delivers what Trooh claims are millions of quality impressions daily, with over 76 minutes of dwell time as students move through dining halls, student centers, recreation facilities, and other high-traffic campus locations. Unlike social media platforms where brand safety concerns have escalated, or traditional out-of-home placements with limited targeting capabilities, Trooh offers advertisers a controlled environment with precise audience demographics.

"Trooh's success has been built on a clear strategy, disciplined execution, and an exceptional team," Poitras said in a statement. "We are excited to partner with Insignia as we enter our next chapter of growth. Their deep experience supporting founder-led businesses makes them an ideal partner as we continue investing in our people, expanding our capabilities, and building a category-defining media platform."

The company has expanded aggressively through both organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Trooh's network reached the 1,000-campus milestone following its acquisition of CheddarU's digital screens, which added exclusive access to over 900 screens across 325 college campuses, demonstrating a roll-up strategy common in fragmented media markets.

Concurrent with Insignia's investment, Trooh appointed Toby Sturek as President, a move that signals the company's ambitions for operational scale and industry credibility. Sturek brings more than two decades of leadership experience in out-of-home media, having navigated senior roles at some of the industry's most prominent players.

Most recently, Sturek served as President of Branded Cities, a premier out-of-home advertising company with significant digital and static inventory across major markets. Before that, he held the position of Executive Vice President of Specialty Businesses at Clear Channel Outdoor, where he oversaw four major lines of business—Clear Channel Airports, Clear Channel Malls, Clear Channel Spectacolor, and Clear Channel Outdoor in Canada.

During his tenure at Clear Channel Outdoor, Sturek was recognized as the visionary behind innovative long-term growth strategies, strategic marketing and business development initiatives in his previous role as president of Clear Channel Airports. He also served as Chief Executive Officer of Soofa, a digital out-of-home company focused on urban environments, before joining Branded Cities.

Sturek's appointment suggests Trooh is preparing for a significant operational build-out. His experience spans traditional and digital OOH, programmatic advertising integration, and managing large-scale media networks—precisely the skill set required to professionalize and scale a campus-focused platform.

"Trooh has created a highly differentiated platform with compelling value for both advertisers and campus partners," said Tony Broglio, Managing Partner at Insignia Capital Group. "The company sits at the intersection of premium physical environments and data-driven media execution, and we see significant opportunity to help Trooh build on its leadership position."

Insignia's investment arrives as digital out-of-home advertising experiences a renaissance. After weathering pandemic-era disruptions that devastated foot traffic and advertiser budgets, the DOOH sector has rebounded with renewed momentum, driven by technological advances, programmatic integration, and advertisers' search for alternatives to increasingly cluttered digital channels.

The broader out-of-home advertising market has demonstrated resilience and growth, with digital formats leading the charge. Industry forecasts project continued expansion as DOOH captures share from both traditional static billboards and digital channels facing measurement and brand safety challenges.

Programmatic DOOH, in particular, has gained traction as advertisers demand the targeting precision and real-time optimization capabilities they've grown accustomed to in digital advertising. Trooh's campus network, with its defined audience demographics and controlled environments, positions the company to capitalize on this shift toward data-driven, programmatically traded inventory.

The college campus environment offers distinct advantages. Unlike urban billboards with heterogeneous audiences or transit advertising with fleeting exposure, campus placements deliver concentrated reach against a specific demographic cohort—18-to-24-year-olds with significant lifetime value as consumers establish brand preferences that often persist for decades.

For Insignia Capital Group, the Trooh investment aligns squarely with the firm's stated strategy. Insignia describes itself as a growth-oriented private equity firm focused on building world-class companies in the consumer and business services sectors. The firm's investment thesis centers on profitable, growth-oriented businesses with defensible market positions led by founders and entrepreneurs who want to reinvest materially.

The founder-retention structure—keeping Poitras as CEO while adding operational leadership through Sturek—reflects Insignia's approach to preserving entrepreneurial vision while injecting professional management and capital for acceleration. This model has become increasingly common in middle-market private equity as firms recognize that founder expertise and relationships often constitute core competitive advantages, particularly in relationship-driven businesses like media sales.

"Trooh has established a trusted, brand-safe platform that delivers scale, measurability, and relevance for advertisers seeking to reach Gen Z," added Nick DeTrempe, Partner at Insignia Capital Group. "We look forward to working closely with the team to support the company's long-term vision."

