This year's outdoor advertising will be dominated by pDOOH

According to market observers, OOH will fully recover its glory in 2023 after battling back after the pandemic's onslaught in 2022.

Even though many companies have yet to achieve pre-Covid revenue levels, the Pitch Madison report claims that OOH recovered in 2021 with a 69% increase over 2020, albeit falling short of the pre-Covid 2019 figures. The report also states that OOH spending in 2021 was Rs 2,178 crore, which is significantly less than the Rs 3,495 crore spent in 2019 but noticeably more than the Rs 1,292 crore spent in 2020.

The CEO of MOMS Outdoor Media Solutions, Jayesh Yagnik, is confident that 2023 will be a good year. "The media landscape will be improved by DOOH's development. Once syndicated data is implemented, which is anticipated to happen in 2023, the measurement matrix that the Indian Outdoor Advertising Association (IOAA) is developing will have a positive impact on the industry. Overall, since confidence in this oldest form of advertising has returned, there shouldn't be any going back. OOH has gone through its worst because of Covid, but we have demonstrated that we are capable of recovering stronger and better.

According to Amarjeet Hudda, COO of Laqshya Solutions, 2023 holds great promise for the OOH industry in India, as it is expected to grow faster than it did in 2022. This year, the sector is expected to grow by double digits, according to Hudda.

Aman Nanda, Chief Strategy Officer, Times OOH, says that the industry is in a positive mood as a result of offices reopening and people starting to travel for both business and pleasure. These elements will therefore continue to influence brands' decisions to advertise in the out-of-home market. "We are sure that brands will still successfully reach consumers through outdoor advertising."

According to Gulab Patil, the founder and CEO of Lemma, "2023 will be a year with opportunities for exponential growth in the OOH industry. In digital agencies, DOOH with programmatic capabilities, began to gain traction in 2022, becoming a popular digital medium that attracted more brands and campaigns and invariably aided the industry's expansion. The acceptance of programmatic DOOH by marketers will increase significantly this year.

According to Arijit Chakrabarti, Vice President of Strategy and Creative at Kinetic India, the first full year of OOH following the pandemic, has been 2022. According to him, a quick look at the trend line demonstrates that there are more clients and brands on OOH today than there were even before Covid.

Growth Factors

Hudda claims that top spending categories, including Real Estate, Auto, Mobile Handsets, and Organized Retail, have been a major factor in OOH's growth. The top three categories are performing exceptionally well. So, this year, we anticipate them to increase their OOH spending.

According to Yagnik, the expansion of OOH media as a whole, new launches, optimistic attitudes, and DOOH will all contribute significantly to driving growth in the upcoming year. "New infrastructure and smart cities are opening up more opportunities for transit media, which is growing inventories and promoting OOH as an industry."

Hudda noted that there has been a significant increase in the propensity to buy. "India has good news despite a slowdown in the European markets. The nation's GDP is anticipated to grow by about 7%. Therefore, we can anticipate that the industry will perform better this year than it did in 2022.

According to Nanda's aviation reports, top airports are already routinely breaking records for passenger growth, indicating that after the lockdown, people are getting out and about to get away from their phones, work, and restrictions. The marketing community "is aware of these trends and has already redirected their advertising budgets towards outlets like airports and other transit formats," according to Nanda.

According to Patil, the main drivers of DOOH's growth over the past few years and those that will continue to do so in the years to come are audience buying, data, and measurement. These capabilities are anticipated to be much more accurate and refined by 2023, and most importantly, they will make it possible for marketers to carry out omnichannel marketing campaigns more successfully.

Emergence of pDOOH

According to Nanda, location targeting will have an advantage in the cookie-less world due to the reduction of personally identifiable information. He predicted that context and geography would affect how brands target the general public in the future. The rise of programmatic DOOH will improve the ability to target contextually, strengthening communication, as OOH is all about reaching the right audience in the right places.

According to Nanda, programmatic digital outdoor advertising will be the upcoming big trend in 2023. According to him, there is an increase in digital OOH inventory across the nation, and in order to reach the next stage of growth, there is a need for standardization and a methodical approach to selling and purchasing digital outdoor media with the aid of pDOOH. It further streamlines the process of smoothly deploying the campaigns across various screen sizes and locations. Additionally, we anticipate that pDOOH will gain more traction in 2023 as global tech giants like Google and Yahoo enter the DOOH space.

In 2023, digitization of OOH screens will continue to be a growth driver, and programmatic DOOH capabilities will be a key differentiator based on advertiser demands, according to Chakrabarti. "Programmatic DOOH screens, in our opinion, will be incorporated into the entire digital ecosystem. Selectively aiming at audience segments at scale would require yet another (though no less potent) screen in the media landscape.

In 2022, DOOH saw a number of innovations, particularly in the 3D sector. Additionally, he thinks that in 2023, there will be an increase in the number of 3D anamorphic innovations.

In addition to the current features of contextual, hyperlocal, and real-time ads made possible with programmatic capabilities, Patil noted that the second half of 2022 saw the rise of anamorphic and hyper-realistic 3D advertisements.

The Future Route

The adoption of tech-driven innovations like AR, VR, MR, and anamorphic is another area where growth is anticipated to pick up in 2023. Many new-age and tech-focused brands are taking notice of such things. Additionally, we anticipate a rise in spending on instruments that make measuring OOH advertising effectiveness easier.

Nanda thinks that 2023 will bring stability, allowing businesses to plan their campaigns ahead of time and leave themselves enough time to experiment with new ideas and technologies. "In addition, with a significant increase in airport passenger traffic, particularly during the current holiday season when people are eager to travel abroad and discover new places, it is a prime opportunity for brands to reach the greatest number of consumers with a captive mindset and a strong desire to spend. With the addition of premium media to airports and metro rail, brands can now take advantage of more opportunities by utilizing pDOOH. The OOH industry's year will be 2023, in our opinion.

According to Chakrabarti, data was king in 2022 and we don't anticipate that to change much in 2023. However, as new AI-based solutions proliferate, we anticipate that a growing number of them will influence site selection and planning practices by 2023. These traditionally OOH-averse categories, like FMCG, can now embrace OOH in 2022 thanks to this data-centric strategy. We anticipate that by 2023, these interventions will have spread to numerous other categories as well. In order to drive a transparent data-centric approach across all aspects of deployment, OOH practitioners have taken cues from other mediums. Today, it is safe to say that data is no longer presented for its own sake, but rather for insights, optimization, and deployment scaling.