‘Roadside DOOH is on a revolutionary journey’

DOOH is making a visible presence on the Indian OOH landscape as various municipal bodies ease the norms for installation and operation of large format digital screens at different locations including city roads. These are still early days for traffic-facing DOOH media business, but the evolving tech for this medium and the trend of DOOH arriving on the scene in non-metro markets foretell of a promising future for the business.

Rohit Chopra, COO, Times OOH shares his perspectives on DOOH advertising with focus on road facing media:

ROI from road facing DOOH media assets

“The ROI assessment for roadside and conventional city media is certainly poles apart as both formats are conceptualised differently, are being sold with different concepts and incur their own respective cost in terms of creative, maintenance and operations.”

“Although, the roadside digital billboards are experiencing a revolutionary journey in India, where I would say they have gone a step ahead is in terms of acceptance by the brands. We see a huge transformation when it comes to using digital billboards by the brands and certainly, they have realised the impact of this medium which is multiple times higher than a static billboard. Moreover, when the entire ball game boils down to the investment, then the CPM of digital billboards is quite minimalist. Hence, we are experiencing a favourable response from clients.”

“If we have to put in figures, then our revenue contribution has gone up to 20% in the last couple of years which used to lesser than 5%.”

Challenges in putting up the best quality digital display screens

“The hardware solution provider industry needs to be strengthened in India. As we are primarily dependent on international markets to purchase hardware, that results in extended procurement time and hefty cost of investments. Post-installation also there is continuous investment required to ensure that digital billboards are up and running which adds to the additional budgets.”

“We ensure timely checks of our digital billboards’ health in terms of their resolution, output, and hardware cleaning. We have a dedicated team that handles the operational part as well as we have partnered with external stakeholders who are experts in maintaining digital sites.”  

 Advertising norms

“There is a drastic shift in the mindsets of civic bodies where their outlook towards the DOOH medium has opened up to an extent. Ahmedabad Smart City Digital Billboard is the epitome of this change in their outlook. Moreover, there are sites in Delhi and Mumbai wherein we are expecting this trend to spiral into other markets quite rapidly.” 

“Civic bodies have understood the fact that digital billboards can really transform the outlook of their cities and especially when global summits like G20 are taking place in different cities of India, it helps them in levelling up their imagery amongst international delegates.”

“Additionally, civic bodies are now aware of the fact that DOOH is highly beneficial for earning additional revenue and communicating critical messaging in no time with such a quick and fast media format.”