Moving Walls is launching ‘Freedom’, a campaign to empower Indian media owners with audience data and automation tools to digitise their selling processes. The initiative was announced at the Outdoor Advertising Convention (OAC) held at the Renaissance Mumbai Convention Centre, Powai, Mumbai.
India is among the fastest growing out-of-home (OOH) markets in the world with PWC forecasting revenue to reach US$545mn by 2020, growing at a 9.3% CAGR. However, major advertisers have called for the industry to address the need for standard metrics.
Even as the medium is being driven by digital transformation, it still lags behind digital media in terms of providing metrics to help marketers evaluate and improve their campaigns and media spends.
Moving Walls, a Singapore headquartered global advertising technology company with offices in Mumbai and Chennai, runs Moving Audiences, which is a technology stack that provides planning, buying, and ad-serving automation tools to OOH media buyers and sellers. The platform is also integrated into leading digital demand-side platforms.
Connecting Billboard Owners to Outcome-Driven Media Buyers
As part of the Freedom initiative, participating media owners will get access to a cloud-based inventory management software. They will also have the ability to generate audience-data driven proposals. Meanwhile, digital billboard owners will also get to use Moving Walls’ proprietary content management software that automates ad serving and brings transparency via automated proof of play reporting.
Srikanth Ramachandran, Founder and CEO of Moving Walls, who is also addressing the 15th Outdoor Advertising Convention (OAC) on ‘How cost-conscious Asian firms are taking to data & technologies’ stresses that OOH data matters just as much to media owners as the media buyers.
According to him, “We are equipping every media owner, irrespective of their size or location, with open-source data and automation tools to connect and engage with potential buyers. For media owners who have their own data, there is a crowdsourcing option to submit this truth dataset for review and acceptance. It is time for the industry as a whole to move to audience and outcome-led media sales.”
Media buyers echo the same sentiment. According to Rachana Lokhande – CO-CEO of Kinetic Worldwide, “Digitisation will transform OOH advertising by making it significantly more audience-led rather than media-led. With access to audience data, OOH, like any other medium will enable us to measure ROI and restructure and enhance campaign strategies to reach wider audiences. So, I’m very pleased to hear the announcement of the initiative by Moving Walls at this year’s OAC.”
Similarly, Vinkoo Chakraborty, Business Head, Rapport India has already seen aggressive uptake in the usage of digital out-of-home across their clients. “We definitely encourage and support such data-driven and technology-led interventions in the out-of-home sector in India,” she said.
Common Standards a Must to Move Industry
Moving Walls is working with more than 100 OOH media owners across Asia to digitise their business. Working in a collaborative model enables media owners to provide common metrics that bring confidence to outcome-driven marketers.
The first movers recognise the need to move from being a drum-beating medium to a ROI-driven. At the launch of the Freedom campaign, 18 media owners have already signed up to the Moving Audiences platform in India including Selvel One and Planet Outdoor.
According to Noomi Mehta, Chairman of Selvel One Group and the only Indian on the board of the World Out-of-Home Organization, “In line with global trends, we are seeing digital brands like Amazon, Ola, Flipkart, and others turning to OOH to grow their business. As media owners, we need to be able to speak their language and provide digital metrics to showcase the value that our medium delivers.”
Also on board is Planet Outdoor, a venture of Rajasthan Patrika group and Rajasthan’s leading media owner with more than 300 strategically located OOH media options in cities of Rajasthan. According to their Assistant General Manager, “This initiative will drive transparency and amplify the reach of the medium. The Patrika Group is delighted to be one of the first movers.”
Moving Walls recently powered the Southeast Asian region’s first programmatic campaigns for Domino’s, HP Printers, and Lazada in Malaysia validating the demand for audience-data driven OOH. The campaigns were executed with global media agencies including GroupM’s Xaxis, Dentsu’s Amnet, and PHD Media.
Meanwhile, the company has also been providing a demonstration of OOH audience reporting capabilities via its ‘Three Billboards’ campaign. More than 150 brands have signed up for the reports including Unilever, Uber Eats, IDFC Bank, TVS Motor, and Wipro among others.
Moving Walls has a global presence with offices in Singapore, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, and the US. The company is looking to extend the Freedom offering to Indonesia and Malaysia within the next few months.
