Route has appointed Euan Mackay as CEO.
He succeeds Denise Turner, who last month announced that she was leaving the OOH joint industry currency (JIC) to join the IPA as its new media research director.
Mackay will officially take on the role in July, following a handover period before Turner’s departure.
Route chair Katherine Almond called Mackay “the obvious choice” for CEO, noting his appointment was unanimous from the board.
Joining Route in 2016, Mackay was first general manager and became its chief strategy officer in March 2024.
Before that, he was a director at strategy consultancy Crowd DNA. Mackay also spent seven years at Kantar Media, most notably as director during 2014-2016.
He will lead Route at a key time of expansion for the OOH JIC. In January, Route appointed Ipsos and Adwanted UK (the parent company of The Media Leader) for a new seven-year contract to collect, process and output audience data for OOH.
The new solution will produce a synthetic dataset, representing the travel habits of the UK population, that will be 82 times larger than the current Route dataset.
In addition, Route is building a centralised API and data tool to offer a “single source of truth” for OOH audiences as well as greater nuance and granularity for campaign planning.
Route appoints Ipsos and Adwanted to build new data model
These developments take place at a time when the OOH industry has experienced strong post-pandemic growth.
According to OOH trade body Outsmart and PwC, last year OOH revenue grew 7.7% to reach £1.4bn — the sector’s strongest-ever year. Growth was primarily driven by digital OOH, which was up 10.2% year on year and now accounts for two-thirds of all OOH revenue in the UK.
“I’m delighted to have the opportunity to lead Route at an exciting time,” said Mackay. “The industry is in rude health and Route is working with Ipsos and Adwanted to evolve our methods, data and delivery mechanisms to ensure that audience measurement for OOH advertising in Great Britain remains best in class globally.”
Turner commented that Mackay has “embraced the huge changes in OOH with creativity and relish”.
She added that he is “well-placed to lead Route into the future”, given his “significant management skills, flair and energy”.
OOH hits record year in revenue
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