‘New-age data driven metrics will the game-changer’

What were the 3 most important factors that influenced Indian OOH business in the year 2018?

• Government moving towards implementing stronger regulations, hinting that the Industry will move towards being more organised.
• Digital clients using traditional OOH to deliver impact and awareness. The rise of OTT as one of the largest spenders in this category, which clearly makes us believe that OOH is also helping them drive traffic on these platforms apart from just creating impact.
• Traditional media partners exploring investments in DOOH and an overall surge in growth of DOOH Inventory.

What would be the top 3 factors driving Indian OOH growth in the year 2019?

The top 3 factors which will drive the Indian OOH growth will be Transit, Technology and Data.
The infrastructural advancement in India will mean that transit will be growing and gaining more importance, although static OOH will continue to deliver impact. Top 10 cities are witnessing developments in terms of public transport - be it metro, airports or buses; Tier 2 cities, especially the smart cities, are following the same trend.

We shall see the rise of tech partnerships to make all DOOH SmartOOH, build better audience networks, give detailed insights and analytics to help brands do sharper targeting. Another impact of technological advancement is how we can infuse creativity in interactivity by developing connected OOH with the integration of mobile. As we move ahead, we shall see more creativity by making every static billboard interactive by using mobile ads at every outdoor location. And the uniqueness of location will drive contextuality and allow more play of creativity for every brand to interact differently with each of their customers. While OOH will continue to drive impact and awareness, mobile will complement every location by providing personalised content/messaging.

Most importantly, we shall see contemporary measurements emerging for a traditional medium. OOH as a medium has always been at the bottom of the media food chain. Worldwide, there have been multiple methods established to prove its credibility on deliveries, but in India, we have not yet cracked the unified approach. Every specialist agency has its own methods and every brand has its own metrics for deriving efficiency of this medium. Moreover, the new age data, especially mobile data (which is not in some meagre sample size on which hypothesis are built, but on a robust data of 100 mn / 200mn users), provides deterministic audience profiles and unique insights on specific pin codes and will change the way of looking at measurement for OOH. This, I feel, will be the biggest game-changer for our industry and the need of the hour.