Out-of-home audience research body Route has named Robert Ray as its new chief executive, replacing managing director James Whitmore.
Over the past two decades Ray has held a number of senior industry roles, including MD of Starcom Worldwide, marketing director at The Newspaper Society and MD of PHD’s Global Strategy Unit. He is also the founder and CEO of boutique consultancy conduit5.
Ray formally begins his new role on June 1. Whitmore, who had been MD of Route for fifteen years, stepped down earlier this year due to health reasons.
“Route is a world-class approach to validating audiences in both traditional and dynamic digital OOH,” said Ray.
“The OOH industry continues to evolve at a phenomenal pace and I’m honoured to be part of the future development of credible, trustworthy and insightful JIC audience measurement.”
The hiring process was led by Katherine Almond, chair of Route, Justin Cochrane, chair of Outsmart, the marketing body for OOH, and Chris Daines, chair of the IPAO, the IPA’s group of outdoor specialists.
Commenting on the appointment, Almond said: “James has done an outstanding job developing Route into the world-leading audience measurement system that it is, and we are delighted to have secured someone of Robert’s calibre to lead the team into the next phase of Route’s development.
“Robert’s experience in media agencies, the Newspaper Society and JICREG, along with his industry standing, will be very valuable to us.”
Route produces audience estimates for out-of-home advertising in Britain, with the data used as the currency for planning, trading and valuing advertising investment in the medium.
The research body is underwritten by the industry, including specialist media agencies Kinetic Worldwide, Mediacom Outdoor, Posterscope, Rapport Worldwide and Talon Outdoor. The media owner guarantors are Clear Channel Outdoor, JCDecaux and Global.
Adwanted UK is the trusted delivery partner for three essential services which deliver accountability, standardisation, and audience data for the out-of-home industry.
Playout is Outsmart’s new system to centralise and standardise playout reporting data across all outdoor media owners in the UK.
SPACE is the industry’s comprehensive inventory database delivered through a collaboration between IPAO and Outsmart.
The RouteAPI is a SaaS solution which delivers the ooh industry’s audience data quickly and simply into clients’ systems.
Contact us for more information on SPACE, J-ET, Audiotrack or our data engines.
