OOH advertising back with a bang this festive season, say experts

It has been a long wait for the OOH industry to reboot and recover after the two years of lull in activity during the pandemic period. The medium has been playing a significant role for every brand in creating good visibility at the market place in tandem with the other mediums that the brands leverage. While industry experts are very optimistic about the revival of OOH, it needs to be seen what kind of spending is being done by brands especially during the festive season. The outdoor advertising industry offers a large gamut of services – starting from the traditional OOH to metro and transit advertising opportunities to digital OOH at malls and other vantage points. How much brands have leveraged OOH this festive season will be interesting to see.

The recovery has started and experts feel that the year 2022 should be a good year for the industry. According to a recent Madison report, OOH advertising recorded billings of a healthy Rs 3,495 crore in 2019, followed by the 2020 slump where it fell to Rs 1,292 crore, with a semblance of recovery in 2021, at Rs 2,178 crore. The report estimates this figure could touch Rs 2,955 crore in CY22. People back to moving out of their homes and the increase in vehicular traffic are some of the definite signs for brands to consider this medium and make the most of it. Hopefully the bollywood industry should may also pumping in money on outdoors as there are a few big movie releases expected in the next few months. For Bollywood and the OTT industry, the OOH medium has always been a primary vehicle for promotions and they would be keen and eager to send their promotional message through this medium.

Jayesh Yagnik, CEO, MOMS, emphatically said that the OOH medium was very much back on track and a good momentum is being seen already. “All the categories have started their investments again and now that mobility is beyond the baseline, this will only grow in the coming festive times,” he added.

Along similar lines, Haresh Nayak, CEO & Founder, Connect Network Inc, said, “The OOH medium is very much back, some of the sign are seen practically seen around us with Ganpati celebrations and the crowds, full airlines, malls, etc. we are seeing a huge surge for the festive seasons with clients active in Automobile, FMCG, Consumer Durables, E-commerce, OTT, etc. 3D anamorphic was the flavor of the seasons and we did see multiple clients exploring it in the DOOH space in terms of innovations.”

The festive season for this year has just begun and the Ganesh festival in Maharashtra and Onam in southern states evoked good response. With the big festival in the pipeline brands are just waiting to explore the outdoor medium for Durga Puja and Diwali. While Diwali will be celebrated nationally, we can see brands coming with vengeance in th state of West Bengal after the pandemic. OOH will draw brands to take   the huge sites with moving and animated designs to draw the attention of the consumer at vantage points.

On the importance of festive season for the medium Yagnik pointed out that festive and pre festive has always been great for OOH. “We expect cross categories like retail, automobile, BFSI, OTT, FMCG, consumer durables and mobile to contribute to this time. Categories like airlines, travel and hospitality are also considering OOH presence before the holiday season as travel is back to pre-covid level. Overall, the outlook is positive and OOH as an industry should do better than the pre covid contributions of this quarter,” he affirmed.

Giving his perspective on the festive season, Aman Nanda, Chief Strategy Officer, Times OOH, said, “The 2022 festive season will be the 1st season after 2 years where there will be zero restrictions on movement and gathering hence people are quite enthusiastic to celebrate this festive season with fulfilment. As we have seen traffic back on road, people visiting pandals and indulging in shopping during the Ganpati festival, we are expecting this momentum to even grow further across cities.”

The reports are suggesting the demand for discretionary products, electronics and gift items is expected to grow by 15-25% vis-a-vis 2019 from August to December. And these are certainly green flags for brands and justify their marketing plans.

Out of home emerges as the right location during festival season as people travel back to their cities, indulge in physical shopping for a personal touch and spend increased time in cultural and religious programs thus brands are relying on innovative OOH campaigns that help them engage masses in their captive mode.

Nanda further noted that almost every category has got their marketing plans in place, and we are receiving a high number of inquiries and briefs, including lifestyle & fashion, automobile, consumer durables and various others.

When it came to innovation, Yagnik remarked that OOH as a medium is becoming more and more dynamic in nature with the introductions of DOOH. Brands are exploring various avenues of tech-based innovations such as AI, VR, Anamorphic, etc. Ideas are no longer looked at isolation only for OOH but anything which can be leveraged by PR is considered by the brand as they can amplify the effects through various other medium such as radio and Digital. Brands will also be exploring more innovative ways to use the medium as technology like drone shows, laser lights, virtual reality and AI can display products in a spectacular manner catch the attention of the audiences.

With local retail and regional brands depending a lot on the outdoor medium the outlooks seem to be optimistic especially when these brands work on very tight budgets. For the regional brands the opening of the outdoor medium will be a huge boon. FMCG, Fashion, Travel, Consumer durables and automobiles are some of the categories one, can expect to be highly visible and leveraging the outdoor medium as the big festivals unfolds.