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The origin of advertising goes back to “outdoor”, which is the oldest form of the advertising medium and later evolved as Out of Home advertising (OOH). The OOH media can be “an instrument of change” for Indian cities and help them transform to SMART cities, it can be a delivery vehicle through which critical civic amenities and services can be offered by the Urban Local Bodies and Municipal Corporations in addition to widening their financial resource base. The book in three volumes tries to trace the OOH evolution and offer meaningful alternatives, recommendations on the OOH advertising policy framework for cities. A 360 degree approach has been attempted to understand the OOH medium from advertiser, media planning and creative design aspect, as they along with other physical aspects of the OOH device play a vital role in acceptance of the OOH medium as a primary mode of advertisement.

The growth of OOH medium had been organic, fragmented and unplanned leading to abuse and manipulation by some unscrupulous stakeholders, bringing it to disrepute and litigations. The menace of illegal media and utter disregard for safety, led the Hon`ble Supreme Court and other State High Courts to intervene, often resulting in a direction for total ban on outdoor media, which have detrimental implications. In absence of a proper understanding and a scientific policy framework, the Municipal Bodies adopt and implement knee jerk policy decisions. Honest media concessionaires and advertisers suffer from such abrupt decisions and disruptions, along with the city Municipal Corporations losing on key revenue base.

The book provides insights and an in depth understanding of the medium, its characteristics and principles for a planned approach for development of the OOH medium. It outlines various approaches and tries to provide a direction on design principles. This Volume-I provides a glimpse into the Origin of Outdoor advertising internationally as well as within India. It highlights the role of outdoor advertising within a city and its relationship with other stake holders. It draws the relationship between Outdoor advertisement and Vehicular traffic which gains significance as safety of motorists is cited as the most common reason for resisting the growth of outdoor advertisement medium. It offers an unbiased critique of Outdoor advertisement in India, the pitfalls and issues to be addressed. This volume draws various categorisations as well as indexes various definitions in practice in the outdoor advertisement industry. The Volume One sets the tone for the next volume wherein an attempt is made to present guidelines and a policy framework for outdoor advertisement planning, designing and implementation.