India’s outdoor advertising industry has been flying blind for years. Brands splurge on huge budgets for billboards, cinema screens, and digital displays with little clue whether anyone actually paying attention to the ads. Not just glancing and walking on by, but actively focusing and noticing, as this is what ads are really trying to do.
That’s where “It’s Spotlight” is shaking things up.
By mixing AI-led insights, super-engaging displays, and gesture-activated experiences, this company is turning outdoor advertising into something that actually tells you if it’s working or not. The vague “impressions” sales pitch is finally being replaced by a chance to see how people really react in real time and what grabs their attention out in the real world.
Here’s the question most CMOs avoid asking: if you paid for 10,000 billboard impressions, how many people actually looked at the ad?
Not walked past it. Not driven by it. Actually noticed it.
For decades, the answer has been simple: nobody really knew.
The Out-of-Home advertising industry has operated on estimates, footfall assumptions, and vague audience projections. Brands spent crores on premium placements, received reports filled with estimated reach numbers, and accepted that as proof of performance.
The problem is massive. India’s Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) market is expected to cross ₹2,500 crore by 2027. Yet the industry still struggled to answer the one thing advertisers care about most: did the campaign capture real human attention?
That gap created an industry built around visibility instead of engagement.
“The industry was selling visibility. What brands actually needed was verifiable attention. Those are two completely different things.”
The term “phygital” is often used for QR codes or app integrations in marketing. In outdoor advertising, it refers to something more advanced.
Phygital advertising combines physical screens with real-time digital technology. The screens do more than display ads. They can track engagement, analyse viewing behaviour, measure attention time, and collect audience insights in real time.
This allows brands to understand how many people actually viewed a campaign, how long they engaged with it, and which audience groups responded most.
In environments like cinema lobbies, audiences can also interact with campaigns through gestures and immersive formats while the system records engagement data simultaneously.
That is the model “It’s Spotlight” is building across India.
Unlike a traditional outdoor advertising company, “It’s Spotlight” has its own way to create an impact. Instead of focusing only on screens, it focuses on measurable attention.
The company’s model is built around four connected elements.
“It’s Spotlight” places screens in locations where audiences spend more time and are more likely to engage with content. This includes cinema chains like Cinépolis and premium malls such as CP67 Mohali.
These environments give brands longer exposure time compared to standard outdoor placements.
The platform uses real-time campaign management to track when and where advertisements are displayed. Brands receive verified delivery data instead of estimated reporting.
Through its partnership with AdMobilize, “It’s Spotlight” uses AI-powered computer vision technology to measure audience engagement.
The system can analyse viewing behaviour, attention time, and estimated audience demographics without storing personal data.
The company also develops interactive advertising formats, including 3D anamorphic displays, gesture-based experiences, and gamified activations. These formats are designed to increase audience engagement.
“It’s Spotlight” introduced performance metrics that take a more nuanced approach to evaluating digital Out of Home (OOH) advertising. Rather than just counting impressions, the platform focuses on what really matters, i.e., getting people to pay attention to your ads.
It means measuring the actual number of people who took a serious look at an ad. It’s similar to a CTR in digital, but instead of counting clicks, it tracks how many people were actually drawn in by your ad.
This metric gives you a sense of how well your ad actually held someone’s attention; how long were they staring at it?
In one campaign, Toyota found that people were looking at their ad an average of 21 seconds.
You can see right away where your ads are landing. Is your fintech ad capturing the attention of 18-24 year olds (like 57% of the people in our campaign data) or falling flat?
Behavioural signals show how much your ad was having an impact. The difference between people just glancing over and actually paying attention in each location.
In one campaign, a single activation racked up 1.35 million impressions and 22,720 confirmed views, but what really stood out was a Gaze Through Rate of 1.69%.
The platform even lets you drill down into how your campaign is performing location by location, time of day, age group, and gender, all right at your fingertips through the live reporting dashboard.
Theory is easy. Results are what matter. Here are three campaigns that demonstrate what’s actually possible when phygital advertising is executed with intent.
Toyota wanted to create something people would stop for, not just pass by.
The campaign used a 3D anamorphic display that made the vehicle appear to break out of the screen itself. The visual effect naturally attracted attention and encouraged social sharing.
The campaign achieved:
For beauty brand Nish Hair, the goal was simple: stand out in a crowded retail environment.
The immersive visuals encouraged shoppers to stop, interact, and physically engage with the installation.
Results included:
For Radhika Das’s India tour, It’s Spotlight developed a gesture-powered concert experience that allowed audiences to control visuals through movement.
The system also captured audience behaviour data, including engagement levels, interaction patterns, and responses across different audience groups.
Key outcomes included:
The company also deployed gamified brand activations in mall environments. One interactive campaign generated 19,610 impressions, a 14.96% Gaze Through Rate, and an average interaction time of more than 20 seconds.
Across immersive formats, gamified activations delivered 2–3× higher engagement than standard DOOH campaigns.
“It’s Spotlight” currently operates more than 350 digital screens across 101 Cinépolis cinemas across India.
“It’s Spotlight” is expanding into new markets, and its partnership with Cinépolis is a big part of it, with over 350 digital screens across 101 cinemas in India now in the spotlight.
Alongside the ad placements, you also get access to programmatic buying, campaign optimisation, audience analysis, and footfall info.
According to Sanya Jindal, Founder & Director of the company, “We’ve been working on building an AI-led analytics system that is going to take advertising beyond the traditional impressions model. We are trying to get screens to be more responsive by bringing together audience data, content delivery, and real-time insights all under one roof.”
This shift to more interactive DOOH advertising is happening across the board. Screens are turning into interactive platforms that can track how well people are engaging, adapt what they are showing you and give you a clear idea of how well each campaign is doing.
Now, it is not just about getting your ad played in people’s faces. Brands can actually see how well their message is sticking, how much time people are giving it, what kind of reaction they are getting and how each campaign is performing in different locations.
You can also use all that data to help guide future decision-making.
For instance, if you get audience interaction data from a live event, that’s going to tell you what moments are generating the most buzz, and meanwhile, attention analytics from immersive campaigns can help shape your strategy for your next media buy.
As the DOOH industry gets more and more tech-driven, screens are evolving from being just some place to slap up an ad to being full-on data-enabled engagement systems.
Outdoor advertising has always been a bit of a dark art in India, relying on rough estimates of how many people saw an ad rather than any real idea of how they actually reacted.
“It’s Spotlight” is working to change all that by making DOOH campaigns measurable, trackable and all about the data while still giving them the reach and visibility that physical advertising has always offered.
Their campaign results show just how much of an impact immersive formats can have, and their partnership with Cinépolis is a big part of how they plan to scale up and get into all the top locations.
By bringing together AI-powered analytics, super interactive formats, and real-time insights on audience behaviour, “Its Spotlight” is planting its flag firmly in the next generation of phygital advertising in India.
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