How monsoon is reshaping India’s OOH advertising playbook

As monsoon rain drizzles over India, the city's billboards come alive with steaming cups of coffee, umbrellas, and promises of warmth against the grey skies. The creative ingenuity of monsoon OOH campaigns has reached new heights over the years. In 2023, Taj Mahal Tea used the medium for its musical billboard 'Megh Santoor' in Vijaywada. The brand utilised a 150-foot installation featuring 31 hammers designed to look like a piano that created classical Indian melodies when it rained, playing until the rain ceased. This themed billboard transformed a simple tea advertisement into an interactive musical experience that celebrated the arrival of the monsoon.

The following year, Britannia Good Day Butter captured imaginations with its innovative hoardings across Delhi, Gurgaon, and Kolkata. These bright, playful billboards featured a hand dipping the Good Day Butter cookie into a steaming cup of tea, capturing the cosy monsoon mood with the tagline "Chai ke saath better hai, kyonki Good Day mein yummy butter hai." The campaign positioned comfort and brightness against the backdrop of rainy day melancholy.

Similarly, McCain Foods India elevated monsoon creativity further with its "McCain Banega, Baarish ka Maza Badhega" campaign, which went beyond traditional billboards to create a 360-degree media experience. The campaign featured multi-brand banter, community marketing through WhatsApp and social channels, RWA Lift Media, and POSM.

The monsoon season in India has traditionally been both an opportunity and a challenge for outdoor advertisers. While the emotional resonance of rain-soaked campaigns creates brand connections, the physical reality of high winds, heavy rainfall, and reduced visibility has long tested the medium's resilience. Given that the 2025 monsoon season is predicted to have above-normal rainfall, the industry is showcasing innovation in both creative strategy and technological infrastructure.

From static survivors to dynamic storytellers

For example, where once brands simply hoped their static billboards would survive the season, today's campaigns are engineered to thrive in it. This shift is reflected in the numbers. According to reports, India's OOH segment grew by 10% in 2024, reaching INR 5,920 crore, with Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) emerging as a key growth driver, contributing INR 700 crore and representing 12% of total OOH revenues.

The creative landscape has undergone transformations. Consider Nescafe's recent monsoon campaign in Mumbai, where billboards strategically placed across key locations feature two complementary narratives: one showing a woman enjoying coffee on a rooftop with the tagline "The Rhythm Of The Rooftop. Make it yours with Nescafe," and another depicting a joyful rain dance with "Your plus-one to the rain dance." 

“OOH advertising becomes particularly important for categories like FMCG (especially personal care and hygiene), healthcare, delivery services, and rainwear, as these products are closely tied to seasonal consumer needs,” notes Dr. Yogesh Lakhani, Chairman & Managing Director, Bright Outdoor Media Limited. 

To attract consumers, brands are moving beyond product placement to create emotional ecosystems that celebrate the monsoon experience.

Such campaigns represent a shift in monsoon advertising philosophy. As Preetam Patnaik, Head of Marketing at Continental Coffee, explains, "Monsoon is not just a season for us but a state of mind. And, we want to see consumers in those moments, in need of a little warmth, familiarity, and connection."

This emotional intelligence is being supported by technological innovation. The industry has witnessed the rise of weather-triggered advertising, where campaigns adapt in real-time to weather conditions. 

Dr. Lakhani shares that brands are strategising smartly by choosing high-visibility, weather-resistant formats, using bold, monsoon-friendly creatives, and leveraging illuminated or digital sites to maintain impact despite lower natural light and weather disruptions.

Continental Coffee, for instance, is planning weather-triggered creatives that showcase "a warm cup of Continental Coffee on a stormy weather day," essentially allowing brands to create campaigns that appeal to human emotions as a way of rationalising purchasing decisions. However, there’s a need to ensure safety in OOH during monsoons, especially given the tragedies that have followed for the industry, including the Ghatkopar billboard collapse.

Safety first

The monsoon season has always been a stress test for outdoor advertising infrastructure, but 2025 brings heightened scrutiny following regulatory changes, particularly in Mumbai regarding billboard safety. This challenge has catalysed a reimagining of how OOH assets are designed, installed, and maintained.

"OOH today isn't just about visibility—it's about resilience. And resilience is being engineered from the ground up," states Yuvrraj Agarwaal, Chief Strategy Officer at Laqshya Media Group. The industry is witnessing wider adoption of weatherproof flex alternatives, UV-resistant fabric, smart clamps, and real-time wind load monitoring systems, transforming what were once upgrades into essential infrastructure components.

“We’re not just waterproofing hoardings—we're future-proofing them. Structural audits, reinforced foundations, drain-friendly fabrication, and IoT-enabled alert systems are the new hygiene.”

The billboard of 2025 is built to endure, according to Agarwaal.

Bright Outdoor Media Limited has also invested in upgrading hoardings with corrosion-resistant metals, high-strength framing, and reinforced foundations to withstand Mumbai's intense monsoon conditions. 

