‘DOOH assets draw attention much quicker’

The success factor of DOOH largely rests on a wider spectrum of advertising brands seeing the advantage of using this media channel for their campaigns. Atul Shrivastava, CEO, Laqshya Media Group shares his perspectives on the emerging DOOH trends in India, in an interview with Media4Growth:

Traffic facing large format DOOH

“The necessity for having DOOH is based on increasing revenue. Unlike print media or any other form of media, there are a limited number of units in OOH advertising and within those units the goal is to increase the revenue. So, that leaves us with two options – one, is to increase the pricing which, of course, has its limitations. On the other hand, if we can utilise the same format to accommodate 3-4 advertisers, we can capitalise on that and maximise our revenue.”

“While there is a significant investment to be made, it can be considered a one-time investment as everyone has seen the advantages of DOOH. While there are multiple streams of media for brands to advertise, the biggest advantage that OOH has is that it helps create maximum impact in the audiences’ mind.” 

Conventional large format vs. traffic facing DOOH

“I don’t think either format competes with the other and the objective of OOH is to draw the commuter’s attention. While static formats are successful in achieving this, DOOH assets draw attention much quicker as it has sharper images, they are well illuminated which adds to its high visibility.” 

Media buying patterns

“We are seeing a shift and a key reason for this is acceptance by clients. Once they saw the advantages of DOOH, clients themselves came to us asking us for slots regardless of the slot time for the screens. Hence, buying and planning are taking place as per the client’s wishes and they don’t have an issue with sharing the ad space with other brands as well. While DOOH assets are limited, the existing ones have an occupancy rate of almost 60% which is a good indication of for the market. Because even when we talk about the traditional static format, we anticipate about 65-70% occupancy and we believe that’s a healthy number. “

On impressions-driven media

“Quite a few experiments have been conducted in the past, to register impressions and recently (post-COVID) we have noticed that various agencies have come up with their own tools and impression measurement is possible up to a certain extent. I won’t say that the impression is exact, but calculation of metrics such as audience reach is now possible for specific areas in the city based on the cellphone data in the region which allows for brands to understand the audience profile better. In fact, at Laqshya, we have been successful in this venture with our tool ‘Sharp’.” 

“This gives the industry a boost and our clients now insist that we provide them with the media plan that is inclusive of insights based on Sharp analysis. This has been the case for the past year or so.”