IOAA urges AAAI to deal with OOH media owners that are necessarily IOAA-registered

New Delhi: The Chairman of the World Out of Home Organisation, Tom Goddard, met with Indian OOH media owners in Delhi for the 'Dialogue with Tom Goddard' event, sponsored by Pioneer. Drawing on his four decades of industry experience, he highlighted the persistent disorganisation within India's OOH advertising sector. He emphasised that this lack of structure prevents the industry from achieving its full potential, especially considering India’s rapid macroeconomic growth and demographic advantage. 

He further highlighted the huge disparity in spending on OOH within the APAC region, with India spending only half a billion dollars or about 2.4% of the total $20.2 billion APAC spends on OOH. As opposed to this, China has slightly more than 50% of the APAC spending at $11 billion.  

This stirred a discussion in the room wherein Pawan Bansal, Chairman, IOAA, iterated how the India OOH operates with local advertisers and clients, which the current spending figures do not take into account. The current spend is essentially the consolidated spending across the specialist OOH media agencies. Almost all media owners felt that the actual quantum of spending was likely to be double the currently projected number, in the region of a billion USD (Rs 8,000 crore). The inaccurate projection of share of spend has consistently undervalued the OOH medium.  

Echoing this sentiment, Praveen Vadhera, CEO, IOAA, said the need in today’s scenario is obviously to get the OOH adex right and right spends, but the need is to grow medium and the brands will only increase their spending if the numbers are being presented to them. Thus, measurability is required to support the increased spending.  

IOAA introduced ‘Roadstar’ a first-of-its-kind audience measurement tool for the OOH advertising industry in India. To make it more effective, IOAA & AAAI have formed a technical committee headed by Vikram Sakhuja so that all the key stakeholders can work together to make it more effective and roll it out. In fact, some of the OOH media specialists, like Madison-MOMS and Tribes, have been using it extensively with great results.

One of the key points critical to RoadStar’s success is the media owners and their sites being on the platform. Therefore, the IOAA is now urging the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) to release a mandate on dealing with media owners who are necessarily members of the IOAA. This move was confirmed by Bansal in the presence of Goddord and other OOH advertisers. 

According to Praveen Vadhera, CEO of IOAA, “IOAA will create an online database of legal OOH advertising sites by directly collaborating with municipalities. “We are creating an online database, talking directly to the municipalities and taking a list of sites that they have utilised. So it is in the public domain,” Praveen added. 

By establishing a verified inventory of OOH sites, Roadstar aims to foster trust between advertisers and media owners. The platform is expected to enhance the buying and selling process, leading to increased efficiency and transparency in the industry. 

The Roadster has been developed on the foundation of various consultations and feedback. Currently, it spans over 800 markets in India (till Taluka level). It provides impressions, reach & frequency profiles of consumers exposed to 63,000+ outdoor media properties, nationally.