Connect Network launches Agentic AI platform IMMERSIVE to power hyperlocal media planning

As marketers increasingly look to personalise campaigns at the city, neighbourhood and pin code level, media planning has become significantly more complex. While brands are investing in hyperlocal marketing, planners are often expected to build campaigns for markets they may never have visited, relying on fragmented data and local expertise to make decisions.

Seeking to address that challenge, Connect Network Inc. has launched IMMERSIVE, an Agentic AI-powered platform designed to help brands and agencies plan, buy, monitor and optimise campaigns using hyperlocal intelligence.

The company said the platform has been built for India's fragmented marketing landscape, where more than 6.49 lakh cities, towns and villages each have distinct audience profiles, cultures, mobility patterns, media ecosystems and pricing dynamics. While campaigns are often planned from metropolitan offices, marketers increasingly need location-specific insights to execute campaigns across diverse markets.

Unlike conventional AI applications that primarily work with text, documents and images, Connect positions IMMERSIVE as an Agentic AI platform capable of analysing multiple layers of intelligence before recommending media plans. According to the company, the platform reasons across brand objectives, audience behaviour, geography, mobility patterns, media availability, pricing benchmarks, environmental factors and historical campaign performance to generate recommendations.

Speaking at the launch, Haresh Nayak, Founder & CEO, Connect Network Inc., said conventional AI largely works with text, images or documents, whereas IMMERSIVE has been designed to understand real-world variables such as geography, mobility patterns and consumer behaviour before creating recommendations.

The launch comes at a time when marketers are seeking more measurable and data-led planning across out-of-home (OOH), digital out-of-home (DOOH), cinema, transit, experiential, retail and rural media, categories that have traditionally relied heavily on manual planning and local expertise.

Explaining the rationale behind the platform, Nayak said planners based in cities such as Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru are often responsible for campaigns across several unfamiliar markets, making access to reliable hyperlocal intelligence critical.

"With Agentic AI, we are democratizing hyperlocal marketing intelligence. Whether someone has spent twenty years working in a city or has never visited it before, they can now understand the local media landscape, benchmark rates, evaluate opportunities and build intelligent media plans within minutes."

According to Nayak, the company has spent the past five years building the platform's intelligence layer using data covering more than 6.49 lakh towns, cities and villages, more than 5.5 lakh media inventory assets, nearly 10,000 cinemas and over 80 data APIs, allowing planners to work with live rather than static market intelligence.

He added that even users without coding knowledge could create a media plan for virtually any city within minutes.

According to the company, the platform operates through multiple AI agents that analyse media inventory, mobility patterns, consumer behaviour and market signals before generating recommendations. It also continuously learns from campaign planning, monitoring and evaluation, allowing future recommendations to improve over time.

IMMERSIVE supports campaign planning across OOH, DOOH, cinema, airports, transit media, rural marketing, experiential campaigns, shopper marketing, retail and brand activations. Besides planning, it also includes media discovery, buying intelligence, campaign monitoring, performance analytics, creative optimisation, including a repository of more than 7,000 creative case studies.

Connect claims the platform also offers the industry's first live media rate benchmarking capability, enabling marketers to compare media pricing while evaluating inventory across locations.

The platform also incorporates AI-powered creative intelligence. According to the company, marketers can simulate how creatives would appear across different OOH formats, analyse where consumers are likely to focus their attention using AI-powered eye-tracking simulations, receive AI-led suggestions for improvements and compare multiple creative executions before deploying a campaign.

Campaign monitoring is integrated into the platform through multiple verification layers, while post-campaign evaluation enables advertisers to measure campaign performance and optimise media investments.

Aditya Goel, President, Connect OOH, described IMMERSIVE as "an operating system for marketing".

Goel said the platform is designed to reduce dependence on instinct-led media planning by combining AI with real-world market intelligence. Beyond campaign planning, he said it integrates buying, creative optimisation, campaign monitoring and evaluation into a single workflow, allowing marketers to manage the entire campaign lifecycle from one platform.
Beyond urban markets, Connect is positioning IMMERSIVE as a planning tool for rural campaigns. The company said it has mapped rural touchpoints such as mandis, haats, primary health centres and transport hubs, while also building a repository of more than 750 melas, yatras and religious gatherings across the country to help marketers identify media opportunities and seasonal audience concentrations.

The company has also introduced a dedicated cinema planning module that uses brand personas, target audience profiles and social listening signals to recommend film genres and titles suited to a brand's target audience before suggesting cinema locations for campaign deployment. According to Connect, the objective is to move cinema planning away from instinct-led decisions towards audience-led recommendations.

Beyond media planning, Connect also sees applications for the platform in retail expansion and distribution strategy. During the launch, the company demonstrated how businesses could use geographic intelligence and market data to identify potential store locations, map competitor networks and optimise distribution planning. 

The company said the platform continuously learns from campaign planning, monitoring and evaluation, allowing recommendations to improve with every campaign executed. 

With AI adoption accelerating across the advertising ecosystem, Connect is betting that the next phase of AI adoption will centre on planning intelligence. By combining hyperlocal market data with Agentic AI, the company is positioning IMMERSIVE as a decision-support platform for marketers navigating India's increasingly diverse and decentralised media landscape.