Dentsu Aegis Network boosts OOH offerings

Dentsu Aegis Network has acquired OOH company Milestone Brandcom in India. The acquisition of Milestone Brandcom comes following the acquisition of Posterscope - Dentsu Aegis Network’s global outdoor media agency.Founded in October 2009, Milestone Brandcom will continue to be led by founder and managing director Nabendu Bhattacharyya after the acquisition. Bhattacharyya will report to Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network, South Asia.In a press release, Dentsu Aegis Network said it "will take a majority share (51%) in Milestone Brandcom. The company will retain its identity, branding and culture and share its knowledge in creative and OOH planning with the group." However the company has yet to comment on the  acquisition worth.Milestone Brandcom currently has 175 employees and over 100 active clients across several industries. The agency provides a full service comprehensive OOH offering which includes an event promotion activation division, rural OOH activation, retail and digital OOH division. Milestone Brandcom also recently launched the ‘Milestone Optimiser’, a tool which optimises OOH media plans by tracking 25,000 sites across India and providing gross impression points of an OOH campaign, a first in India.Nick Waters (pictured), CEO of Dentsu Aegis Network Asia Pacific said, “This acquisition marks another significant step as we build a high quality and scaled group in India.”Bhasin said: “Milestone Brandcom is not only a market leader but also a pioneer of several developments in the OOH industry in India. Posterscope was already amongst India’s fastest growing brands. This investment now establishes clear leadership for us in this very important medium, making us the leader in the OOH and OOH retail space in India. We believe that OOH will play an increasingly important role for clients in years to come so we are delighted to be able to offer clients a market leading service.”Meanwhile, Dentsu-Aegis agency Posterscope has also launched its new tool Prism Creative across Asia Pacific this month. The tool is aimed at helping clients gauge how their creative will look on OOH media and reduce the amount of errors. This ultimately helps clients to visualise their campaign better. This tool, now available to Posterscope clients across the region, will visually show if an ad isn’t suitable for OOH media – if it has too much text, unsuitable colours or layout errors - and campaigns can be changed before they run.  Prism Creative also has the ability to switch from day to night visuals, play digital videos and do a distance check of creative.Recently, Dentsu Aegis Network also launched an experiential marketing agency psLive in all key Asia Pacific markets.