Delhi polls: OOH sees up to 8% uptick in demand

The 2025 Delhi legislative assembly elections for all 70 constituencies, is scheduled to be held on February 5, 2025. While all eyes are on the power dynamics of the national capital there is also anticipation in the advertising business, particularly among outdoor players.

But will outdoor get its due, wonder industry observers? According to some experts, there has been an increase of up to 8% in the demand for outdoor inventory this election season compared to the post-festive months. Sharing more on this was Pawan Bansal, COO of Jagran Engage, who said that there has been a minor uptick of 6-8% in the OOH inventory. The Election Commission of India has started campaigns and has taken a bulk of inventories in Delhi, he shared.

Going by earlier trends, the election period brings in an upswing of 20-30% in media spending by political parties. Delhi is painted in polling colours - from billboards, bus shelters, metros to autorickshaws – all adorned with slogans, party symbols and candidate portraits. This year, the poster wars of ‘Phir laayenge Kejriwal’ vs ‘kamal ka button dabaye’ have already grabbed voter eyeballs.

OOH’s Share

Nevertheless, experts suggest that even though political advertising does bring in a large chunk of money for OOH businesses, most of the media spending goes towards digital campaigns, posters, flyers and campaign rallies.

Dipankar Sanyal, CEO, Platinum Communications, suggests that during an election period, inventories don't see much of an increase. While political parties consume existing inventories, availability of media becomes an issue. “December saw a lull in spending on OOH after the festive high, but the election fever kicking in has given it some high. Spending has again seen a cut post the code of conduct coming in. But overall, it has been a significant boost,” Bansal added.

As for Dinesh Vasudeva, even though the political advertisers’ OOH inventory occupancy can be over 50% and parties spend a huge amount of money on outdoors, the spending is not much in the intervening 4.5-5 years. Hence, the effective contribution of political parties to outdoor business’ revenue is minor.

Other brands?

So, will other brands invest in OOH during this period? Sanyal explains that typically during a rally event, political parties take over the entire area by way of setting up temporary media like banners and flags along with the regular outdoor media if it's available. This leaves very little scope for any other brand to appear around that time, and so they avoid advertising during election campaigns.

Bansal also asserts that no brand would go where political advertising is happening. “I have seen political advertising, they use media spots to build a good frequency, especially the hotspots where they really want to target the voters. Hence, no brand would specifically go there to promote their brands wherever political advertising is happening.”

In terms of ad rates, Sanyal says he has not seen any increase in ad rates during elections. Political parties are very well organised in their buying process hence increased ad rates are not appreciated or entertained, he revealed.

On the other hand, Vasudeva shared that a notable ad rate hike is generally seen during this period as is seen in the case of most advertising formats. But since this time advertisers are also focused on the Auto Expo and other local events, the ad rates haven’t seen a premium as high as it usually is.

Digital Gains

The industry analysts also suggested that political parties are more focused towards digital advertising and aren’t looking at DOOH or Augmented Reality ads significantly this time.

Google Ads Transparency Report revealed that political parties have collectively spent over Rs 12.25 crore in the past month on campaigning for the Delhi elections, with significant investments in digital platforms. A total of 5,834 ads have been published as political ads in the past month.

At Rs 4.66 crore, BJP’s spends are the highest followed by the Central Bureau of Communication (Rs 1.6 crore).Over 76% of the buget, totalling to Rs 9.4 crore, has been spent on video ads. This has been followed by image ads (22%) and text ads for the remaining 1.85%.

As per a report cited in 2020, during the Delhi elections, BJP spent Rs 26 crore on TV and digital campaigning,and Rs 1 crore on flags, banners, posters and leases. AAP spent Rs 5.9 crore on TV and digital campaigning and a
little more than Rs 2 crore on banners, posters and leases. Congress also spent Rs 14 crore on TV and digital campaigning and Rs 1 crore on banners, posters and flags.

This year, BJP is working with McCann World Group and Scarecrow M&C Saatchi for their political campaigns. While DDB Mudra has been hired by the Congress to help with its publicity campaign, AAP is collaborating with the IPAC.