At the end of the two-day long NEONS OOH Conference by Exchange4media saw Noomi Mehta, Chairman of the Board of Selvel One and Chairman, The Indian Outdoor Advertising Association, delivered a valedictory address about the future of OOH, how agencies can support this creative way of advertising and way forward.

He mentioned that while media around the world is facing a lot of troubles both in viewership and losses, Out Of Home advertising is one such platform that is continuing to do well.

Mehta spoke about reasons why consolidation in the OOH media is not happening and how can that be taken care of. “So many handicaps have been mentioned in OOH. They talk of diffused ownership, too many small players. But this is natural. It's a local medium. It's been so in every country around the world. What makes it different is the consolidation progress. Why hasn't consolidation happened? It is because the big bucks haven't arrived as yet. When they do, the market will dramatically change and there will be consolidation.”

“We have the additional problem of generation. The generations have what we call the legacy element. A person who inherits a business automatically feels emotionally attached to it and that emotional attachment causes valuation expectations far in excess of reality. We talk of no credible third-party monitoring but this problem is easily solved. The only problem that is not solved is who's going to pay for it. If the client expects another freebie, it is not going to happen for a long time. Lack of third-party data and recognized viewership data has often been mentioned. The platform for measurement is ready. The app is ready. What is not ready is the agencies willingness to take to it. As soon as the agencies make up their mind that measurement is indeed wanted and they subscribe to it, we'll be on our road to well measured outdoor advertising assets,” he added.

He also explains how laws in the country can be a tricky business in terms of road permissions for OOH advertising, but the industry is making progress in the same.

Lastly, he explained how advertisers and agencies can work together to make the best use of OOH and digital together. “Digital OOH is one to many. But the advantage is it can have a layer by which the many can also talk to the one. So, you can get both mass and personalized medium in one single ad by using the combination of the smartphone and your digital ad. Make no mistake, digital outdoor is here to stay and so are we. Digital will grow and so will we. But it's not an us versus the agency situation. It is us and agencies. We are two sides of the same coin. We both dine at the same table. Together we can prepare a feast. We need the agencies to help prepare the measurement sauce, which spices up our media offering and makes OOH experience a delightful culinary journey. Otherwise, the table will remain bare and we will be left fighting for scraps.”

On Day 2 of the 4th edition e4m OOH Conference, experts deliberated on the topic 'Leveraging DOOH for Innovative & Impactful Media Formats'. The panel comprised Nabendu Bhattacharyya, founder and CEO, ideacafe; Alok Gupta, Director, Graphisads Ltd; Dheeraj Soni, National Sales Head - India, Lemma Technologies, and Yatnesh Pandey, VP-Marketing, GreenPly Industries Ltd and the session was chaired by Ashish Karnad, EVP – Media & Digital, Hansa Research.

Speaking on the difference between digital OOH and traditional OOH formats that are currently available in India, Soni said, “Before talking about what is different, we need to talk about what is similar between OOH and DOOH, and I think common is OOH and problematic DOOH are a complement to others available in a media mix. We have seen that the results are replicating multifold. Whenever a brand is activating OOH or DOOH, they have seen good results within that media mix. I think these are commonalities. In terms of what is different between the two is just that on OOH you can only show static images which, over a period of time, become
dead. On the other end, if it is a digital screen, you can keep on rotating that creative which can become engaging as well.

Gupta added, “I have been a part of the industry for the past 17 years ad when I started, we were a traditional OOH industry. I will be honest, when we talk about OOH as a synonym, 80 percent of everyday people will not know about OOH also; they still relate it with outdoor. But when we are taking this shift from outdoor to DOOH to PDOH, things have changed dramatically in the last three to four years. The good thing about DOOH is that there is no baggage to carry like OOH. We have some system of sales which were through agencies, through direct lines. The DOOH deals today are very disruptive in nature. They are actually behaving like start-ups. So,
to say, DOOH today is the start-up baby of our industry, which will disrupt the overall scheme of things. And in the next three to five years, the changes will be far dramatic and drastic in nature.”

Bhattacharyya pointed out, “I have to buy from both. I think DOOH has its advantages. There are brands that are built on DOOH and many OOH. The famous brand we see, is Apple. Apple, as a company, across the world, only use static media, not DOOH media. They are different, they wanted to be premium and they have done their class, aesthetic and beauty and creative – everything they brought together as an example across the world.”

