Founder & CEO Haresh Nayak explains how IMMERSIVE’s agentic AI is set to revolutionise OOH planning for brands across India’s evolving cities and towns.
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising has long relied on planners' local knowledge, fragmented data and experience. As India's cities rapidly evolve with new metro lines, flyovers and changing traffic patterns, planning campaigns across markets has become increasingly complex.
Connect Network is betting that artificial intelligence can change that. The advertising agency, which specialises in OOH media, has launched IMMERSIVE, an agentic AI platform that aims to help brands and agencies plan campaigns using hyperlocal market intelligence instead of relying primarily on experience or manual research.
Built over five years and entirely self-funded, the platform combines location intelligence, media inventory, pricing benchmarks and campaign analytics into a single interface.
Why does OOH need AI?
Haresh Nayak, founder and CEO of Connect Network, says the idea emerged from a challenge most media planners face today.
"Most agencies have planners sitting in Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru who are expected to plan campaigns across 10 or 15 different cities. They may never have even visited those markets," he says.
India has over 6.49 lakh cities, towns and villages, each with different audience behaviour, mobility patterns and media ecosystems. According to Nayak, expecting planners to possess deep local knowledge for every market creates an intelligence gap.
"The objective wasn't to replace jobs. It was to empower people to make more intelligent decisions. Even if you've never been to Baroda, the platform can tell you where to advertise, what formats work and what the prevailing rates are," he adds.
What does IMMERSIVE do?
Unlike generative AI tools that primarily create text or images, IMMERSIVE uses agentic AI to analyse multiple layers of information, including audience behaviour, location intelligence, pricing, mobility patterns and historical campaign performance, to recommend media plans.
According to the company, the platform currently maps:
6.49 lakh cities, towns and villages
20,000 PIN codes
Over 5.5 lakh OOH media sites
10,000 cinemas and 22,000 screens
Malls, airports, railway stations and rural touchpoints
It also integrates over 80 live APIs, allowing marketers to work with near real-time information instead of static datasets.
Built in-house over five years
Unlike many AI products built on existing large language models, Nayak says IMMERSIVE's AI engine has been developed internally.
"The entire AI ecosystem has been built in-house. There are no third-party AI platforms involved. That's why it took us five years," he says.
The project has also been completely self-funded.
"We've invested in building it over the last five years, and we believe we'll see returns on that investment over time."
Who is it built for?
Nayak explains the biggest users of OOH advertising continue to be automobile, real estate and FMCG brands, although each category approaches the medium differently.
Automobile and real estate advertisers largely focus on urban markets, while FMCG brands increasingly use outdoor media to strengthen rural outreach. Luxury brands, meanwhile, use OOH to create high-impact, aspirational campaigns.
The platform has therefore been designed to support multiple formats, including traditional OOH, cinema, rural marketing, transit media, airports, retail and experiential campaigns.
Rather than relying solely on sales pitches, Connect Network plans to let the platform demonstrate its own capabilities. "In our industry, many agencies say they have a tool or software, but very few have something that's actually live," Nayak says.
Over the past six months, after refining the platform, the company says it has already begun working with 10–12 clients. "The best way is for clients to experience it themselves. Most of the people we've spoken to want to use it and see it live."
Free to use for now
Interestingly, Connect Network isn't charging brands to access the platform's core planning capabilities. "Our idea is to help marketers and brands. Every module related to media and marketing is currently free," Nayak says.
The company plans to monetise advanced use cases instead. Brands that want more detailed business insights, like finding places to expand retail, looking at household income levels, or assessing distribution options by PIN code, will be able to access these insights through a different paid model.
"We're approaching this like a startup. The idea is to scale adoption first and evaluate pricing over time."
Who is your competition?
Nayak says that the platform currently holds a unique position in the market when it comes to competitors. "I've been in this industry for 25 years, and I don't see anyone offering these kinds of capabilities," he adds.
He notes that much of the industry's conversation around AI has centred on job displacement, whereas Connect Network's focus has been on using AI to strengthen media planning rather than replace planners. "The shift in thinking is asking, 'Why not use AI to grow our business?' That's the approach we've taken."