2022 saw OOH clawing back after the pandemic’s onslaught and 2023 will see the medium regain all its glory, say industry watchers.   

Although many businesses are yet to reach pre-Covid revenue levels, the Pitch Madison report says OOH rebounded in 2021 with a 69 per cent increase over 2020, albeit falling short of the pre-Covid 2019 figures. The report further says that Rs 2,178 crore was spent on OOH in 2021, significantly less than the Rs 3,495 crore spent in 2019 but visibly more than the Rs 1,292 crore spent in 2020.

As for Amarjeet Hudda, COO of Laqshya Solutions, 2023 has come with a lot of hope for the OOH industry in India with better growth than in 2022. Hudda predicts double-digit growth for the sector this year. 

Speaking of positive signs, Aman Nanda, Chief Strategy Officer, Times OOH, says the atmosphere in the industry is upbeat as offices have reopened and people have begun to travel for both leisure and work. As a result, these factors will continue to skew brands to advertise in the out-of-home sector. "We are confident that OOH will remain a highly relevant medium for brands to target consumers."

Gulab Patil, Founder & CEO, Lemma said, “2023 for the OOH industry is going to be one with exponential growth opportunities. 2022 saw that DOOH with programmatic capabilities has made inroads within digital agencies, as a mainstream digital medium bringing in more brands and campaigns, and invariably contributing to the growth of the industry. This year will be bigger and better in terms of higher acceptance from marketers for programmatic DOOH.”

Arijit Chakrabarti, Vice President – Strategy and Creative, Kinetic India, opined 2022 has been the first full year for OOH post the pandemic. A quick glance at the trend line shows that there are a greater number of clients and brands present on OOH than it was even before Covid, he said.

Growth Factors

According to Hudda, the big reason for OOH’s growth has been spending by top categories, namely Real Estate, Auto, Mobile Handsets and Organised Retail. “The top three categories are doing very well. Hence, we expect they will spend more on OOH this year.” 

Yagnik shared that along with new launches, positive attitudes, and the expansion of OOH media as a whole, DOOH will play a significant role in fuelling growth in the upcoming year. “New infrastructure and smart cities are creating more opportunities for transit media, which is raising the inventories and fostering the expansion of OOH as an industry.”

The propensity to purchase has increased a lot, Hudda shared. “Despite a slowdown in the European markets, India has positive news. The country’s GDP forecast is approximately 7%. So, we can expect this year to be better than 2022 for the industry.”

Nanda shared that aviation reports show that leading airports are already breaking passenger growth records on a regular basis, indicating that people are out and about after the lockdown, taking a break from digital fatigue, work, and restrictions. “The marketing fraternity is aware of these trends and is already diverting their ad budgets towards avenues such as airports and other transit formats,” said Nanda.

As for Patil, “Audience buying, data and measurement are the key factors that have fostered the growth of DOOH over the last few years and will continue to do so in the years to come. It is expected that these capabilities in 2023 will be much more refined and accurate, and most importantly, they will enable marketers to execute omnichannel marketing campaigns more effectively.”

Emergence of pDOOH 

As per Nanda, in the cookie-less world, location targeting will take an upper hand due to reduced personalised identifiable data. Brands will have to look for newer options to target masses wherein context and location will come into play, he noted. “As OOH is all about targeting the right audience at the right locations, the increase of programmatic DOOH will improve the ability to target contextually giving a substantial base to the communication.” 

Nanda predicts that the next big trend of 2023 will be Programmatic Digital OOH. He shared, “There is an increase in the digital OOH inventory across the country, and to enter the next level of growth there is a need for standardisation with a systematic selling and buying approach for digital outdoor media with the help of pDOOH. It further simplifies the process of deploying the campaigns across different sizes and locations of screens effortlessly. Furthermore, with tech giants of the world like Google and Yahoo, entering into the DOOH space, we expect pDOOH to gain higher traction in 2023.” 

According to Chakrabarti, digitization of OOH screens will continue to drive growth in 2023 and going by advertiser demands Programmatic DOOH capabilities would be a key differentiator.  “We believe that Programmatic DOOH screens would merge into the entire digital ecosystem. It would be another (albeit) powerful screen in the mediascape to selectively target audience segments at scale.”

Multiple DOOH innovations have occurred in 2022, particularly in the 3D space. He also believes that as 3D anamorphic creations become more common in 2023, the number of such innovations will increase. 

The second half of 2022 saw the rise of anamorphic and hyper-realistic 3D ads, which are yet another factor attracting more demand for the medium other than the current features of contextual, hyperlocal and real-time ads possible with programmatic capabilities, Patil noted.

The Road Ahead

Another segment expected to drive growth in 2023 will be around tech-led innovations such as AR, VR, MR and anamorphic. “Such things are catching the attention of various new-age and tech-oriented brands. We also expect an increase in investment in tools that facilitate measurement of OOH ad effectiveness.”  

Nanda believes that 2023 will bring in stability for brands to plan campaigns in advance and have enough time for creative and technology innovations.  “Moreover, with a massive increase in airport passenger traffic especially during the ongoing holiday season when people are in the mood to travel abroad and explore new places, it is a golden time for brands to tap the maximum number of audiences with a highly captive mindset and spending mood. Now with airports and metro rail being equipped with world-class media, brands will leverage the potential of pDOOH to unlock greater possibilities. We see 2023 as the year of the OOH industry.”

Data was the king in 2022 and we don’t expect that to change much in 2023, said Chakrabarti. “However, with new AI-based solutions becoming more commonplace we expect a greater number of these solutions to drive the site selection and planning process into 2023. This data-centric approach has allowed categories such as FMCG, which were traditionally OOH averse, to embrace OOH in 2022. In 2023, we expect these interventions to percolate to multiple other categories as well. OOH practitioners have taken cues from other mediums to drive a transparent data-centric approach across all aspects of deployment. Today one can safely say that data is no longer showcased just for data’s sake but for insights, optimization and scaling deployment,” he asserted.