‘Wider adoption on supply side key to pDOOH growth’

Programmatic DOOH has been part of the Indian OOH conversation for seven years. The adoption is real but uneven, and the gap between what the medium can do and how much of it is actually being used programmatically remains wide. Anuj Bhandari and Shivalika Anand of DGTOOHL sat down with Media4Growth to talk through where things stand, what is driving growth, and what is still in the way. The interaction was centered  around the the company’s recent report that points to more brands turning to programmatic Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) to bring greater precision to their outdoor campaigns. 

The global picture is instructive. Programmatic DOOH already accounts for roughly a third of the overall DOOH market worldwide. In India, the share sits at around 10% of DOOH today, with expectations of it reaching 25 to 30%. The brands coming on board include names that never previously considered programmatic DOOH as an option, and that shift, Anuj says, is being driven by one thing above all else: the ability to pay for verified impressions rather than buying inventory on trust. “Why would anybody not want that? Everybody wants measurability and flexibility,” he says. 

But the bottleneck is not on the brand side. Anuj is clear that the bigger challenge is getting publishers to make their inventory programmatically available. “Adoption happens majorly at the supply side. The numbers we talk about can only happen when the supply gets programmatically enabled.” 

Digital fatigue vs performance fatigue 

Shivalika Anand, coming from the digital industry, adds another dimension to the case for the medium, in the context of digital fatigue, that is an emerging reality. “I am already banner blind on digital. But when I am at Cyberhub or at an airport, it’s a 40-foot screen, I will not miss the opportunity of seeing that.” Anuj is equally blunt about where the real fatigue lies: “There is no digital fatigue. There is measurability fatigue. Programmatic DOOH gives you the advantage of never having a viewability problem.” 

On budgets, the picture is more reassuring for the traditional OOH industry than many assume, 80% of programmatic DOOH budgets are being pulled from digital pools and not from OOH spends. “It is getting budgets that digital was sitting on,” Anuj says. In fact, he feels that with programmatic, there is opportunity for DOOH/OOH to get a bigger chunk of the pie. 

India’s programmatic DOOH market currently stands at around Rs 100 crore, with a target of reaching Rs 250 crore, but that growth depends entirely on more supply becoming available and more publishers understanding that programmatic is not a threat to their rates, but an opportunity to use their inventory more efficiently, points out Anuj. 

The AI factor- more  hype than real? 

On AI as being more of a hype, Anuj minces no words. “A lot of people are using the AI tag just to say they are a technology company. I don’t see any AI tool that has been genuinely useful for out-of-home or programmatic yet.” 

Read the full conversation, covering measurement, common currency, and what the road ahead looks like for programmatic DOOH in India, in the April edition of Outdoor Asia Magazine.