Technology developments will be key for OOH in 2015 - Global Advertisers

On the back of a great 2014, the OOH sector is hoping to build on its success in the coming year too. With political stability in the centre and certain sectors like automobile and telecom once again ready to spend, agencies are expecting ad spends to increase even further this year.

However, there are still some hiccups with traditional spenders like retail and real estate.

Sanjeev Gupta, MD of Global Advertisers, says there is enough existing, ready to sell real estate stock to last two years. This coupled with liquidity crunch and high lending rates have made the going tough for the real estate sector, he claims.

“These factors are at work across all important sectors like retail, manufacturing, jewellery and apparel, electronics and banking. One expects these conditions to prevail for the better part of next year. The most important response from the advertising industry to these challenges has been a willingness to craft campaigns that are shorter, cost-friendly and also make concessions in bill settlement schedules for clients,” he opined.

Others like Blue Ocean Media MD Rajiv Saxena feels that real estate and government spends will be better this year and contribute to an improvement in the ad spend scenario, though he agrees that things will be much clearer by the end of March.

“As I see, 2015 will continue to bring in & also accelerate the growth in the OOH industry as a whole. More importantly, the thing that encourages me is that all the four major stake holders in the business, viz. clients, agencies, media owners and regulatory authorities have started to understand and appreciate the efficacy of the medium as also that standard processes and protocols are required and concrete steps are being taken to bring in core changes in the way this business is structured and run,” said Kaushik Chakravorty, Co-founder and Director of Street Talk.

Both Gupta and Hiyav Bajaj, MD of TDI, expect the OOH sector to grow in the range of 10-15 per cent in 2015. Saxena also said that ad spends on OOH are expected to be better than 2014.

2014: A year of challenges and achievements for OOH

The year 2014 has been a challenging one for some sectors of the economy and a time of hope for others with the coming of the new government at the center. Overall, both trade as well as manufacturing have been sluggish. Outdoor like other advertising platforms is a barometer of the health of the economy. OOH grew by a 15 to 20 per cent in the last one year despite increased competition, unenthusiastic buyers and galloping inflation.

In this scenario marked by rising operational costs, stiff competition and high inventories, Global responded by innovating its price, product as well as service offerings. We created Asia's biggest hoarding in Bandra, threw a rope to cash-strapped real estate firms by offering barter deals and flexible payment options and offered complimentary PR and social media support.

We have entered an interesting phase as far as the real estate sector is concerned. High rates of interest on home loans coupled with rising unit prices have built up big inventories as high as 15 months in some parts of the country. In this situation marked with serious cash flow issues, real estate players are offering discounts, easy payment facilities and other facilities to attract clients. Global is meeting this challenge by offering hoardings on EMI, and on barter to its builder clients across India. Mumbai’s buyers, who wish to invest in a second home as well as holiday villas and plots, have to be made aware of projects in markets that offer more reasonably priced properties with better ROI. We are making special efforts in this direction and have executed several campaigns in the last few months – the latest being for XRBIA in Pune which was a grand success. 

   

If I have to note one big highlight in the year behind us, it would be the marked improvement in political campaigning. All parties led by the ruling party at the centre used OOH as a primary medium to send their message across to voters along with digital and social media. The last Lok Sabha campaign has changed the face of election campaigning in India for ever. This is good news for OOH as well as for advertisers in general as it underlined like never before the power of OOH as a medium.

OOH has a long way to go before it can serve the grand designs of our PM to turn India into a global manufacturing hub. We continue to struggle with red tape, lack of standard norms and arbitrary levies and delays in decision making. There is also an urgent need for transparency, regular monitoring and a system that measures OOH media on the basis of accepted metrics. In several cities there are restrictions on erecting digital billboards that come in the way of developing new properties. These factors come in the way of growth of those in the outdoor business and also create trust issues between service providers and clients. One hopes that the PM will look into all these issues and work towards the creation of standardised guidelines for outdoor properties that include new, better, and transparent rules for the erection, leasing and licensing of billboards and other outdoor media.

Global Advertisers wishes everyone a very Happy New Year

 

Join us on: www.globaladvertisers.in/