• by Fern Siegel , April 27, 2011

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings tapped Michael Chico as senior vice president, national sales group. He will focus on multi-market out-of-home campaigns.

Based in New York, Chico reports to Rocky Sisson, executive vice president of sales and marketing. Sisson says with advances in digital technology, "out-of-home is gaining a larger share of advertising spending." He cited Chico's "dynamic leadership capabilities and well-established relationships in the industry" as crucial to the growth of the company's national sales push.

Prior to Clear Channel Outdoor, Chico was executive vice president, advertising sales and marketing for Screenvision Cinema Networks, where he oversaw revenue from on-screen advertising, mobile and texting platforms, lobby kiosks and digital signage.

Before that, he held sales posts for Madison Square Garden and NBC Television Stations and Disney.

Clear Channel Outdoor had a profitable fourth quarter in 2011, with revenue rising nearly 4% to $793 million, but it still missed analysts' estimates.

In January, Clear Channel Out of Home announced big plans to expand programs that were largely experimental last year. In 2010, the company piloted programs featuring interactive digital displays in bus shelters in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., and bathroom mirrors and elevator banisters in Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. These programs will enter other markets this year.

Clear Channel Outdoor is the world's largest outdoor ad company with close to 1 million displays in 45 countries across five continents. In the U.S., the company operates more than 200,000 ad displays, as well as airport, rail, and mall advertising businesses worldwide.