Billboards, bazaars & belonging: How OOH is owning Diwali 2025

They don’t just light up skylines, they light up conversations at tea stalls, metro stations, and neighborhood markets. They speak in the city’s own accent, in colors its people recognise. This year, OOH and local media aren’t just channels. They’re connectors, turning lanes, landmarks, and LED walls into community billboards of belonging.

If Diwali is the festival of senses, Tata Coffee Gold captured all five in one stroke. At Select CITYWALK, Delhi, a 3D aroma-anamorphic installation brought the coffee journey to life - beans roasting, aroma swirling, gold granules falling in slow motion. The air literally smelled of coffee. Visitors snapped selfies that became AI-generated latte art, flashed on the screen in real time, then walked away with a QR souvenir and a hot cup. It wasn’t just a billboard - it was a memory. (Executed by Laqshya Media Group.)

The festive quarter now contributes almost 30% of annual OOH revenue. According to the Pitch Madison Report 2025, India’s OOH market climbed from Rs 4,140 crore in 2023 to Rs 4,650 crore in 2024, and is projected to cross Rs 5,200 crore in 2025 - a 12% leap year-on-year.

What’s different in Diwali 2025 is how brands are stitching traditional OOH with digital agility. Flipkart’s ‘Big Bang Diwali’ pushes the ‘out with the old’ narrative across media, giving creatives the must-share punch OOH needs. Xiaomi’s ‘Deals, Drama & Diwali’ leans into high-energy storytelling that migrates between DOOH loops and social clips - the same idea, optimised for the street and the stream. Amazon’s Great Indian Festival went sky-high with a hanging sofa built in Mumbai - turning dwell time into camera time. And Fastrack’s UFO Collection landed 3D installs across seven cities, using dynamic lighting and creator collabs to bridge OOH spectacle with digital discovery.

Why this works right now

If there’s one pattern emerging this Diwali, it’s that the most visible campaigns are also the most locally tuned.

Hyperlocal beats hyperloud

The smartest festive OOH isn’t chasing eyeballs, it’s chasing empathy. The best work this season has been designed by postcode: the right junctions near markets, pandals, metros, and malls. The copy sounds like the city itself, and the creative format fits how people actually move through those streets. The recovery in OOH is being powered by precisely these hyperlocal choices.

DOOH is becoming the default canvas

Digital OOH isn’t the cherry on top anymore, it’s the main course. It is turning static screens into responsive storytelling surfaces. These tools are taking OOH from reach to responsive reach - where one creative can adapt by hour, weather, or mood. Industry outlooks predict that DOOH’s slice of total OOH will keep rising sharply in the coming years.

Festivals are a season, not a weekend

Marketers aren’t thinking of Diwali as a date on the calendar; they’re building corridors of celebration from Navratri to Christmas. OOH ensures continuity; DOOH delivers the moments. E-commerce, jewellery, and auto brands especially are stretching narratives across weeks, using data-led scheduling to follow audiences as they shop, travel, and celebrate, and the spends are following too.

DOOH’s evolution continues, growing from 23.8% of OOH revenue in 2023 to an expected 39.5% by 2028.

If you’re building a Diwali plan now, three things separate the seen from the saved:

• Design for the lens. Bold motion, clean focal point, one idea per site.
• Make it participatory. Add a micro-action: scan, vote, trigger, personalize.
• Localize the story. Regional idioms, city cues, even micro-festival motifs.

OOH is moving from visibility to vitality, built locally, animated digitally, and measured by how many people stop, smile, shoot, share, and show up.

In the festival of lights, it’s not about who glows most; it’s about who makes you feel lit.

This article is penned byYuvrraj Agarwaal, Chief Strategy Officer, Laqshya Media Group.

Disclaimer: The article features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of the publication.