# OAC 2026: ‘OOH isn’t chasing digital, it’s ready to amplify it’

As digital advertising continues to command an ever-growing share of marketing investments, the OOH industry finds itself at a defining crossroads. At the 20th OOH Advertising Convention (OAC), a high-powered panel featuring marketers, media experts and technology leaders came together to discuss a pressing question: How can OOH grab a larger share of the digital pie?

Moderated by Abhishek Shetty, Brand Marketer, the session brought together Piali Dasgupta Surendran, Vice President – Marketing, Sattva; Girish Ahuja, Head of Marketing, H & R Johnson; Gagandeep Marwah, DGM Marketing, Crompton; Jahan Mehta, Chief Growth Officer, OAP Mediatech; and Srikanth Ramachandran, CEO & Founder, Moving Walls.

Rather than framing OOH and digital as competing mediums, the discussion revolved around how the two can work together, with better measurement, stronger data, contextual creativity and collaborative industry efforts becoming the recurring themes.

Before inviting the panelists to share their perspectives, Abhishek Shetty set the context by highlighting how digital has steadily increased its share of advertising investments over the past decade, while OOH continues to fight for a relatively modest allocation despite its proven impact on brand building.

Rather than asking whether OOH should compete with digital, Abhishek reframed the discussion around a more pertinent question—what does the industry need to do to earn a bigger share of marketers’ digital budgets? Throughout the session, he guided the conversation around measurement, technology, creativity and accountability, encouraging each panelist to address not only the opportunities but also the structural changes the industry must embrace.

OOH’s biggest strength lies beyond billboards

Setting the tone for the discussion, Piali Dasgupta Surendran of Sattva argued that the industry often limits its own thinking by reducing OOH to billboards and digital screens.

According to her, Out-of-Home is an all-encompassing medium, capable of extending far beyond conventional formats into experiences that consumers interact with in the physical world.

She pointed to India’s award-winning OOH work as evidence that the country’s most successful campaigns have been those that redefined what outdoor advertising could be rather than simply buying more media.

At the same time, she questioned one of digital’s biggest strengths, measurement.

While digital advertising is often celebrated for precise attribution, Piali observed that marketers are increasingly dealing with ad fraud and the dominance of large digital platforms, making measurement itself an area that deserves closer scrutiny.

“Measurement has become digital’s biggest currency,” she noted, “but sometimes it is also its most overrated one.”

Digital has become obsessed with the bottom funnel

For Girish Ahuja of H & R Johnson, the challenge facing marketers today isn’t choosing between digital and OOH, it is surviving in an environment where every marketing decision is expected to demonstrate immediate business returns.

He explained that over the years, marketing conversations have shifted almost entirely towards bottom-funnel performance metrics, often at the cost of long-term brand building.

As a result, many traditional media channels, including OOH, have become undervalued despite their proven ability to build awareness and salience.

“Everyone wants real hard data and instant conversions today,” Girish observed. “The pressure has become so intense that brand-building efforts often don’t receive the credit they deserve.”

Attention, not impressions, is the real currency

Adding another dimension to the discussion, Gagandeep Marwah of Crompton argued that marketing today is ultimately about winning consumer attention.

According to him, OOH remains one of the few mediums capable of creating disproportionate impact because it commands attention in a way digital increasingly struggles to achieve.

OOH, he said, establishes scale and importance of a brand, something that smaller digital ads simply cannot replicate.

In contrast, he pointed to research showing that consumers now spend barely one or two seconds on an average digital advertisement while being exposed to hundreds of such ads every day.

“Digital delivers enormous reach,” Gagandeep explained, “but OOH delivers memorable attention.”

While each of the brand marketers drew on their own experience with OOH and how it helped their category, they also shared their views on why OOH still receives a relatively small share of media budgets and the answer was common – Measurement.

Abhishek, while acknowledging the common challenges of measurement, also  had one common question to the panel: if marketers already recognise OOH’s effectiveness, what is preventing the medium from securing a larger share of media investments? The responses, though varied in perspective, ultimately converged on a common theme—greater standardisation, stronger audience measurement and easier buying experiences.

The industry already has solutions, it needs adoption

Jahan Mehta, of OAP Mediatech; challenged the perception that OOH lacks measurement. According to him, audience measurement platforms already exist. Instead, the industry now needs broader adoption, stronger tools and greater collaboration.

He urged media owners to move beyond simply selling inventory and begin building infrastructure that improves buying experiences, from unique site identifiers and automated buying systems to stronger proof-of-performance reporting.

Most importantly, he stressed that no single organisation can solve every challenge alone.

“Each industry player should pick one problem and build a solution for everyone,” Jahan said.

OOH shouldn’t compete with digital, it should complete it

For Srikanth Ramachandran of Moving Walls, the industry’s biggest opportunity lies not in replacing digital, but in becoming an indispensable extension of it.

Sharing global examples, he explained how platforms like TikTok actively package Digital Out-of-Home alongside their digital campaigns because the combination consistently delivers stronger brand outcomes.

According to research shared by Srikanth, integrating Digital OOH with social media campaigns has demonstrated 20–27% improvements across brand recall, purchase intent and other key marketing metrics.

He questioned why the OOH industry continues waiting for digital platforms to create these products instead of proactively building them.

“Digital Out-of-Home should become the raita that accompanies every digital campaign,” Srikanth said, using a distinctly Indian culinary  analogy.

As the discussion evolved beyond measurement, Abhishek challenged the panel to think beyond technology. He asked whether the industry’s future lay in trying to replicate digital capabilities or in strengthening the qualities that make OOH fundamentally different.

Building trust may be OOH’s greatest superpower

One of the panel’s most interesting debates centred around whether OOH should imitate digital capabilities or double down on its own unique strengths.

Srikanth argued that while digital excels at targeting and attribution, OOH offers something increasingly valuable, trust. Consumers often trust brands more once they encounter them in the physical world.

Meanwhile, Piali reminded the audience that the definition of OOH itself is expanding rapidly. She cited India’s award-winning Mumbai Railways campaign, where train tickets were transformed into lottery tickets to encourage commuters to purchase valid tickets.

The campaign demonstrated that OOH is no longer confined to hoardings, it encompasses any creative engagement consumers experience outside their homes.

The future belongs to integration, not competition

As the session concluded, the panel reached a clear consensus. The future is not about OOH versus digital.

It is about building stronger ecosystems where both complement each other. For marketers, the demand is straightforward: better measurement, standardised data and stronger proof of business outcomes.

For the industry, the responsibility is equally clear: build better products, adopt common standards and reposition OOH as an essential extension of modern marketing rather than a standalone traditional medium.

Summing up the discussion, Abhishek observed that OOH’s growth will depend as much on changing perceptions as improving measurement.

“The industry doesn’t need to position itself against digital,” he concluded. “It needs to demonstrate how digital becomes stronger because of OOH.”