• by Joe Mandese , April 23, 2024

Days before the out-of-home ad industry is scheduled to hold its annual meeting, the head of the industry's primary audience measurement service Geopath -- Dylan Mabin -- has stepped down as president.

The news, which was announced late Monday by the organization's chairman -- Michael Lieberman, U.S. CEO of WPP's Kinetic Worldwide unit -- included a statement by Mabin, but did not explain why he was leaving now, three years after he succeeded former GeoPath CEO Kym Frank under what some see as similar circumstances usurping some of Geopath's role as the out-of-home ad industry de facto measurement standard, as well as the only true JIC (joint industry committee) functioning in the U.S. advertising marketplace.

“After dedicating more than 16 years to Geopath, with the last three as President, Dylan Mabin has decided to embark on the next chapter of his career," Lieberman said in a statement, adding that Mabin agreed to continue in his role while Geopath's board searches for a new president.

Statements aside, the timing is reminiscent of Frank's ouster as Geopath president in 2021, just before the organization was about to co-host the out-of-home ad industry's annual conference jointly with the Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America (OAAA), in what some saw at that time as a palace coup by OAAA management, which had begun shifting away from Geopath's more rigorous "eyes-on" or "likelihood to see" standards for measuring out-of-home ad delivery in favor of an audience impressions-based one.

Some see that as another example of media suppliers -- abetted by their agency counterparts -- muscling the ad industry to adopt inferior audience measurement standards that nonetheless make their audiences look bigger and therefore create a more sellable supply of advertising inventory.

The other main example is the push by big TV/cross-platform video advertising suppliers certifying their own new "alternate" ad currency suppliers, and ultimately creating a new media-controlled committee, which they dubbed a JIC, although it has no advertisers represented on it.

The move also comes as the media industry ratings watchdog, the Media Rating Council, is poised to release its own, updated standards for out-of-home measurement, which some insiders believe favor the supply-side and effectively kill any hope for the kind of "eyes-on" or "likelihood to see" audience measurement Geopath helped pioneer in the U.S.