Speaking from the demand side, Pandey spoke on how he sees DOOH and how it fits in his media plans. He said, “As an advertiser, we always are in between the supplier and the measurement. Before coming to why we choose DOOH or OOH medium, let me give some context. We are in the home improvement/ renovation category
where the consumer purchase cycle is long. So when you have to chase the consumer, you have to remain in this consideration for a longer time and then you have to create impact. And for creating impact, we use this OOH medium.”

Vinkoo Chakraborty, President, Rapport Chrome, deliberated on the topic, ‘The Reality of Digital OOH in India’ at the 4th edition of e4m NEONS OOH Conference 2023.

Commenting on stages of growth at digital out-of-home in India, Chakraborty said, “The years that we are going through are the second innings of digital OOH in India. The first innings was way back in 2008-2009 when it started. Over a period of years, it established itself, and 2015-2016 onwards, we have seen greater traction in terms of the volumes which have come up in different ambiances across different places.”

“We have seen increased space of roadside DOOH. There is huge traction in terms of roadside DOOH across the top 25 cities. Today, as of date, Ahmedabad tops the list wherein there are more than 100 DOOH sites. All these numbers, combined together, contribute to three percent of the total DOOH in India. The place-based networks like malls, multiplexes, gyms, restaurants, etc., are contributing to 67 percent of the total DOOH, and out of this total chunk, residential DOOH tops the list. Through residential DOOH, we are able to garner significant reach across metro and tier-1 markets,” she added.

Chakraborty further elucidated the challenges of DOOH that is seen in today’s time. “The first challenge pertains to infrastructure and high pricing, especially roadside DOOH. The second challenge refers to efficiency and effectiveness and the third challenge is a regulatory framework that plays an important role in out-of-home. We need to check and moderate the pricing of assets if we want DOOH, as a medium to grow further,” she remarked.

Concluding the session, Chakraborty conveyed, “We need to have more industry collaboration. When I say industry collaboration, advertisers, creative agencies, specialist agencies and media partners need to sit together. We need to share our learning in terms of what works and what doesn’t. There is a bigger industry collaboration required to have workshops, learnings, case studies, etc. There is tremendous scope to unlock higher creativity. A lot more is possible in terms of DOOH and what all can we do and can be integrated with technology.”

At e4m NEONS OOH Conference, Shiv Kumar, Chief Marketing & Passenger Experience Officer, Manohar International Airport, spoke about how airports are very impactful places for OOH advertising since most passengers have at least 45 mins to one hour of free time before boarding the flight.

Kumar began his address by speaking about the industry during the Covid times. He said, “In 2020, the industry was impacted in a tremendous manner for almost 2 months as the airlines were not functioning. It had a huge impact on the lives of people. With normalcy coming back, today, the Indian industry is able to handle one billion trips.”

He shared that India has 140 airports which include heliports and water drones and the number is expected to reach 220 by the end of 2025. 

Kumar shared many case studies where it created an impact for the brand to advertise on airports as it becomes a part of the memory of the travelers and sometimes they tend to share it on their social media. He said, “We share travel experiences on social media. Airport advertising is always attended by the receptive audience, they are all waiting for the flight, you have time with each of them. This is the time you can influence their minds.” 

In conclusion of his address, Kumar said, “The audience is already there, you need to grab their attention and interrupt their thought process and that's when the results are guaranteed.

Airport OOH advertising is an open envelope of opportunities, he said.

For the longest time, brands have been functioning OOH advertising to expand their market reach. To further provide a platform to the OOH industry, e4m hosted the Neons OOH conference to bring industry leaders, brands and advertisers under one roof. On Day 1 of e4m NEONS OOH Conference on May 17, Irvinder Kaur Ray, Executive Director, Risk Advisory, Deloitte India, spoke on how investments in immersive and DOOH advertising campaigns give more ROI to the brand and how the OOH industry has evolved globally. Ray shared insights on the topic ‘Media’s Role in the New Ecosystem of Experiential and Outdoor Advertising.’

Ray mentioned how OOH advertising has evolved exponentially over the last few decades. She also spoke about the OOH Adex report which bounced back to 4% in the year 2022. Moreover, while addressing the agenda, Ray highlights multiple roles of OOH advertising for brands that include: location targeting, Attention-grabbing, reach multiplier, building brand association, call to action at the last mile and omnichannel strategy.

