Discussing the challenges for OOH media, measurement was unanimously the trickiest challenge faced by media planners, agencies and brands using out of home advertisement techniques. Speaking at the annual OOH conference organized by exchange4media, Managing Director of Posterscope Group, Haresh Nayak, TIMDAA’s CEO Rohit Gupta and GraphisAds’ Director Alok Gupta shared their views about the shortcomings of the oldest medium in this country.

Technology will be the key factor in evolution of OOH as a medium and making it a preferred choice for marketers in the coming years. Nayak said, “No medium is perfect in stating the return on investments and same is the case with OOH but with evolving technology, measurability will be much easier. America’s agency Izon Global Media took five years to use technology in measuring OOH media’s impact.”

Rohit Gupta said,”Technology should be used in research, predicting the passengers’ behavior, their economic status, and their interests and buying pattern. With such data coming out of the research media planners can easily decide on the perfect location for their out of home advertisements.”Speaking about the significance of research Gupta also said that marketers can identify which locations did not serve their purpose by audience measurement tools as such tools can accurately tell you for how many seconds did the consumer watch your advertisement.

Alok Gupta on the other hand emphasized on the gut feeling of the client to be the best tool to judge the impact of a certain billboard ad. “I believe the gut feeling of a client on whether certain location serves their purpose is the best way till date to go about outdoor advertising and it works well between agencies and clients.” Gupta also mentioned that an outdoor consumer survey gives you unbiased results with which you can measure the efficiency of your outdoor advertisement.

Airports have emerged as the best and most preferred out of home advertisement locations in the country. One probable reason can be regulatory authorities at airports which not only give a proper visibility to the billboard but also reduce the presence of competitive boards which divert attention of passengers. While the panel discussed the problems they are facing in billboard advertising space all three of them unanimously agreed that measurement remains the key challenge for OOH advertisements and only technology and research can bring in the change, this industry has been seeking for long.