OOH Business Unit Head

The OOH Business Unit Director is responsible for leading, growing, and commercially managing the Out-of-Home business unit across iProspect clients. This role provides strategic direction across OOH planning, buying, vendor partnerships, client leadership, operational delivery, and performance accountability. The Director is expected to build a future-fit OOH offering that drives client value, protects revenue, unlocks growth opportunities, and ensures excellence across static, digital, programmatic, and integrated OOH solutions.

Job Description:

Key responsibilities:

Business Unit Leadership & Commercial Growth:

• Lead the OOH business unit strategy, ensuring the offering is commercially viable, differentiated, and aligned to iProspect’s broader media and client growth objectives.

• Own revenue growth, margin protection, pipeline development, and the identification of new OOH opportunities across existing and prospective clients.

• Develop clear operating models, workflows, and standards that ensure consistent excellence across OOH planning, buying, implementation, and reporting.

Strategic OOH Planning & Product Excellence:

• Provide senior strategic oversight across integrated OOH plans, including roadside, mall, transit, airport, place-based, digital OOH, and programmatic OOH environments.

• Ensure OOH recommendations are grounded in audience insight, location intelligence, traffic movement, reach, frequency, visibility, contextual relevance, and business outcomes.

• Champion innovation in OOH, including data-led planning, dynamic creative, programmatic activation, measurement frameworks, and cross-channel amplification.

Client Leadership & Senior Stakeholder Management:

• Act as the senior OOH lead for key clients, providing strategic counsel, thought leadership, escalation support, and confidence in the quality of the agency’s OOH recommendations.

• Build trusted relationships with client stakeholders, internal client leadership teams, strategy, investment, digital, creative, finance, and operations teams.

• Translate client business objectives into clear OOH strategies, measurable outcomes, and commercially sound recommendations.

Investment, Trading & Partner Management:

• Lead strategic relationships with media owners, specialist suppliers, technology partners, and production partners to secure quality inventory, competitive pricing, innovation, and added value.

• Oversee negotiation principles, trading governance, inventory selection, supplier performance, and buying quality across the OOH portfolio.

• Ensure commercial controls are in place across pricing, approvals, purchase orders, delivery commitments, reconciliation, and billing accuracy.

Performance, Measurement & Accountability:

• Set clear measurement frameworks for OOH activity, including reach, frequency, impressions, share of voice, location quality, campaign delivery, proof of posting, and post-campaign effectiveness.

• Ensure reporting moves beyond delivery metrics to provide actionable insight, learnings, and recommendations for future planning cycles.

• Hold the team and partners accountable for accurate implementation, reporting integrity, campaign governance, and continuous improvement.

Tools Adoption, Utilisation & Team Training:

• Drive the adoption, consistent utilisation, and ongoing optimisation of dentsu developed OOH planning, mapping, audience, traffic, measurement, reporting, workflow, and financial governance tools across the OOH team.

• Establish minimum standards for tool usage, ensuring that OOH recommendations, inventory evaluation, audience rationale, supplier comparisons, campaign tracking, proof of posting, and post-campaign reporting are supported by the appropriate platforms and data sources.

• Lead structured training, onboarding, refresher sessions, and capability-building programmes to ensure all OOH team members can confidently use approved tools and apply them to client work, operational delivery, and commercial decision-making.

• Monitor tool utilisation, identify capability gaps, and work with internal teams, media owners, and technology partners to improve adoption, data quality, process compliance, and overall team effectiveness.

People Leadership & Team Development:

• Lead, coach, and develop OOH planning, buying, and operations talent, building the capability required to support current client demands and future business growth.

• Create clear roles, responsibilities, workflows, quality-control standards, and escalation processes across the OOH team.

• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, commercial ownership, and proactive problem-solving.

Financial Management & Operational Governance:

• Own budget oversight, revenue forecasting, margin management, supplier cost control, and financial risk management across OOH activity.

• Partner with finance and client teams to ensure accurate billing, reconciliation, purchase order management, and compliance with client commercial requirements.

• Identify operational risks early and implement controls to protect the agency, client relationships, and campaign delivery.

Industry Leadership, Compliance & Market Reputation:

• Stay close to market developments, industry tools, OOH regulation, measurement standards, media owner capability, emerging formats, and competitive activity.

• Represent iProspect credibly in the OOH market and contribute to thought leadership, pitch work, client education, and agency reputation building.

• Ensure all OOH activity complies with relevant legal, regulatory, client, and internal governance requirements.

Skills & Qualifications:

• Education: Bachelor’s degree or diploma in Marketing (advantageous), Advertising, Media, Business Management, or a related field. A postgraduate qualification or leadership development experience would be advantageous.

• Experience: 8+ years’ experience in media planning, buying, OOH strategy, media owner partnerships, or specialist OOH leadership, with proven experience managing clients, teams, budgets, supplier relationships, and commercial outcomes.

• Skills:

  • Strong strategic understanding of the OOH ecosystem, including static OOH, digital OOH, programmatic OOH, place-based media, production considerations, trading models, and measurement approaches.

  • Strong working knowledge of relevant OOH planning, audience, mapping, traffic, measurement, and industry tools, including ROAD 2.0 where applicable.

  • Proven ability to embed tool adoption, usage discipline, training, and governance across a specialist media team.

  • Excellent commercial negotiation, trading, vendor management, and senior stakeholder management skills.

  • Ability to interpret data, market intelligence, audience movement, and campaign performance to guide strategic decision-making.

  • Strong financial acumen, including forecasting, margin management, budget control, reconciliation, billing governance, and commercial risk management.

  • Confident executive-level communication, client presentation, escalation management, and cross-functional leadership capability.

• Personal Attributes:

  • Commercially minded, accountable, and comfortable owning the performance, reputation, and growth of a specialist business unit.

  • Strategic, solutions-led thinker with the ability to balance client ambition, commercial reality, operational complexity, and executional excellence.

  • Strong people leader who can build capability, manage pressure, resolve issues, and create a high-performance team culture.

Location:

Sandton

Brand:

Iprospect

Time Type:

Full time

Contract Type:

Permanent