How is OOH adapting to personalized advertising & shifting consumer patterns?

With recent heat waves driving people indoors and thunderstorms uprooting billboards, the OOH advertising industry has been forced to grapple with the vagaries of climate. But the challenges for the sector don’t end there. OOH players are also dealing with the increasing penetration of smartphones across India and the rise of personalized advertising.

As Bhushan Kadam, Creative Director – Design for White Rivers Media, points out, personalised advertising occurs when a user is consuming content by choice. On the other hand, OOH captures attention when the user is waiting between things, be it during a commute or in a lobby, when they have the time to absorb your messaging.

OOH players have also realised that with most commuters being glued to their devices rather than seeing marketing billboards whiz by, the solution is to go digital.

“Under the umbrella of outdoor advertising, the Digital OOH (DOOH) industry is leading the charge of change. Pound for pound, DOOH uses less materials, time, money, and electricity in comparison to traditional OOH. Logistically as well, since a DOOH ad is delivered electronically, it bears no expense of transporting and disposing of physical material, thereby saving on fuel emissions. Unlike OOH, a single DOOH space can display multiple advertisements,” says Kadam.

Sidharth Singh, Co-founder, CupShup, observes that while the going might not look too tough at the moment, with the advent of metaverse and other digital media, OOH will certainly face challenges from other quarters. “OOH must innovate to keep itself relevant. First, it must push the creative boundaries to make space for newer ideas. Secondly, it should take the phygital route to personalize its offerings,” he says.

Kadam believes that the evolved marketer uses OOH to trigger a journey, and then continues it through QR codes, special offers, or other incentives that drive users to a website or a portal.

“Today, with engagement-focused technology, OOH is opening up avenues that personalised marketing can't really tread. AR, VR, Mixed Reality, gesture motion sensors, beacon/RFID, IoT, and real-time feed integration are all ways in which OOH is making the public access digital screen more compelling,” he says, noting, “Programmatic advertising lets you build a hyper-relevant OOH strategy, without interrupting the user's chosen content experience (much like personalised marketing does).”

Rachana Lokhande - Founder, Glocal Bridge, agrees that personal marketing is on the rise and so are the rising concerns over privacy and that people are glued to their phones especially when they are commuting. But she, like other industry veterans, believes that today’s consumers are getting used to being exposed to larger-than-life formats and their mental alertness is also high in that environment.

“I think mobile phones are like the last mile to OOH. Recently, a report suggested that people who see OOH ads tend to find more about them using their mobile. The increase of accessibility to data, plus the audience behaviour, which is more about acting on impulse, is a fantastic opportunity to combine both mediums effectively using the right kind of content,” she states. “With Location Intelligence data availability, you no longer need to focus only on elaborate outdoor sites, but can also micro plan basis the audience journeys,” Lokhande added.

“As someone rightly said, the costliest real estate property anywhere isn’t in a metro city, but in the hands of every person. With competition intensifying for digital space ever more, personalisation is being used much more than its expiry date. Yes, personalisation is needed and it works wonders, but we shouldn’t forget that human beings are social animals that have shared visions, and enjoy congregations and mingling with each other,” asserts Singh, saying he believes that while there will be the need for some course correction, OOH and specially DOOH still have a role to play in the media mix of tomorrow.

Kadam concludes, “Compared to traditional OOH, digital screens are already accommodating smarter marketing strategies. Programmatic methods ensure relevance to the audience, and smart billboards allow one to reflect real-time data (traffic, weather, etc.) for no additional cost. Today, said screens can communicate with personal devices too, allowing your ad to engage users with a storytelling method that mimics personalised advertising but isn't as intrusive, since it doesn't interrupt a chosen content experience.”