5 Mins With – Jill Rothenhauser

After more than 21 years on the agency side of OOH, Jill Rothenhauser recently joined UniLED as Partnerships Director in the US, bringing with her a wealth of experience across media planning, buying, tools and transformation.

We caught up with Jill to hear about her move from agency to AdTech, how OOH has evolved over the course of her career, and why she believes independent verification has an increasingly important role to play as the industry continues to grow.

You recently joined UniLED from Rapport, how, and why, did you get into the OOH Industry?

I fell into OOH right out of college back in 2004. I laugh now because I didn’t even know what OOH was. It wasn’t a media channel they covered in my business or marketing classes. I just knew I wanted a job in advertising. It seemed fast-paced, full of smart and creative people and somewhere there would be lots of different directions I could go. 

It turned out to be way more spreadsheets than glamour. The truth is, I actually love that. I stayed because of the people. This industry truly really does have the best community. I was right about it being fast-paced too. No two days are ever the same! Again it makes day-to-day work life much more interesting. 

Can you give us some insight into your day-to-day role at UniLED?

My role is focused on client services in the US, working closely with agency teams to make sure they’re getting the most from the UniLIVE platform and helping them communicate the value of independent verification to their clients. 

One thing I know from being on the agency side is that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Every advertiser has different priorities and every campaign is different, so a big part of my role is understanding what matters to each team and where verification can add the most value. 

I’m also involved in expanding the services we offer in the US to meet the evolving needs of our agency and advertiser clients, so there’s a lot of variety in the role.

What made you decide to move from a Media Agency to an AdTech company?

I spent my last few years on the media agency side in a Tools and Transformation role. My experience in, and the knowledge I’d developed of, media planning and buying proved invaluable in helping to find solutions to many of the technology and innovation challenges we faced along the way.  

For the first decade of my career “AdTech” wasn’t even part of the agency vocabulary. As I was introduced to more companies and had a chance to experience the technology and tools in action, it was easy to see the value they could bring to OOH. It was inspiring to see innovation at play, and I enjoyed seeing just how AdTech was helping push the industry forward. Additionally, how it could help to encourage more spend into the channel. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that role ended up preparing me for a move into an AdTech company. It’s how I first “met” UniLED and came to understand the what and why behind independent verification. I’ve loved getting to learn a different side of the same industry.

Is there any advice you would give someone making the same move? 

Trust your knowledge, experience and relationships. Yes, there is plenty I still don’t know –  some data conversations make my head spin.  But when you understand the result or the outcome and what all that data and technology can help achieve, that’s what is important.  Your problem-solving skills, your negotiation and strategic skills are all transferrable and invaluable, whichever side of the industry you’re working on.

With over 21 years of experience in the OOH industry, what has been your ‘wow’ moment in its evolution?

3D anamorphic. I absolutely love seeing and experiencing the ongoing innovation in the OOH industry. 

20 years ago there were (probably) still no digital billboards outside of major markets. They were just being built and installed in my home city of Detroit and it felt like such a new thing. Fast forward 20 years and there are digital OOH screens in almost every market. And we’re not just talking digital versions of the static billboards anymore. We have ads jumping out of screens on billboards, bus stops, and then there’s the Las Vegas Sphere.

What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for the OOH sector in the next five years? And what role do you think third-party verification will play?

Accelerating digital conversion is the industry’s biggest growth lever. It unlocks addressability, programmatic scale, and dynamic, contextual creative. These are the things that let OOH compete for budget on the same terms as other media channels that have traditionally operated in real-time. But digital conversion at scale also brings challenges. OOH has always been the unmissable, physical, IRL, shared-experience channel, not just another feed to scroll past. 

We don’t want OOH to become part of the same clutter as online digital. So the goal is to advance the technology without losing what makes the channel special: that IRL quality.

As screens multiply and the creative gets more dynamic, accountability gets more complex too, and that’s where third-party verification has an important role to play. Making independent verification standard practice is now critical. The channel can grow and evolve while trust remains high, as long as the right third-party verification layer is built in from the start.

What’s one common misconception the wider OOH industry has on third-party verification?

That it’s optional and a ‘nice to have’. Or that the reporting provided by partners (media partners or DSPs) is the same as third-party verification. 

Independently verifying campaigns provides deeper insights into campaign value. Additionally, it provides the opportunity (and information needed) to optimize campaigns. This is particularly important in the pDOOH space where we can independently validate impression multipliers.

Things like this directly impact the value of OOH, so being able to surface under or over-valued CPMs is important in giving media planners and advertisers greater confidence in their investment. Ultimately, greater confidence helps drive more dollars to the channel, which is good for all.