WOO talks to Srikanth Ramachandran of Moving Walls prior to the Africa Forum in Cape Town on March 11th thru 13th 2024. Srikanth shares his thoughts on Digital Transformation some insights into his business and his thoughts on Moving Walls' expansion.
How does your technology platform enable digital transformation for OOH media owners both digital and classic?
- Our enterprise software has been instrumental in driving the digital transformation of the OOH media industry. We have built this platform to address all OOH formats and buying processes - traditional and programmatic.
The foundation of the platform is our registry, which we refer to as the single source of truth. Media owners start by recording their inventory and these details are then made available for planning, booking, measurement, and even to programmatic Supply Side Platforms (SSPs). As more technology platforms emerge for OOH media owners to connect to, it is an operational burden and frankly a waste of time to have to make updates to this information across several platforms manually.
With inventory updates sorted, we then make several tools available for media owners to transform every aspect of their business. This ranges from an Inventory Management System (IMS) and booking engine to measurement and self-serve advertising connected to their website.
What are your software's key differences vs other providers? How would an OOH media owner go about assessing their digital transformation strategy?
- The software’s key difference is in being able to provide a bespoke experience based on the requirements of a media owner and the market norms. This is reflected in the platform’s ability to support every OOH format and connect to other software the media owner may already be using.
Any transformation strategy has to begin with an assessment of what exists. For media owners, this needs to be a review of their current processes from how advertisers interact with them and book campaigns to how campaign and revenue reporting is managed.
Forming such a strategy is easier for media owners who are just setting up vs those who have been around for ages. However, there are always opportunities to make an existing process more efficient and free up more time to grow revenue.
We refer to this transformation as solving the six sides of a Rubik’s Cube - the advertiser, the data, the front-end, the back-end, the reporting, and the sales tools. Our software is designed to address all these aspects to enable this digital transformation.
Tell us about Moving Walls' expansion to Africa. What are you looking forward to discussing at the WOO Africa Forum?
- The continent of Africa has made significant progress in the OOH space, increasing growth of digital signage, rapid urbanization, high mobile penetration, digital infrastructure development, innovative solutions, outdoor lifestyle culture, and untapped market potential. The interesting thing for us is that this region is very similar to Asia in a couple of ways. First of all, no two markets are the same - there are vast differences in OOH media standards and maturity in even neighboring countries. Secondly, OOH media is generally fragmented with no obvious market leaders.
Given this situation, we have been quick to build multiple partnerships and deploy our platform to enable both traditional and programmatic OOH campaigns. At our booth in the WOO Africa Forum, we will be showcasing the digital transformation roadmap for OOH media owners. We’re also looking forward to discussing the efforts being put into making OOH media more sustainable.
What are your predictions for how OOH media will fare in 2024?
- We have already seen a few announcements of record revenues for some media owners based on 2023 data. DOOH advertising will continue to drive this and other factors like the demise of third-party cookies will only drive new advertisers to our medium. Programmatic DOOH continues to be the major technology trend in our space but we are also seeing increased collaboration between OOH software providers, which is essential for digital transformation.
Another key trend to look at is how the AI content generators can be used to remove a common barrier to scaling DOOH campaigns - having to create or resize creatives for specific formats. This technology is sure to make it easier to run dynamic campaigns as well.
As a longstanding WOO member, how would you describe its benefits for companies still to join?
- WOO is a springboard for anyone in this space to get connected to a global community of OOH stakeholders. There certainly isn’t any other global OOH organisation with this type of reach. The immeasurable networking opportunities and international exposure that come with being a member have been beneficial to us.
Given that we have the collective challenge of growing OOH media’s share of the advertising spending pie and the even bigger challenge of doing this sustainably, it is particularly important to foster collaboration between the different players. The WOO Congress and now the additional forums go a long way to make this happen.
How would you like to see WOO develop in the foreseeable future?
- As a longstanding WOO member, we have seen the organisation grow not just in terms of its member reach but also in the regional forums held in new markets. This provides an opportunity for new players to present their solutions on a global stage. At the same time, global players get a way into these emerging markets too.
We are looking forward to WOO continuing to grow the number of these regional congresses as well as establishing some more specific member-driven councils to work on challenges like sustainability, standards, and so on.
Mandakini Negi - Co-Founder and Managing Director of LMX will be representing Moving Walls on the Programmatic panel on Day 2 of the forum.
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