Published on: September 4, 2026
Merlin Coutinho, SVP at Lemma, explores how AI and conversational planning could reshape OOH media planning and moving planners from inventory-led decisions towards audience intent, journey and strategic judgement.
What if building an OOH media plan was as simple as having a conversation?
Not long ago, planning an OOH campaign meant spreadsheets, inventory lists, audience reports and several rounds of manual optimisation. Today, AI is beginning to change that equation.
Imagine starting with a simple prompt:
“I want to reach 25–40-year-old professionals in Mumbai and Bengaluru. The objective is awareness. Prioritise business districts, transit routes and high-frequency commuter environments. Recommend the right formats, locations, dayparts and budget allocation.”
Within seconds, an AI-led planning engine can begin connecting the dots between audience, mobility, location, inventory, context, time and campaign objectives to create an actionable media plan.
But the real shift isn’t simply that a plan can be generated faster. It is that planners can begin to interact with the plan differently.
What if we prioritise frequency?
What if we move more budget into transit?
What if we focus on the morning commute?
What if the objective shifts from awareness to consideration?
The plan can evolve with every question.
This moves OOH planning from a largely inventory-led exercise towards one that starts with audience intent and the journey a brand wants to create.
Instead of beginning with “What inventory is available?”, planners can increasingly start with “What journey do I want my audience to take?”
That distinction matters particularly in OOH.
Unlike many digital environments, OOH is shaped by the physical world. Where people are, how they move, what they are doing, how long they are exposed to a message and what surrounds them can all influence the effectiveness of a campaign. A commuter travelling through a business district in the morning represents a very different opportunity from the same person encountering a message near a retail environment later in the day.
The challenge for planners is therefore not simply identifying the right screen or location, but understanding how multiple environments, moments and exposures can work together.
Programmatic OOH has already made inventory more addressable and flexible. AI adds another layer of intelligence, helping planners navigate the complexity of audiences, environments, moments and outcomes at a scale that would be difficult to replicate manually.
But this isn’t about replacing the planner.
AI can process vast amounts of data and surface combinations that may not be immediately obvious. It can test scenarios, identify patterns and help planners explore a much broader range of possibilities.
What it cannot replace is the judgement that comes from understanding a brand, its audience, its creative idea and the nuances of a particular market.
“The smartest model is therefore not human versus machine, but human with machine.”
The planner brings the brief, strategic thinking, creativity and judgement. AI brings speed, scale and the ability to explore possibilities far beyond a traditional spreadsheet.
This also changes the role of the planner.
Rather than spending disproportionate time collecting inventory information, comparing spreadsheets and manually working through combinations, planners can spend more time asking better questions: Why this audience? Why this environment? Why this moment? What happens if we change the objective?
That is where conversational planning becomes particularly interesting.
AI-powered planning tools are beginning to make media planning feel almost as intuitive as having a conversation: give it a prompt, challenge the recommendation, refine the inputs and arrive at a smarter plan.
The simplicity of that interaction is important.
Because the future of OOH doesn’t necessarily need more complexity. It needs technology that can absorb the complexity and make it easier for planners to work with.
The biggest shift may therefore be from planning screens to planning journeys — understanding where audiences are, what they are doing, when they are most receptive and how different OOH environments can work together to move them through a campaign.
For planners, this means the starting point may no longer be the inventory catalogue. It can be the audience, the objective and the journey.
And perhaps that’s where the next chapter of OOH planning begins. Not with a spreadsheet. With a prompt.
Disclaimer: This article was originally written by the author. Views expressed are the author’s own. All rights belong to the original author.
