Ganesh Chaturthi 2025: OOH spends up 20% as brands go big to tap festive fervour

Ganesh Chaturthi, one of India’s most celebrated festivals, has increasingly become a hotspot for brand activations and outdoor advertising, with marketers vying for consumer attention amid massive gatherings, decorated pandals, and city-wide processions. 

According to experts, outdoor advertising has seen a sharp upswing this Ganesh Chaturthi, with spends rising nearly 20% year-on-year as brands tapped into the festive spirit to connect with consumers.

“This year, we expect a clear jump of 15–20% in OOH spends around Ganesh Chaturthi compared to last year,” said Vikas Nowal, Founder & CEO of Interspace Communications. According to him, with inflation stabilizing and disposable incomes on the rise, brands are showing greater confidence in festive consumption. Maharashtra, a high-consumption market, has naturally attracted higher marketing investments.

He added that while Mumbai and Pune continue to dominate OOH activity, Tier 2 and 3 cities such as Nagpur, Nashik, Kolhapur, Aurangabad, and Solapur are witnessing more structured festive campaigns compared to last year. This shift reflects the growing importance of non-metro Maharashtra, where brands are seeing stronger incremental growth.

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Yuvrraj Agarwaal, Chief Strategy Officer, Laqshya Media Group, noted that Ganesh Chaturthi 2025 (Aug 27–Sep 6) is prompting early budget lock-ins across Mumbai, Pune, and the Konkan region. He said festive spends are trending 10–20% higher than last year, with brands committing earlier, though premium pricing remains firm at high-demand sites. “Festive premiums are intact — but now they’re performance-questioned. Clients will pay more if we prove impact beyond impressions,” he added.

Nowal further stressed that festive OOH campaigns around Ganesh Chaturthi in Maharashtra command a clear premium, with high-footfall inventory across Girgaon, Lalbaug, Dadar, Shivaji Park, suburban Mumbai, and central Pune booked weeks in advance. “Media owners know the demand is high & rightly so because the visibility during this period is unmatched. Brands are willing to pay more because they see a direct impact on sales & brand love during these 10 days.”

However, the premium is driven as much by contextual relevance as by rates — securing media near a prominent pandal means buying into cultural significance and consumer emotion, a value that often justifies the spend.

Brand spends

Industry insiders say categories such as FMCG and Q-commerce players in snacks, beverages, and ice creams are dominating queue-time touchpoints, while telecom and OTT platforms are leveraging live-darshan tie-ups and data packs. Auto and smartphone brands are syncing festive launches with visibility drives, whereas durables and electricals such as Polycab and Havells are leaning on safety and lighting narratives. BFSI and fintech brands are also active with UPI-linked donation initiatives and branch catchment campaigns. 

Sandeep Ranade, Executive Vice President and Head of Quantitative Research Division at Hansa Research said, “Categories like Real Estate, BFSI, consumer durables are some of the categories which use OOH as a part of their overall campaigns. During Ganesh Puja local restaurants, retail, educational institutes, classes, media/OTT etc use the Ganesh pandals to reach their audiences.”

For many brands, Ganesh Chaturthi has become a pivotal fixture in the marketing calendar, not only for its deep cultural and emotional connect with consumers but also as a high-visibility platform across pandals and public celebrations. The festival effectively marks the start of India’s festive season, giving marketers an opportunity to launch campaigns, drive visibility, and build early momentum ahead of Navratri, Durga Puja, and Diwali.

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“At ITC, we constantly strive to celebrate India’s cultural richness with meaningful and innovative brand experiences. This Ganesh Chaturthi, Aashirvaad is paying tribute to tradition in two unique ways. Together, both initiatives reflect our commitment to elevating the festive spirit through devotion, innovation, and togetherness," said Shuvadip Banerjee, Chief Digital Marketing Officer, ITC Foods. 

He said Aashirvaad Atta is offering a unique devotional experience by engraving the smallest idol of Lord Ganesha on wheat grains, symbolising purity. Visitors can co-create digital Ganesha artworks projected on a life-sized wheat idol and receive these engraved grains as prasad.

Meanwhile, Aashirvaad Soul Creations, through #BappaKiTayyari, is blending tradition with technology—delivering festive sweets like modaks and puran poli and providing aarti booklets via WhatsApp to keep rituals accessible.

