Player after player admits that the Outdoor Advertising industry is largely unorganized. And planner after planner also admits that there is hardly any measurability or currency in the Out of Home segment as of today. Then how has this industry, by even conservative estimates, grown to a figure of Rs.1000 cores?

As Outdoor becomes Out of Home, and newer options emerge; and as the industry grows past its sizeable critical mass, as larger players come in, the signs of the industry organizing itself seem bright. Media biggies like Times OOH, News Corp and the Jagran Group have serious plans in this space. International agencies are coming in, and the outdoor divisions of advertising agencies have also established their presence in this space. But the big boys of the media and the MNCs took their time coming in. An industry that is evaluated at anywhere between Rs.1000 crores and Rs. 4000 crores today, despite not being organized, despite lack of uniformity in laws governing it, can safely be called an enigma. But the enigma is not difficult to comprehend, when you are told that the great outdoors - as an industry - is still finding its feet.

We caught up with some players from an industry whose time was said to have come a couple of years ago. One feels that the soothsayers were wrong, when we see that some of the key players in the market are not even two years old. In this piece, we have tried to profile some of the agencies that are making a mark, and asked them for their take on the state of evolution of the industry.

Common sense tells us that one of the key indicators of the stage of evolution of any industry is the level of differentiation that exists within the industry genre. While advertising matured with the advent of Outdoor, DM and the like, Outdoor is showing signs of maturity with the advent of specialists for the Retail space, Medium-specific specialists and more.
Even among the old timers (relatively speaking), there is tangible differentiation, claim players. How different are they?

What is the USP of each of these agencies? How has the last year been? What is the client profile like? We asked them…

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The Indian Listenership Track (ILT) 2006 Wave 3 results released a few days ago have invited new thinkers and arguers in the form of media agencies, who have taken to the fore to give measurement systems for Radio in India a fair trail. A strange uprising by these new band of brothers, given that all this while, it were the radio stations who were crying foul and good, and calling for the need to have a rather ‘robust’ and widely-practiced system in place. And why not have them voice their belief, as ultimately, it is they that decide what a certain jingle should read and sound like on radio, thereby bringing good tidings to the gullible listener as also the advertiser.

It’s been months now that radio stations have been prompting for an earnest change in the measurement system in practice. Such is the need that a panel formation from within the industry that would enable adequate reach and frequency is being mooted. The DAR (Day After Recall) method, they reason, does not provide the right statistics, and is rather looked at from a saliency point of view. Something like an, ‘audio cue’ or ‘audio mastheads’, like is being followed by the print medium that uses the masthead to recall readership, should be necessitated, they reckon. ‘Diary method’ and the ‘Watch Meter’ are the other popular choices being talked about, but then it is the evolution of some new methods being suggested by agencies that need a mention here.

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Santosh Desai recollects ad industry’s journey through 2006

Supriya Thanawala

When Santosh Desai’s exit from McCann and into Future Brands was highlighted in the editorial page of Impact, we mentioned that one of Indian advertising’s best-known strategic planners had left the industry (the traditional ad agency business, at least). A reiteration of his proficiency was made last week, as Santosh Desai took audiences down memory lane, chronicling the journey of Indian advertising in the year gone by.

At the Ad Review 2007, organised by the Advertising Club of Bombay, nearly a hundred professionals from the industry, as well as management and advertising students, turned up to listen to Santosh Desai’s two-hour long presentation on advertising through the year gone by.

Desai addressed various issues in the growth of advertising and branding in India, through a presentation of selected television commercials. Although there was a disgruntled mention about the lack of print and other non-television media ads in this annual do, the overall response that Desai received was delightful.

“The way that I went about the study was that I looked for patterns and examples, and read, saw through the entire material that I had. It mostly encompassed making sense of a chaotic and large number of information that I had gathered,” Desai said later.

 

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