APAC Leader or Country Managers: Which Do You Need?
For most DOOH businesses expanding across Asia Pacific, the answer is not simply one or the other. A Country Manager usually makes more sense where a market has its own buyer relationships, commercial norms and route to market. A regional APAC leader becomes more valuable once several countries are operating from a repeatable playbook and somebody needs to coordinate them.
The mistake is treating APAC as one hiring problem. It isn’t.
Japan, Australia, Singapore and Korea can require very different types of leadership, even when the technology and proposition are broadly the same. The real question is how much of your existing model will travel, and how much needs to be built locally before the market can generate meaningful revenue.
We have seen both approaches at close hand.
When Vistar Media launched in Japan, it already had an APAC Managing Director. Even so, the business still needed a senior local leader who could represent Vistar in-market, build credibility and create the commercial foundations for growth. We ran a retained search for its first Country Manager and deliberately looked beyond people with direct DOOH experience, mapping the wider Japanese Adtech ecosystem instead.
Local reputation, senior relationships and the ability to build a market mattered more than having an identical job title elsewhere. You can read the full Vistar Media Japan case study.
Hivestack presented the opposite challenge: expansion across multiple countries at speed. During 2020 and 2021, we worked with its senior leadership team and delivered 23 senior appointments across 15 markets in seven months, including eight markets across Asia Pacific.
What became obvious was that the same search could not simply be copied from one country to the next. Compensation changed, candidate expectations changed, competitor sets changed and the maturity of programmatic and DOOH varied significantly. The leadership requirement was similar, but the search strategy was not. You can read more in our Hivestack international expansion case study.
When does an APAC leader make sense?
A regional leader earns their place when there is something meaningful to coordinate.
That usually means the business has already proved part of its model in the region, several markets are live or opening in a relatively short period, and there is enough overlap between them for a common commercial strategy to exist.
There is also a management benefit. Once a business has several local leaders, headquarters needs somebody who can decide where investment should go next, coordinate teams and give the board a coherent view of performance across the region.
The timing matters, though. Hiring a senior regional leader before there is genuinely a region to lead can add another layer without solving the underlying market-entry problem.
A regional appointment works best when it is coordinating local capability, not replacing the need for it.
When does a Country Manager make more sense?
A Country Manager is usually the stronger first hire when success depends heavily on local credibility.
That can mean language, relationships, how agencies buy, the structure of the local ecosystem or simply having somebody senior enough in-market to be taken seriously.
If they are effectively creating the market, they need to do more than sell. They may need to establish the company’s reputation, open senior relationships, adapt the proposition, make future hires and tell headquarters when the original strategy needs changing.
That was central to the Vistar Japan brief. Direct DOOH experience was useful, but it was not the deciding factor. The stronger question was whether the person had the standing, network and commercial judgement to become Vistar’s face in Japan.
The questions we would ask before deciding
There is no fixed rule based on headcount or number of countries, but these questions usually make the answer clearer.
| Question | Regional leader | Country Manager |
|---|---|---|
| How much of the sales model transfers? | Most of it | Very little |
| Where are the key buyer relationships? | Regional | Predominantly local |
| How many markets are opening next? | Several | One or two |
| Is there a proven playbook? | Yes | No |
| How different is the local ecosystem? | Broadly comparable | Materially different |
| How senior does the first local hire need to be? | Regional cover exists | They need to represent the business themselves |
The point is not to create a scorecard. It is to force the business to be clear about what the first senior hire actually needs to do.
Can some APAC markets be run from a hub?
Yes, but there is no universal list of markets that can and cannot be run from Singapore, Australia or another regional hub.
It depends as much on the business as the geography. If customers buy regionally, the product needs little localisation and the sales motion is similar, a hub can work very well. If relationships are deeply local and every market has a different agency, publisher or technology ecosystem, local leadership becomes much more important.
The headline numbers can hide those differences. The World Out of Home Organization estimates Asia Pacific accounts for around $29.7bn of OOH spend, roughly 55% of the global market, with DOOH representing 55.7% of regional revenue (WOO, provisional figures). Australia is already significantly more digital than that average, with digital accounting for 77.1% of OOH revenue in Q2 2026 (OMA, via LBB).
Those are both APAC markets, but they are not the same hiring environment.
Sometimes the answer is neither
If you have one successful market and are still testing whether the next one warrants serious investment, you may not need a regional leader or a full Country Manager yet.
A local partner, distributor or senior commercial hire reporting into an existing leadership team can sometimes be a sensible way to test demand. The trade-off is that you may learn more slowly and have less control over the customer relationship.
The point is not to build the biggest regional structure as quickly as possible. It is to put the right level of leadership into each market at the point it can actually make a difference.
Timing matters too. A critical market-entry role sitting open can delay everything behind it, which is why we have also written about what happens when a critical hire stays open for 30, 60 or 90 days.
So which should you hire first?
If the market needs someone to build local credibility, adapt the proposition and create the first meaningful customer relationships, a Country Manager is usually the stronger starting point.
If you already have several markets operating from a repeatable model and need someone to coordinate investment, people and commercial strategy across them, the case for an APAC leader becomes much stronger.
And in a mature regional structure, you may well need both.
Our work with Hivestack involved senior appointments across eight different Asia-Pacific markets as part of a wider 15-market expansion programme. Our work with Vistar Media in Japan started with one foundational Country Manager. Both were international expansion projects, but they required very different hiring strategies.
That is normally the useful starting point: not “What should our APAC org chart look like?” but “What does this particular market need from its first leader?”
Common questions
Should a DOOH business hire an APAC leader or individual Country Managers? If markets require significant local adaptation, relationships and leadership, Country Managers are usually more important early on. A regional APAC leader becomes more valuable once several markets share a repeatable model and need coordination above them.
Does a Country Manager need direct DOOH experience? Not always. In our Vistar Media Japan search, direct DOOH experience was not essential. We prioritised senior digital advertising or Adtech experience, local relationships, market credibility and the ability to establish a new business.
Is a regional leader more expensive than hiring Country Managers? A senior regional appointment will normally carry a higher individual salary, while several Country Managers obviously create a larger combined investment as the region grows. The better comparison is which structure gives the business the best chance of creating revenue in the markets it is entering.
If you are working through this across Japan, Singapore, Australia or the wider region, drop us a note and talk us through the plan. It does not need to be a live search. We can give you an honest view on how we have seen other international Adtech businesses structure it, where local leadership tends to matter most and where a regional model may be enough.
You can also read more about our Executive Search work and our Adtech practice.
About the author
James Lyon, Co-Founder, Executive Search
James leads senior and executive search work across Ultimate Asset, with mandates spanning Revenue & Sales Leadership, General Management, Marketing & Customer Leadership, and Product & Strategy across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia. Ultimate Asset is a specialist recruitment and executive search firm for Adtech, MarTech, SaaS and Emerging Media, founded in 2005, with more than 20 years in its markets.