Inderpreet Singh, Head - Marketing, at Birla Opus Paints said, “Festivals in India are deeply ingrained in our culture, shaping habits, traditions and shared celebrations across regions. Our festive campaign celebrates the power of colours in enriching these traditions and making every moment more memorable." He added, “Given that festivals in our country are celebrated with equal enthusiasm across regions, in their unique ways but with the same fervour, our efforts are designed to connect with people across audiences, communities and regions”.

Cycle Pure Agarbathi also reiterated this, noting that Ganesh Chaturthi holds an integral place in its festive calendar. “Ganesh Chaturthi is a festival that is budgeted for separately from all other festivals. Even though it is one of the five major festivals for which the company has a single festive strategy including Pongal, Durga Puja, Diwali, and the Ayyappa season, we allocate more money for this particular festival to be able to have more extensive campaigns, influencer collaborations, and retail activations,” said Arjun Ranga, Managing Director at Cycle Pure Agarbathi. 

Ranga added that the brand follows a multimodal strategy - balancing national visibility with hyperlocal activations through community-led pandal partnerships beyond temple associations. This approach allows it to connect with spaces that embody the pure spirit of worship while blending scale with cultural intimacy. 

Nowal noted that Ganesh Chaturthi is no longer just folded into overall festive budgets, with many regional and mid-sized brands carving out dedicated OOH spends for the occasion. The festival’s hyper-local and experiential nature makes premium sites, such as Lalbaugcha Raja in Mumbai or Dagdusheth Halwai in Pune uniquely powerful for visibility and cultural relevance. As a result, brands are increasingly treating Ganesh Chaturthi as a standalone media moment, supported by on-ground activations and digital amplification, with sharper ROI expectations.

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OOH categories

According to Agarwaal, digital OOH emerged as the fastest riser this season and is expected to contribute nearly 20% of overall OOH by 2025. Static premium billboards continue to anchor awareness along mandal corridors, while transit media across metro, rail, and bus networks is benefiting from mobility spikes. Experiential activations, including shaded queues, hydration ATMs, and food stalls, successfully demonstrated during the 2024 Lalbaug campaigns by Pulse, Pizza Hut, Havmor, Vi, and Polycab are also becoming integral to festive marketing.

Agarwaal said, “The winning stack is premium static + DOOH + service-led experience. Be seen, be dynamic, and be useful.”

This heightened focus on outdoor visibility is echoed by brands themselves. “OOH is still a very important touchpoint for us, especially in places with lots of people visiting during festivals. We can't disclose the precise numbers, but we can say that a large part of our festival budget is allocated to OOH, mainly from areas such as Mumbai, Pune, and South India, where Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations are going on,” said Ranga of Cycle Pure Agarbathi. 

Meanwhile, Singh of Birla Opus added that OOH continues to be an integral part of their media mix, deployed basis the requirement and communication objective of each campaign rather than a fixed allocation. 

Ganesh Chaturthi has firmly established itself as one of the most important markers in the festive marketing calendar, driving strong early-season OOH investments and setting the stage for the months ahead. For many brands, the festival delivers a rare mix of hyper-local connect and mass visibility, making it an indispensable spend window.

Commenting on the trend, Nowal observed, “Majority of brands who can’t leverage the media festival called IPL, they target such events to get their presence felt be it local or citywide. From the local jewellers to real estate, they all see it as the beginning of the festive season and it is this last quarter of the calendar when they see a good spike in their business.”

Festive season spending

Marketers view Ganesh Chaturthi as the ignition point for a much larger spending cycle, which intensifies with Durga Puja in the East and culminates with Diwali nationwide. By unlocking high-impact visibility in September, the festival builds momentum that carries into India’s biggest consumer-spend months. 

However, experts also flagged uncertainties tied to the upcoming GST reforms due post-Diwali. “We need to wait and watch to see if the consumers will continue with festive buying or delay the purchase of high ticket items post Diwali to benefit from lower prices (due to lower GST),” Ranade cautioned.

According to Agarwaal, AdEx is forecast to grow 11–12% in 2025, with Diwali likely to trigger the sharpest inventory crunch. Brands are already advancing bookings for Navratri–Dussehra–Diwali, with greater emphasis on compliance, structured planning, and measurable ROI.

As he summed it up, “Ganesh is the ignition; Diwali is the overdrive. 2025 bookings are earlier, cleaner, and heavier on compliance.”