Ocean Outdoor’s Nick Shaw: the year ahead for agencies, advertisers and audiences

1/ British companies are sometimes criticised for not investing enough, admittedly in a difficult macro-economic environment. What are Ocean’s investment plans for 2026?

Even in a tough economic climate, it’s important to invest.

2025 was a challenging year but we chose to spend nearly £7 million improving the quality of our existing estate, with upgrades on key assets in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester.

2026 will be our biggest year yet for new development, with a huge capex programme underway. We’re not just investing in new formats, new screens and new cities, but also in our people.

Significant changes to our leadership and management team include the promotion of two key colleagues. Andrew Gibson, one of the industry’s best trading directors, becomes chief revenue officer, and Rachel Sutton steps up as director of brand partnerships. Together they make a formidable team and are now leading the sales efforts across our growing UK network base.

2 /Ocean is synonymous with landmark UK sites, in London especially. How national is your reach? Do you plan to move into more cities?

National reach is massively important to us as it’s what advertisers crave.

From conception, Ocean has been a regionally focused business. We’ve managed the contract for Liverpool Media Wall since 2008, New Street in Birmingham since 2010 and Manchester Printworks (below) from 2014. In fact, we originally operated more screens in the regions than we did in London.

Of course we aspire to move into new cities, subject to the necessary planning. Ocean’s growth continues with the roll out of our first premium large format DOOH location in Landsec’s Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth. Together with our existing Bournemouth and Southampton locations, this provides cover in the best retail locations along the south coast. Portsmouth becomes our 19th UK city, with Cambridge to follow later this year.

Ocean goes into these cities wanting to be additive; we are not in the business of building screens right next to, or on top of, a competitor site.

This month we extend our reach in Manchester even further having just been awarded the contract to operate the interior large format and digital six sheets in Manchester Arndale. We are also reinventing one of the country’s original Ask for it By Name heroes – Chester Road. This unmissable site targets traffic heading in and out of the centre at one of the city’s busiest roundabouts.

In the Midlands, the landmark Birmingham Media Eyes are also making a comeback following a two year hiatus which saw them switched off to accommodate further development in that area. The screens are being replacing and there’ll be a relaunch in the spring.

3 /One of the advantages of internet-based advertising is its flexibility in terms of format and size. How can a physical medium like Out of Home compete with this?

I find this question quite frustrating because DOOH always has been flexible. We offer dayparting, tactical hourly or one day activations, and have done so since digital existed. I was delivering this sort of stuff 20 years ago when I was at CBS Outdoor.

The Lionesses winning the Euros is just one example of DOOH’s immediacy. We had a Nike ad up on Piccadilly Lights immediately after their win, and again to coincide with the homecoming parade. Looking around London, I must have counted 10 to 15 reactionary ads across various DOOH networks within minutes of the final whistle being blown.

In recent years what has made DOOH even more flexible, is the huge amount of mobile data now available, allowing brands to be even more contextual and hyper targeted. Programmatic platforms have helped here by attracting new brands to the medium.

The important trade-off for advertisers is that DOOH, unlike internet based advertising, is a brand building medium. It’s also brand safe – the single biggest concern in the advertising industry. Advertisers should be prioritising transparency, relevance and contextual alignment. DOOH delivers on every front.

4 /Ocean has gradually built up its community presence and investment in recent years, particularly through women’s sport. What benefits has this brought to Ocean, the wider OOH medium and the community?

Having laid the groundwork by securing superb OOH partnerships with both the Women’s Super League and the Red Roses, we will continue to connect brands with fans and new audiences through shared experiences and bespoke activations which give more airtime and wider prominence to women’s sport.

There’s a strong business case for investing in women’s sport. According to the Women’s Sports Trust, 68% of UK adults want brands to invest in the future of women’s sport and not just for short-term visibility or gains. Their research reveals a clear commercial opportunity, with women’s sport delivering strong brand connection, emotional resonance, and high levels of purchase consideration.

Anyone who visited the Women’s Rugby World Cup fan zone curated and managed by Ocean Labs at Battersea Power Station back in September will have seen the benefits of this sort of family friendly space for fans, brands and wider audiences.

Within hours of the Red Roses lifting the trophy, Ocean had transformed the same space to accommodate the historic home win celebration. The players loved it and so did the crowd, the party making international news headlines across the world.

According to World Rugby 2025, the tournament itself was attended by fans from 133 countries, 53% of them female. Fifty percent said they had never been to a women’s rugby match before, and 95% said they intended to return and watch it again. A superb opportunity for sponsors and brands to leverage their rights in a category where fans say they want brands to show up and be present.

Underpinning all of this, our 2026 calendar of sports and cultural partnerships kicks off shortly with highlights from the Winter Olympics presented in association with Corona Cero and Aldi starting from 6th February.

Industry wise, everyone, not just Ocean, is doing their bit in their respective communities, tapping into the local zeitgeist and what matters to the people living and working in the cities where we operate. Over and above the portion of ad revenue which is returned to Local Authority coffers (50p in every pound) by the OOH industry, we leverage our platform each year to mark important moments like the Hillsborough anniversary in Liverpool; and in 2025 we carried tribute copy following the deaths and funerals of Ricky Hatton in Manchester, Ozzy Osborne in Birmingham and Dickie Bird in Leeds. We don’t expect plaudits. We do it because it’s the right thing to do.

5/ What would you most like to see in 2026 – for Ocean specifically and the wider OOH medium?

Deeper, creative exploration of the symbiotic relationship between the digital and the physical. At Ocean we continue to push the envelope with our first ever roof top projection of a giant working compass on London’s BFI IMAX, working with Uncommon Creative Studio, Wavemaker and OMODA JAECOO.

More new and emerging formats – following the launch last summer of The Showcase, we have another new format in the pipeline which will be unveiled in Germany next month.

Landsec’s The Venue affords brands the chance to occupy prime West End space directly below Piccadilly Lights. Disney, Audi, L’Oreal are just some who have used this opportunity to create real time content for fans on the big screen and in the online universe as well.

As a medium, OOH enters 2026 in rude health and, as such, a good position to grow. I’d just love to see that recognised. As the analyst Ian Whittaker pointed out in his report with Talon, OOH’s strengths have been under-appreciated. In the UK, for example, OOH is around 3% of total advertising spend but should probably be double that.

To quote Whittaker directly, OOH has several key advantages in the current environment:

– It fits into the zeitgeist for brand building;
– It’s trusted;
– It’s attention grabbing;
– Its reach is phenomenal.

Outsmart’s Playout report provides a single source of truth. Standardised data, recorded and verified independently by PwC / Mediasense, Playout adds even more accountability to our brand-safe, trusted medium.

I am further buoyed by WPP Media who published its new global advertising forecasts last month. One noticeable feature was the strength of OOH, with 6.3% growth globally for 2025E and 6.7% for 2026E, boosted by the World Cup. While this is slightly below the total global advertising growth forecasts, OOH is the strongest performer of the “traditional” platforms. That’s hard to ignore.

For the wider medium? Well, OOH’s global mandarins congregate in London this June for their annual World Out of Home congress. At the same time, SXSW takes place on the other side of town. The spotlight will be well and truly on London and the UK.

Nick Shaw is UK CEO of Ocean Outdoor.