“AI poised to redefine OOH landscape”, Aman Nanda, CSO & Head of Marketing at Times OOH

Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to significantly reshape India’s out-of-home (OOH) advertising sector, moving beyond traditional metrics to drive more measurable value for stakeholders. This perspective comes from Aman Nanda, CSO & Head of Marketing at Times OOH, who recently shared insights into AI’s transformative potential in the industry.

AI’s three-fold revolution in OOH

According to Aman, AI is revolutionizing OOH in India through three primary avenues:

• Smarter location targeting: AI leverages smartphone and mobility data to analyze audience movement patterns across diverse urban and semi-urban geographies, including major metros like Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru, as well as tier 2 and 3 cities such as Indore and Kochi. This allows advertisers to implement region-specific OOH placements that reflect actual audience flow, rather than solely relying on footfall assumptions.
• Contextual & cultural customization: Recognizing India’s diversity, AI assists in tailoring Digital Out of Home (DOOH) creatives based on language, culture, and consumer profiles. An example cited is a campaign in Bengaluru’s metro that could switch between Kannada and English based on commuter demographics and time of day to enhance relevance and impact.
• Performance optimization & measurement: AI tools now offer predictive analytics and real-time feedback. This capability enables brands like Hindustan Unilever and Maruti Suzuki to shift from traditional planning to audience-based buys, allowing for better quantification of campaign reach and engagement, addressing a long-standing challenge in OOH metrics.

AI’s reach beyond digital screens

Aman emphasizes that AI’s utility extends beyond digital screens. “AI doesn’t need a digital screen – it needs data,” Aman stated. He explained that even the most conventional OOH formats can become smarter with the right tech stack. For traditional OOH businesses, AI can facilitate smart site selection by analyzing historical traffic patterns, mobile movement data, and demographic information to identify optimal traditional billboard locations. During campaign execution, AI-powered computer vision can anonymously measure actual viewership of traditional assets, providing metrics like impressions, viewer demographics, and attention time. Post-campaign, AI systems can correlate traditional OOH exposure with consumer behaviours such as store visits, website traffic, and purchase patterns, enabling attribution models previously impossible in static media environments.

Adoption and future outlook

Times OOH considers itself an early adopter of technological changes, whether it’s DOOH, PDOOH, or Roadstar. While the industry, including Times OOH, is in an initial or exploratory phase regarding AI adoption, Aman believes that “with time and increased market awareness and more established use cases AI will find its ground”. The company is conducting internal pilots focusing on process efficiencies, content generation, and inventory management.

Aman sees AI as a game-changer across the OOH value chain, including campaign strategy, planning, management, measurement, business operations, and media management. He highlighted the potential for Agentic AI to be customized for tasks like smart inventory management, media planning, and proposal creation to better optimize business operations. Additionally, there is scope for AI-based dynamic content creation for contextual advertising based on audience demographics and geography. Aman also suggested that if AI-based solutions can be offered as a value-added service to clients, then a premium can be demanded, in turn increasing their share of the Ad pie.

“With AI we are at a very interesting technological inflection point,” Aman concluded, anticipating an uptick in AI usage in the OOH sector as the technology advances and becomes more mainstream and adoption increases.