Focusing more on how OOH advertising has become more effective and efficient today, she said, “The OOH advertising provides an intense consumer engagement as compared to television or digital. Also, brands use creative styles of marketing content while fabricating campaigns which include: QR codes, website URLs, coupons and much more. Furthermore, choosing the right location for OOH campaigns is essentially important to target the right customers.”

Speaking about how brands have upgraded the style of content and graphics using AI tools in the last couple of years, Ray mentioned how the automobile brand Baleno launched digital billboards giving a more realistic experience to the consumers using programmatic. Moreover, Ray defines how Baleno using digital out-of-home advertising (DOOH) targets all metro cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Gurugram, reaching 3.9 million people approximately. She also mentioned how the ad awareness percentage of Nexa jumped to 35% leveraging the programmatic DOOH.

Quoting how KFC grabbed customer attention using billboards, she said, “KFC’s unique style of playing with pictures and graphics helps the brand in seeking customer attention span.” Further talking about how billboards solve real-life problems, Ray mentioned how the countries facing water scarcity are using billboards both for advertising purposes and storing water to serve people.

Sharing how OOH advertising drives the brand’s message, Ray says, “Brand message can be portrayed in an alive manner if the brand uses innovation and unique styles of designing campaigns. Also, brands can bridge the gap between the physical and digital world using virtual reality OOH campaigns.” She also added how Nike, Tesco Home Plus and some other brands have been designing innovation campaigns using virtual reality over the last few years. “Tesco Home Plus Brand is a brand from South Korea and is doing an entire retail business using virtual reality and DOOH campaigns,” said Ray while addressing the virtual reality campaigns.

Mentioning how luxury brands are using OOH, she said, “Luxury brands like Jackman, Emporio Armani, and Michael Kors using virtual reality campaigns to create customer engagement, traffic and conversion.” 

In the concluding remarks, Ray said, “The brand's advertising becomes more powerful and impactful when the brands use OOH and DOOH in combination with other media vehicles. Also, besides enhancing traffic and sales, DOOH gives more ROI to the brand.”

The conference saw industry leaders speaking about new practices in OOH, how OOH fits in the world of macro advertising, the aesthetics of OOH, the power of content and design, and many other agendas related to OOH advertising. 

At e4m’s NEONS OOH Conference, industry leaders came together to discuss the topic, ‘To Infinity & Beyond: The OOH Forecast’. The panellists were Dipankar Sanyal, CEO, Platinum Outdoor; Mangesh Shinde, Co-Founder, OSMO; Saibal Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Xperia Group; and Vikas Nowal, Country Head, Interspace Communications. The discussion was moderated by e4m’s Senior Assistant Editor Kanchan Srivastava. During the discussion, experts spoke about what is required in the OOH industry and how it is still the most important and relevant medium.

The session started with the experts discussing how the OOH  medium will still be relevant in the future with digital’s increasing share in the AdEx. Speaking on the same, Sanyal said, “As many as 137 new airports are coming up. Then there is the Bharat Mala project under which all tier 2 and tier 1 cities are getting connected. Also, more and more metros are coming up. So people would want to go outside, and outdoor is relevant until people are outside. The beauty of OOH is that it has adopted and adapted itself to the digital world; outdoors is becoming a part of the digital world. It is not negating it. Hence now it is not getting irrelevant. Outdoor is going to proliferate, outdoor is here to stay and it will continue to grow.”

When asked about his forecast for the next 20 - 30 years for the medium, Gupta said, “OOH and DOOH  is no more a billboard advertising, it is all about experience creation. Industry only talks about billboard and digital billboard, why can't we include experiential marketing? As time will flow, more ad tech integration will happen and more experience creation will happen.”

The OOH industry doesn’t have a specific measurement system and data is something advertisers are after. Speaking on what the industry is doing to create credibility, Shinde said, “Talking about measurement, many of us unanimously will agree that out-of-home measurement is not as evolved as the traditional and digital peers. If we look at the numbers, out-of-home would be almost 10x of BARC measurement, considering we will have to measure by area and pin codes. However, the outdoor industry is 10 or 0.1x of the television industry, so the gap is really huge. So we have to take this call if it is financially viable to get invested and see if there is any return on investment.” 

He went on saying that this will also affect them in the asset level as the sites are attributed to keeping the grip data which includes various dynamics like traffic, chauffeur preference, etc. “So there is huge fragmentation in the industry which adds on to the operation and financial hustle”, he added.

