MAM
Bright lights up festive season as outdoor ads shine with double-digit glow
MUMBAI: This festive season, the outdoors are looking anything but dull. As streets dazzle with lights and shopfronts sparkle with offers, Bright Outdoor Media (BOM) is gearing up for a season of high visibility literally. The company expects strong double-digit growth in ad spends this Diwali, fuelled by a cocktail of economic optimism, brand buzz, and an unmistakable festive pulse on the streets.
Leading the charge, the real estate sector has taken centre stage, wrapping city skylines in giant hoardings and LED glows announcing new projects. From FMCG and e-commerce to automobiles, consumer electronics, jewellery, and fashion, nearly every sector is upping its outdoor presence to capture festive shoppers’ attention. The result: India’s cities are once again turning into open-air galleries of marketing ambition.
But it isn’t just traditional categories making noise. Fintech, BFSI, health and wellness, D2C, and quick commerce players are also stepping into the OOH frame, using the medium to push festive payment offers, cashback deals, and brand discovery. With outdoor spaces offering both scale and immediacy, even digital-first brands are realising that nothing beats the visibility of a billboard at a bustling junction.
“We are witnessing robust demand across brand categories this festive season, with advertisers focusing on visibility, innovation and impact,” said Bright Outdoor Media CMD Yogesh Lakhani. “Large-format visibility, digital billboards and integrated campaigns are driving the momentum, and we expect strong double-digit growth compared to last year.”
At the heart of this surge is the rise of Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH). Bright Outdoor, already among India’s largest operators of big-size LED billboards, is riding the wave of dynamic and data-driven displays. These screens allow advertisers to adapt messaging in real time from countdown offers to live sports updates making the outdoors feel as alive as the internet.
However, Bright isn’t dimming its faith in traditional billboards just yet. Static formats, the company says, remain the cornerstone of mass visibility vital for brands seeking long-term impact or presence beyond metros. Lakhani explains, “Digital and interactive formats will continue to gain preference, but large-format billboards will always be critical for brand recall and reach. The future is hybrid where technology meets tradition.”
The festive glow isn’t confined to big cities either. With Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets witnessing a consumption boom, brands are extending their OOH footprints into regional India. From high-footfall malls in Pune and Jaipur to highways connecting emerging industrial towns, the billboard boom is spreading fast.
As the first outdoor media company listed on the BSE, Bright Outdoor Media continues to consolidate its leadership across Mumbai and the wider MMR region, claiming nearly 50 per cent of Mumbai’s OOH market. Its stronghold, built on long-term client partnerships and a robust portfolio of owned media assets, is now expanding into a digital frontier with more LED installations across transit hubs and high-traffic zones.
The company’s hybrid model combining static strength with digital agility could very well define the future of Indian outdoor advertising. For now, though, Bright’s billboards are doing exactly what their name promises: keeping the festive season shining, one giant frame at a time.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
