by Amber Larkins, OOH Today
We recently published our annual list of the Top Women Driving Growth in Out-of-Home (OOH) for 2025. Today, we are highlighting Carrie Fitzmaurice Daly, Head of Sales – East, Volta Media
Carrie Fitzmaurice Daly is the Head of Sales, East, for Volta Media. She oversees sales strategies, driving growth and expanding market presence across East Coast media accounts. With over 25 years of experience in omnichannel sales and marketing leadership, Carrie has worked both agencies and clients in every vertical, with national, regional and local brands. She has held leadership roles at the DPAA, Velocity, and Eye Corp Media. Her proven track record of success and leadership in the media and advertising industries underscores their ability to drive results and foster growth. Carrie holds a B.S in Marketing from Fairfield University.
Carrie’s background before OOH was in newspapers. It helped prepare her for calling on national and regional advertisers and pitching a regional media solution. She, like many others, fell into OOH after she left print and was interviewing with other media companies. Her first and only OOH conversation at that time was with Eye Corp Media, a leading mall media company.
“The more I learned about OOH the more excited I got about working in an industry where you can’t block or minimize the ads, they are in a brand safe environment, with no viewability issues,” Carrie said. “To be able to strategically place ads on the path to purchase and often be the last ad a consumer sees before they make a purchase is an enviable position to be in.”
“The more I learned about OOH the more excited I got about working in an industry where you can’t block or minimize the ads, they are in a brand safe environment, with no viewability issues,” Carrie said. “To be able to strategically place ads on the path to purchase and often be the last ad a consumer sees before they make a purchase is an enviable position to be in.”
Embrace the Challenge
From the very beginning of selling out of home, it became obvious to Carrie that while the OOH teams certainly see the low-hanging fruit in terms of having budgets dedicated to OOH, decisions on media channels can come from a variety of sources.
“I always worked for more boutique or niche OOH media companies vs. the large billboard media owners so you had to do things differently to stand out and let people know who you were,” Carrie said.
Her greatest successes have been when she sees a sales rep, that had little to no experience in OOH, embrace the challenge, hustle, get creative and achieve their goals.
In her own career, the most valuable resources who have helped her be successful are the people she has worked for and the people she has worked with.
“Sales leadership sets the tone for what is expected. Recognize and reward hard work and foster a team culture,” Carrie said.
Just as important, are the teams that she has the privilege of managing.
“People bring different skill sets, contacts, experience, and energy to the team – ideally, we all learn from one another and get stronger as a result,” Carrie said.
“People bring different skill sets, contacts, experience, and energy to the team – ideally, we all learn from one another and get stronger as a result,” Carrie said.
Be Confident Out of the Gate and Look for Mentors
There were times when Carrie wasn’t 100% confident. If she had been more confident, then she could have reached out to her leadership or peers for advice and guidance that would have helped her get through uncertain times and advance her skillset and value.
“Women need to be confident out of the gate, and look for mentors,” Carrie said. “You need to be a self-promoter, but with a team spirit – and not in an arrogant way. Look for opportunities to take on projects, or work with other people to help network, showcase your skills. You will get noticed and for all the right reasons!”
Too Many Decision Makers Stuck in Traditional Planning
Carrie thinks the industry needs more people have a different appreciation of OOH in the omnichannel mix, whether male or female. While she appreciates that OOH has been hard to measure, there are a lot of great companies putting resources against OOH being able to speak the same language as other media channels. Many media companies have case studies that can prove out the value of adding DOOH to an omnichannel buy.
“To me, the lack of growth is due to too many organizations and decision makers being stuck in traditional planning models,” Carrie said.
She says we need to continue to break down the barriers between media channels. Some agencies are doing this already and programmatic has certainly help blur the lines and help promote buying audiences vs. silo’s.
“If we continue to have audience conversations, appreciate video can run across media channels and not lose sight of the fact that 85% of sales still happen in brick & mortar stores then we can gain a greater slice of ad spend,” Carrie said. “There is proven value in being able to intercept the consumer while they are on the path to purchase.”
- Advertisement -
