‘OOH inarguably oldest forms of advertising but still lacks supremacy of measurement’

OOH sector is showing immense growth in the past few years, especially after COVID. According to the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2023, OOH has registered a 68% increase and is expected to grow by 12% in CY2023.

Despite the remarkable growth, measurement in OOH sector remains a concern. Speaking about the issue, Co-Founder of Osmo advertising, Mangesh Shinde told exchange4media, “OOH is inarguably one of the oldest form of advertising but still lacks the measurement supremacy that digital has to offer in India, at least to the extent it has in western markets. It still holds rudimentary perception from marketers POV. At Osmo, we have taken conscious efforts to make measurement a default offering.”

Osmo advertising was founded recently in 2021 which claims to be India’s only omnichannel location based advertising Industry. They have been challenging traditional methods of OOH by using extensive AI and Ml. Elaborating more about the company, Shinde shared, “AI/ML technology existed even before the popularity they got off lately but the use case, especially in OOH, has been possible due to availability of mobility & audience data points. This data gives us a single view of consumers covering all phygital (physical & digital) touch points from location perspective. Our Data Science team use ML to predict identify the correct target audience & populate unduplicated reach and frequency of OOH assets across markets. Often the conversation stops at measurement, but we have taken a step more to use ML for attribution as well. We have automated the entire process on our planning platform – Loc8.”

Shinde also shared some key strategies that Osmo has been focusing on, after the pandemic. He gave 3 major key points –

Time Spent: India has 2 out of world’s top 10 cities in the list of traffic intensity with average traffic speed 16km/hr and many more cities in top 50. As the normalcy returned in 2022, we saw huge spike in traffic density and time spent in OOH. Going forward, OOH will continue to be a go-to media channel for top funnel targeting at hyper local & national scale.

Synergies: We have seen a good correlation causation effect on organic internet traffic for the brands through OOH campaigns. OOH + Digital is one of the lucrative combinations for creating an impact and generating conversations. Hence OOH will continue to be an integral part of the entire media mix.

 Deep pockets of consumers Beyond Tier 1 towns: The consumers in Tier 2 and beyond town have evolved as the digital transformation progressed during and after pandemic. Reverse Migration and WFH models have resulted in increased purchasing power parity. These markets have become cash cow for brands and provide an opportunity for new customer acquisition. OOH becomes a natural media option for these brands primarily because OOH as a medium is more relatable and native for local audience and this helps the brands to build trust amongst the local audience.