Generation Partners Pushes Captivate’s Buttons

National CineMedia has agreed to acquire Captivate, a video-advertising network that operates screens in the elevators and lobbies of office and residential buildings, from Generation Partners at an enterprise value of $275 million.

Captivate operates a network of digital video screens installed in the elevators and lobbies of commercial office towers and residential buildings, where they show short bursts of news, weather, and other programming interspersed with advertising to people waiting for or riding elevators.

The network spans more than 26,000 screens across over 11,000 buildings in more than 170 designated market areas in the United States and Canada. Its customers are national and local advertisers seeking a professional, higher-income audience, along with the building owners and property managers that host the screens.



Captivate was acquired by Generation Partners when the firm carved the business out alongside Gannett in 2013. At that time, the company’s media network included over 10,000 office elevator displays across more than 1,000 commercial office buildings in the US and Canada.

Today, the core of the business sits in more than 1,600 Class A and Class B office buildings, the higher-grade properties that house professional tenants, and those locations generate roughly 90% of advertising revenue. The screens are placed to reach viewers during short, repeated moments of downtime, and Captivate sells that attention to advertisers by building, market, or audience profile.

In 2023 the company extended the network into residential apartment and condominium buildings, growing to more than 9,700 residential locations and broadening the audience beyond the office day. The New York City-headquartered company is led by CEO Marc Kidd with Mark Shapiro as chairman.



Captivate was founded in 1997 by Mike DiFranza and, after operating as an early place-based media network, was acquired by newspaper publisher Gannett in the mid-2000s. In September 2013, Gannett partnered with Generation Partners to spin Captivate into a standalone company, initially co-owned by the two before Generation took full control. Under Generation’s roughly 13-year ownership, Captivate weathered the collapse in office traffic during the COVID-19 pandemic and, in 2023, expanded from office towers into residential buildings. The sale to National CineMedia ends that hold and folds Captivate into a publicly traded advertising company.

Captivate generated approximately $64 million in revenue and about $19 million in adjusted EBITDA in 2025, with revenue up roughly 40% and adjusted EBITDA up more than 50% over the prior two years. Based on the enterprise value of $275 million, this equates to an EBITDA valuation multiple of 14.5x. National CineMedia expects more than $3.5 million in annual run-rate cost savings within a year of the deal’s completion. Assuming these savings, the EBITDA valuation multiple declines to 12.2x.

“Captivate has built a uniquely powerful network, bringing together premium locations, highly desirable audiences, and a growing base of advertisers alongside enduring brand and property partnerships,” said Leigh Lowery, the chief revenue officer of Captivate.

[caption id="attachment_239469" align="alignright" width="120"] John Hawkins[/caption]

“Captivate has been a highly successful investment for our firm, exemplifying Generation’s long-term, thesis-driven strategy to partner with experienced entrepreneurs to build exceptional companies,” said John Hawkins, a co-founder and managing partner of Generation. “We are proud of what we have accomplished over the past decade and believe NCM is well-positioned to continue Captivate’s success and support its long-term growth and expansion.”

Digital out-of-home advertising — the ad screens found in transit stations, retail centers, offices, and other public and semi-public places — has been one of the faster-growing corners of the ad market as spending shifts from static billboards to networked digital displays. The United States market was worth about $6.7 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at roughly a 9.4% annual rate to about $15.4 billion by 2034, according to IMARC Group. Globally, Grand View Research put the market at about $20.7 billion in 2024, growing about 10.7% a year toward $39.1 billion by 2030, with North America accounting for roughly 36% of worldwide revenue.

Growth in the sector is being driven by programmatic buying, which lets advertisers purchase digital screens in real time much as they buy online ads, and by data that ties screen locations to audience demographics. Place-based networks in high-dwell venues such as offices and elevators are among the segments drawing growing advertiser interest.

[caption id="attachment_239472" align="alignright" width="120"] Mark Jennings[/caption]

“We poured our hearts and all of our firm’s resources and energy into Captivate and navigated significant headwinds to the business when the pandemic hit,” said Mark Jennings, a co-founder and managing partner of Generation.

For publicly traded National CineMedia, which sells advertising across roughly 22,000 theater and lobby screens in more than 1,750 theaters, Captivate is a step beyond the cinema toward a broader premium video and digital out-of-home platform. The acquisition adds a network reaching professional and residential audiences in office and residential buildings, a business that generates about 90% of its revenue from higher-grade office towers and that has grown revenue roughly 40% over two years. Together the companies would operate more than 48,000 screens across theaters, offices, and residential properties in 185 designated market areas, including all of the top 100.

“This acquisition marks an important milestone in NCM’s evolution and represents a key next step in our strategy to build a market-defining premium video and digital out-of-home advertising platform,” said Tom Lesinski, the CEO of NCM.

Generation Partners makes majority and minority investments of $20 million to $100 million in technology-enabled service businesses across business and information services, healthcare services and technology, media and marketing services, and real estate. The firm was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Solomon Partners was the financial advisor to Captivate, and BofA Securities was the financial advisor to National CineMedia.