The safety-first approach extends beyond physical infrastructure to operational protocols. Companies are implementing stringent structural audits through certified engineering professionals, conducting pre-monsoon and mid-monsoon assessments to ensure early detection of wear or risk, especially in high-traffic zones. Weekly structural health checks, digital display load simulations, and city-by-city SOP enforcement have become standard practices.

This emphasis on safety has accelerated the shift toward digital formats. Bus Queue Shelters (BQS) are gaining prominence as they provide safer, weather-proof visibility while allowing precise targeting of locations where category consumption peaks. Continental Coffee has moved toward Digital OOH and BQS in select Mumbai areas. 

Patnaik notes, "BQS provides safer, weather-proof visibility, allows us to target the places where coffee consumption/category penetration is at its peak, and provides the safest OOH option."

Laqshya Media Group’s Agarwaal shares that the rain changes not just roads, but routes to attention. Rising categories like Health & Hygiene (sanitisers, immunity boosters, clinics), Quick Commerce & Food Delivery, Auto (SUVs, tyres, wipers, waterproofing), Rainwear, Tea/Coffee brands, and FMCG comfort foods use monsoon as a cultural hook, timing campaigns around weather mood, not just market cycles.

“Challenging categories like fashion, footwear, and outdoor events need more inventive formats like mall facades, metro DOOH, or backlit digital shelters where weather doesn’t wash away visibility,” he continues.

OOH is evolving from fixed presence to contextual intelligence, and brands are increasingly focusing on hyperlocal targeting, surrounding workplaces, transit stations, and residential regions where spontaneous purchase decisions are most likely. 

Data-driven monsoons

While safety measures and creativity are changing, so is the way the industry embraces data science and advanced analytics to measure and optimise their monsoon campaigns.

"Measuring the effectiveness of OOH during the monsoon has evolved far beyond visibility checks and gut feel. Data science has transformed OOH into a far more accountable and ROI-driven channel," explains Patnaik. The industry now leverages sophisticated tools like LOCATE, GeoIQ, TAP, Mogean, and Moving Audiences to track exposure with 70-85% accuracy through real-time GPS movement, geo-fencing, and AI-powered traffic analytics.

These platforms monitor over 80-120 million devices in India, providing crucial insights into footfall, dwell time, audience personas, and location-based behaviours, which is essential data when weather conditions affect traditional outdoor visibility and travel patterns. 

Continental Coffee aligns OOH campaigns with real-time location and movement data, tracking visibility correlation with retail lift, regional sales shifts, and digital search spikes in high-exposure zones.

The measurement sophistication extends to persona mapping, enabling brands to target specific demographics like "tech-savvy working mothers aged 28-40 who shop online and commute via metro." This precision ensures that messages reach the right consumers in the right emotional state, maximising impact despite weather-related challenges.

Bata India's approach to monsoon measurement is multi-metric. Deepika Deepti, Head of Marketing, explains, "We are adopting a data-driven, multi-metric approach to evaluate the effectiveness and ROI of our OOH campaigns during the monsoon. While tracking increased footfalls in areas surrounding our OOH placements remains a key metric, we are also closely monitoring digital interactions and engagement on our campaign videos."

The footwear brand is focusing on Digital OOH across malls and high-street locations as digital screens offer dynamic, real-time content capabilities, preferring it over traditional static billboards, particularly when weather conditions are unpredictable.

For its Floatz campaign, the brand has strategically selected high-footfall areas such as Howrah Station in Kolkata and multiple Mall OOH sites across the country, where Digital OOH presence ensures maximum visibility and engagement. 

“The flexibility of digital screens also allows us to deploy hyperlocal creatives, ensuring our messaging remains timely, relevant, and impactful throughout the monsoon season. This approach not only optimises reach but also enhances the overall effectiveness and safety of our OOH investments during this period,” shares Deepti.

DOOH is projected to grow at a 7.2% CAGR through 2030, twice the overall India OOH market CAGR, driven by programmatic buying capabilities and falling LED panel costs. The DOOH market is expected to reach USD 300 million by 2030, with approximately 185,000 active DOOH screens across 50 cities in India, as per reports.

Transit media is experiencing particularly strong growth, with an 8.3% CAGR forecast, while airports capture the fastest growth at 9.7% CAGR. This growth is attributed to high-dwell settings that allow advertisers to serve sequential creatives during extended passenger wait times. 

Overall, OOH is projected to reach INR 7,900 crore by 2027. DOOH is expected to increase its share of total OOH revenues to 17% by 2027, while transit OOH is projected to grow at 16% annually, and traditional OOH at 8%, driven by geographic diversification.

As the monsoon clouds gather over India's cities, brands are shifting the way they connect with consumers. The journey from traditional OOH to DOOH, from safety concerns to structural innovations, and from gut-feel measurements to data-driven optimisation highlights how the industry has learned to turn challenges into opportunities. 

As Agarwaal aptly puts it, "While the clouds may cover the skies, our brands still need to shine. In a distracted world, smart OOH doesn't just endure the storm—it dances in the rain."

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