Insignia's portfolio includes various consumer and business services companies, suggesting the firm sees Trooh as fitting within a broader thesis around fragmented service markets ripe for consolidation and professionalization. The campus media space remains highly fragmented, with individual universities often managing their own digital signage or working with regional providers, creating consolidation opportunities for well-capitalized platforms.

Underlying the investment thesis is a fundamental shift in how brands approach Gen Z consumers. This demographic cohort, now comprising college students and young professionals, represents enormous spending power and influence—both as direct purchasers and as trendsetters whose preferences cascade across broader consumer markets.

Yet reaching Gen Z has proven challenging through traditional channels. This generation exhibits lower television viewership than predecessors, employs ad-blocking technology extensively, and demonstrates sophisticated skepticism toward digital advertising. Social media platforms, once considered the primary channel for youth marketing, face growing concerns around brand safety, ad fraud, and the effectiveness of increasingly cluttered feeds.

Campus environments offer what many advertisers consider a "captive audience" in the best sense—students spending significant time in defined locations with limited competing stimuli. A digital screen in a dining hall or student center commands attention during natural dwell periods, creating opportunities for message absorption that fleeting mobile impressions cannot match.

The brand safety dimension carries particular weight in the current advertising landscape. As major brands have faced reputational damage from ads appearing alongside controversial content on social platforms, the controlled, professionally managed campus environment provides assurance that brand messages appear in appropriate contexts.

While Trooh has established a significant footprint, the campus advertising space is not without competition. Various players operate in the college marketing ecosystem, from traditional poster and sampling programs to digital networks and experiential marketing platforms. The company will need to defend its campus relationships against both established media companies seeking to expand into the vertical and well-funded startups pursuing similar strategies.

The relationship dynamics with universities themselves present both opportunity and risk. Colleges and universities increasingly view their campus environments as revenue-generating assets, but they also maintain strict standards around commercial messaging and student experience. Balancing advertiser demands for prominent placements and measurable results with institutional partners' concerns about commercialization requires careful navigation.

Technology integration represents another frontier. As programmatic advertising becomes table stakes in digital media, Trooh will need to continue investing in the data infrastructure, measurement capabilities, and platform integrations that advertisers expect. Sturek's experience with digital OOH platforms should prove valuable in this dimension, but it will require ongoing capital investment—precisely what the Insignia partnership enables.

The measurement and attribution challenge that has long plagued out-of-home advertising persists, even in digital formats. While DOOH offers advantages over static billboards in terms of impression counting and creative flexibility, demonstrating direct response and conversion impact remains more complex than in digital channels with click-through tracking. Trooh's ability to develop robust measurement frameworks that satisfy advertiser ROI requirements will influence its competitive positioning.

The Trooh-Insignia partnership reflects several broader trends reshaping media and advertising markets. First, the continued fragmentation and specialization of advertising channels as brands seek audiences in increasingly specific contexts. Second, the premiumization of out-of-home advertising as digital capabilities enable targeting and measurement previously impossible in the medium. Third, the ongoing consolidation of fragmented media markets as private equity capital flows toward platforms that can achieve scale advantages.

For Trooh, the immediate priorities likely include expanding campus coverage, enhancing technology infrastructure, building out the sales organization to capture national advertiser budgets, and potentially pursuing additional acquisitions to accelerate network growth. Sturek's operational expertise will be critical in professionalizing systems and processes to support this expansion while maintaining the campus relationships that underpin the business model.

The company's success will ultimately depend on demonstrating clear ROI to advertisers while delivering value to university partners and maintaining positive student experiences. If Trooh can execute on this multi-stakeholder value proposition, the platform could emerge as the dominant player in campus media—a category that, while niche, offers access to one of advertising's most coveted demographics at a formative life stage.

As digital advertising faces headwinds from privacy regulations, ad-blocking technology, and platform fragmentation, the appeal of physical-digital hybrid channels like DOOH continues to grow. Trooh's bet is that the college campus represents not just a location, but a mindset—a moment when brand preferences form and lifetime customer relationships begin. With Insignia's capital and Sturek's operational leadership, the company now has the resources to test whether that thesis can scale into a category-defining media business.