Audience, accountability & agility: OAC panel decodes the missing factors in OOH

At OAC 2025, one panel session stood out for its clarity of theme and directness of tone. Titled “The Missing ‘A’ Word in OOH Pitch: Time to Introspect?”. The session tackled a fundamental question: What is the ‘A’ that’s still absent in OOH advertising? Moderated by Rajiv Raghunath, Business Advisor, VJ Media Works, the discussion featured senior leaders from the media owner, agency, and brand marketing segments, Alok Jalan, Managing Director, Laqshya Media Group; Shekhar Narayanaswami, CEO, Times Innovative Media Ltd. (Times OOH); Pratip Francis, Head of Brand Marketing, MRF.
 Together, the panel unpacked what the OOH industry must do to strengthen its pitch to advertisers and claim a larger, more justified share of media spends. 

Audience: the A that must come first 

The discussion kicked off with Rajiv asking the panel to decode the missing word and the answer, according to the panel, was unanimous: audience, not just assumed audiences, but defined, measured, and validated ones. 

Rajiv noted how platforms like Google, Meta, and Amazon first built massive audience ecosystems before scaling their advertising models. In contrast, OOH traditionally grew around physical inventory, often taking audience visibility for granted. “But in a data-driven world, physical presence alone no longer cuts it,” he said. 

Shekhar agreed. “OOH has been a mass-reach medium, but the days of assuming that if a billboard is there, it must have been seen are behind us,” he said. However, he also noted that things are changing. With transit media, for instance, audience profiling is already being done through heat maps, real-time passenger research, and mobile data analytics. But this level of detail is still not the norm across roadside media. 

Accountability: The real missing link 

The conversation soon shifted to a deeper challenge in OOH: accountability. Why does OOH still struggle to attract consistent ad dollars from marketers despite its wide reach and physical dominance? This was a question that loomed large in the discussion.    

Alok highlighted a common industry frustration: that many advertisers still approach OOH as a space-buying exercise rather than a media investment. “Clients aren’t always demanding audiences. They’re often just looking for the lowest cost per square foot,” he said. “But as an agency, we don’t want to sell space, we want to sell audiences. And the data exists to support that,” he pointed out.   

Pratip brought in the brand marketer’s view. “The biggest shift in recent years has been the move to performance-led planning. Whether it’s print, TV, OTT, or digital, we now reduce everything to a cost-per-view,” he said. “The problem is, OOH doesn’t yet offer robust or universally accepted metrics to slot into this model, which makes it harder to justify within performance-focused frameworks.” 

He explained that OOH often ends up as a secondary or late-stage addition to media plans, not because marketers doubt its value, but because  “its lack of granular metrics puts it at a disadvantage during planning cycles that increasingly start with analytics and ROI modelling”. 

Agility and programmatic: is OOH catching up? 

Another interpretation of the missing “A” was agility, especially in the context of real-time campaign execution, performance tracking, and programmatic buying. 

Shekhar acknowledged that DOOH is beginning to bridge this gap, with capabilities like dayparting, contextual targeting, geofencing, and dynamic content. “But let’s be honest, programmatic OOH is still a very small slice of the pie,” he said. “And as an industry, we’ve historically operated in opacity, whether in pricing or performance reporting. Programmatic forces transparency, which some players fear may affect margins,” he said, candidly pointing to one of the biggest challenges in the industry.    

Despite these challenges, all panelists agreed that the shift toward agile, data-driven delivery is both inevitable and necessary. And as Pratip pointed out, innovations like AI-powered audience recognition and mobile integration offer a way forward, if they’re adopted and communicated industry-wide. 

Creativity: more than just visuals 

While audience and agility were seen as measurable dimensions, Rajiv emphasized the third “A” that often gets overlooked: attention. Not just in terms of reach, but in terms of how brands creatively engage their audiences in the OOH environment. 

“OOH is one-to-many, but that doesn’t mean passive,” Rajiv said. “Is enough being done to ensure content on these formats drives real engagement?” 

Alok also stressed that content matters just as much as context. “We often talk about Amul or Apple because they understand how to use the format. Unfortunately, most creative agencies still treat OOH as an afterthought to TV or print,” he said. “That mindset has to change.” 

Pratip added that while content quality does matter, it’s usually the second step for most marketers. “Unless we have clarity that we’re reaching the right audience at the right place, the best creative is still an inefficiency,” he said. “But yes, once the audience side is resolved, creative engagement is key to cutting through.” 

The path forward: nine action points 

In closing, Rajiv asked the panelists to share three concrete actions each that the OOH industry must adopt immediately to make itself more relevant, competitive, and audience-first: 

Shekhar Narayanaswami 

1. Make audience data easy to access and use across the industry 
2. Adopt AI, sensors, and mobile analytics to enrich audience understanding
3. Push for better creative standards that go beyond static displays
    

Alok Jalan 

1. Remove procurement teams from the media buying process, treat OOH as a strategic medium 
2. Demand custom creatives made for OOH, not recycled from other formats
3. Ask for audience metrics every time, change the conversation from “site” to “reach”
    

Pratip Francis 

1. Encourage marketers to evaluate OOH like a media channel, not a physical asset
2. Push for credible, widely accepted measurement standards (on par with BARC or IRS)
3. Invest in training agency teams to interpret and apply available data tools effectively

Final thought 

As the session wrapped up, one point became clear: the OOH industry doesn’t lack value, it lacks alignment. There is available data, emerging technology, creative potential, and proven impact. But until these are integrated into a cohesive, transparent, and audience-first narrative, the missing “A” will continue to hold the industry back. 

OAC 2025’s message to the OOH community was clear: stop talking around the missing ‘A’ word. Define it, own it, and deliver on it.