'Clients that have 50 crores plus investment in OOH are looking at more accountability'

The Dentsu Aegis Network’s OOH arm Posterscope celebrated its 11th anniversary in the month of September this year. Haresh Nayak, Group MD, Posterscope Group South Asia & Regional Director, Posterscope Asia Pacific says that the journey has been all about reinvention. Nayak stated, “Reinvention has helped us grow year on year. Today, as Dentsu Aegis Network we have 3-4 OOH agencies in the network and we have 35% market share in the organized trade. It’s not only about the scale but about the depth, we bring to the business and our own responsibility to add to the industry itself”.

OOH is one of the oldest mediums of advertising to date and will continue to grow. “In OOH, the chances of skipping ads are less. There is no ad avoidance or ad blockage”, commented Nayak.

The biggest challenge of OOH was that there was no data. Nayak remarked, “In 2016, we worked with our digital agencies and looked at a couple of options like Geo-Fencing which tells you how many mobile phones are there in that Geo-Location. Today, we tied up and have subscribed to a lot of data of Facebook APIs, IBM Watson Analysis, Senses GI’s maps. We created a solution to break the industry's biggest challenge which is that there is no data.”

“Now we are able to tell our clients how many mobile phones are crossing a particular billboard. We know that if there are 100 mobile phones passing, we have 80% of people seeing the billboards. We are also able to streamline and organize the medium. In the last two years, all the big pitches that have happened in the OOH industry Posterscope has won Maruti, Oppo, Vivo all the big pitches. It is because of us bringing an answer to a lot of questions one is from the data point and the second is from the professional level in terms of automation, AI and bringing in innovations in the medium”, Nayak added.

Within the Dentsu Network, they have 24 brands out of which 7 brands are under Nayak’s KPI’s. Speaking about the DOOH space, Nayak remarked, “The DOOH space is evolving and if you look at corporates like Panasonic is putting up screens in their stores and they are partnering with a lot of corporates. In the last 2-3 years, investment in the Digital space has grown. If you look at the numbers in 2016 there were 25-30,000 screens. We now have 70,000 plus screens that is a huge difference.”

“Some months back, we did an activity for Skoda. So, whenever a Skoda comes across a digital billboard it would identify the car and say, ‘Welcome Skoda.’ Those are the innovations that are possible in that space. DOOH is still a growing medium and needs a little bit of investment. The biggest support should come from the government in terms of permissions, benefits to people investing. It will not only help the advertiser in terms of optimizing the spends but also it also makes your city look smarter. In the next three years, there will be roughly around 2 lakh screens coming up.”

They launched ROH ( Run of House) when the agency was doing a billing roughly around 5 crores in the digital space. Today they are doing roughly around 15 crores. In one year there has been a jump of 3X. But the medium is new and it has started at zero. Initially, it will grow at receptive growth levels. On average globally it is growing at 30%. In India, it is very nascent.

Talking about an emerging trend in the OOH space Nayak says that clients are showing a lot of interest in the DOOH space. “All the large clients that have 50 crores plus investment in the space are looking at more accountability in terms of reach in every rupee spent. The clients want ROI for the money spent. We are in the data analytics space and are able to provide that to them”, shared Nayak.

The agency gives a report to their client Maruthi in terms of Geo-Fencing and how many mobile phones have passed and the customer’s data.

For example, the Flipkart campaign that the agency rolled out. Every Year the client who knows the agency’s platform gives the sales data by pin code. Because of this, they know that apparels are delivered in a particular space and what the percentage volume is. “We take their data and upload it to our system and come to know our priority areas. We also have other data like the population of that area, Gender and so on. We are able to predict which category will sell in that area”, explains Nayak.

The agency gives a report to their client Maruthi in terms of Geo-Fencing and how many mobile phones have passed as well as the customer’s data.