When asked about bringing relevancy to the medium in a world full of digital attribution, Nowal said, “Looking at how digitization is happening at a faster pace, television has been replaced by YouTube, if you were to look at newspaper, it has been replaced by Twitter, video has been replaced by podcast and eventually theatres have lost their shine to OTT platform.”

“Out-of-home is still standing tall, and having said that, we can't complain that there is a need to be a little bit of adaptability, which is the relevance that is needed. In order to bring relevance and credibility, we need to position ourselves better. We can't be selling square feet or Excel sheets or 10-20 seconds of display. What we need to do is what Out of Home is known for: big, bold, and beautiful. I think we need to change your positioning from just someone who has a great network of media owners, sites, and execution bandwidth, to the brand custodians selling the war factor and the impact.”

The discussion also included topics like manpower requirements and the changing client demand. The panel also discussed how the AdEx for OOH is likely to go up but at a slow pace. The panelist concluded the discussion by saying that there is a need to redefine OOH with technology and creativity.

At the e4m OOH conference, a panel of experts spoke on  ‘Need for Optimized OOH Advertising for an Efficient Brand Building’. The panellists were Aatika Ehsan Ansari, Head of Media-Digital, Pernod Ricard India; Ammar Millwala, Head of Media, Aditya Birla Capital ; Haresh Nayak, Founder; CEO, Connect Network Inc; Taranjeet Kaur, Head of Media, Digital and PR, Tata Consumer Products. The session was chaired by Amiya Swaup, Partner- Marketing Advisory Services, and Ernst & Young LLP. 

Before opening the discussion, Swaup talked about the FICCI Frames advertising report. He spoke about how the OOH industry has recovered to 86% in the year 2022, how terrestrial media has recovered to 59% and transit media has recovered to 41%. 

Swaup then began the session by questioning what brands expect from agencies while investing in OOH campaigns. Answering the question, Millwalla said, “The role of OOH is at the top of the funnel for Aditya Birla Capital. Moreover, we focus more on driving awareness, brand recall, and driving consumer interest. Also, agencies are helping us do strategic planning while building OOH campaigns.” Adding on to Millwala, Ansari said, “Outdoor helps our brand in maximising local brand presence while doing any event in a particular city. Also, agencies play an important role in understanding the market better before fabricating content for OOH.” 

Sharing more details on what brands are expecting from outdoor campaigns, Kaur said, “Outdoor helps in enhancing the brand’s market reach and it has become an important medium for brands, however, Outdoor is not a lead medium.” Describing how brands are leveraging OOH and how agencies are strategizing the journey of brands while planning for OOH campaigns, Haresh said, “OOH is bringing brands and consumers closer. Moreover, the data gathered from OOH campaigns is both measurable and accountable.” 

Comparing OOH with other media platforms, Millwala said, “The power of OOH is undeniable as it is driving the brand’s market reach and giving them a presence in the physical markets. Moreover, brands must understand the psychographics and travel patterns of the audience before investing in OOH campaigns.”

Focusing on calculating the ROI of OOH campaigns, Ansari said, “The mechanism of measuring the ROI from OOH campaigns is not yet defined as compared to television and other mediums. We invest a calculated budget on OOH campaigns and expect data and ROI. Moreover, brands need to understand the audience matrix to do planning more strategically.” 

Mentioning immersive Outdoor campaigns, Kaur said, “Marketers must use digital to connect consumers to outdoor campaigns. It also helps in measuring consumer data.” She also said that the OOH industry is evolving exponentially in other western nations and India must follow the innovations happening in OOH across the world.

Describing the role of programmatic in the OOH industry, Nayak said, “The evolution of digital has happened in India in the last couple of years. We as an industry need to evolve faster as compared to other countries in terms of bringing programmatic and building a digital system of measuring consumer data.” Adding on to Nayak, Millwala said, “Brands must plan their objectives while investing in OOH. Moreover, scientific planning is important to understand the media investment mechanism.” 

Speaking about the roles of OOH, Ansari said, “A few specific roles of OOH include: Driving customer engagement, building localised connect with the consumers, bringing more innovation in the advertisement and branding industry.” 

In the closing remarks, experts mentioned the key pointers which include: Improvising data measurement system to bring more ROI to the brands from OOH campaigns, bringing creative solutions and technological advancement in OOH, syndicated market research to boost overall ROI. The three pillars to drive maximum results from OOH include: Market research, technology and innovation, building trust in tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 cities.