When relationship meets data: Raheel Amjad of JCD presents the dynamic possibilities at OAC 2026.

For an industry where relationships have been the fuel that drives businesses, tech-led data intelligence and all that comes with it can seem challenging, forcing it to ask itself some tough questions, while being at the crossroads.  

Speaking at the 20th edition of OAC, was Raheel Amjad, Managing Director of JCDecaux India, addressing the theme, ‘Relationship vs Data: Pick Your Choice for Future Growth,’ tracing how the OOH business got here and where it needs to go next. 

Raheel began by reminding the audience that out-of-home was built on relationships. Long before dashboards and attribution models, the business ran on trust between media owners, creative agencies, and brands, what he called a ‘trust matrix.’  

It also ran on local knowledge: knowing which street corner, transit hub, or neighbourhood would actually work for a brand’s message. Relationships also helped in smooth campaign executions with speed, while addressing regulatory and other challenges.  

But changes are inevitable and driven by the growing role of technology, shifts in consumer behaviour and changing brand expectations, these changes are fast redefining how the OOH eco-system functions, as Raheel pointed out.  

Static billboards are turning into flexible digital-out-of-home networks. CMOs are under pressure to prove return on every rupee spent. And media planners now compare OOH directly against mobile and digital formats that come with built-in tracking. 

That shift created what he called ‘metric clashes.’ Gut feeling and personal relationships were suddenly not enough to win a budget conversation. Planners started asking harder questions, like: what specific audience can you actually guarantee for this ad placement? Relationship-based selling, on its own, struggled to answer that. 

Raheel laid out the data trends shaping the OOH: richer audience and mobility data that maps people’s real movement patterns, tools that connect ad exposure to actual outcomes like footfall or web traffic, ads that change based on real-time triggers like weather or flight schedules, and programmatic systems that automate buying across channels. 

As he said, this data does more than just look good in a report. It proves things the industry always claimed but couldn’t always show: how many people actually saw an ad, whether it changed how they felt about a brand, whether it drove them into a store, and whether it boosted searches or app downloads online.  

The core of his argument was this – leaning on only one side is a mistake. Relying purely on relationships risks OOH being written off as old-fashioned. It’s hard to measure, which means budgets get cut first when marketing directors go looking for savings, and it doesn’t hold up well when a campaign’s performance gets reviewed. 

But relying purely on data has its own trap. Treating premium physical locations like just another line on a programmatic spreadsheet turns them into a commodity. It sets off price wars that shrink margins, and it wipes out the human, local judgment that made great campaigns possible in the first place. 

According to him, the real path forward is both together. Relationships open the door and win the brief. Data defends the budget and shapes smarter campaigns going forward. “The future of out-of-home is both data-enabled and relationship-driven — using evidence to plan smarter, create better work, and prove that real-world advertising delivers real business results,” he concluded.