India’s retail media advertising revenue is projected to cross ₹30,000 crore in 2026. The growth reflects how closely media is becoming tied to consumer shopping behaviour. During the festive season, consumers move across social, search, mobile, out-of-home, marketplaces, and physical stores before buying.
Retail media gives brands visibility into what consumers search, browse, add to cart, and buy. But festive shopping doesn’t happen within the retailer ecosystem alone. So, how can brands connect retail media with the moments and environments that influence the purchase journey beyond the store?
What happens before the shopper reaches the retailer?
The festive journey starts before the purchase. Retail media captures an important part of the shopping journey, but festive decisions are often shaped much earlier. A consumer considering a television may encounter a product while travelling to work. Someone shopping for jewellery may see a brand on the way to a mall. A family looking for a new car may research models online before visiting a dealership. A consumer preparing for Diwali may discover offers days before they actually begin shopping.
These interactions happen across digital and physical environments. And during the festive season, physical environments become particularly important. Malls, high streets, airports, transit hubs, retail districts and other high-footfall destinations see increased consumer movement as people shop, travel, meet friends and prepare for celebrations.
That makes out-of-home an important part of the festive media journey. Retail environments can extend the commerce signal. The opportunity is not to treat retail media and out-of-home as separate channels. Retail media can provide signals around what consumers are actively shopping for. Those signals can then inform how brands extend communication into the physical environments surrounding the shopping journey.
For example, a brand promoting festive offers could use commerce-led audience insights to plan out-of-home around relevant retail districts and malls.
- A jewellery brand could build visibility around premium shopping destinations.
- An electronics brand could reach consumers around malls and retail clusters.
- An automobile brand could extend communication across high-traffic business and entertainment districts before consumers reach a showroom.
The role of the physical environment changes here. It is no longer simply a place to deliver an impression. It becomes another layer through which commerce intent can be activated. Programmatic connects the two. This is where programmatic infrastructure becomes important. Instead of planning retail media, digital media, and out-of-home as isolated investments, brands can use audience and commerce signals to inform activation across channels.
A commerce-led audience can be extended into relevant physical environments through programmatic out-of-home. Location, inventory, timing, and exposure data can then help brands make those activations more contextually relevant. Mobile and CTV can extend the journey further, allowing brands to continue communication after an audience has encountered the physical campaign. The result is a connected media approach around the festive shopper:
Commerce signal → Audience activation → Physical environment → Digital extension → Outcome
For Lemma, this is where programmatic out-of-home fits into the larger festive ecosystem. It connects audience intelligence with the physical environments where consumers make decisions, while allowing exposure to be carried into digital channels.
Festive media needs to look beyond the transaction. Retail media will continue to play an important role in festive advertising because it brings brands closer to commerce and provides valuable behavioural signals. But the festive shopping journey does not begin when a consumer opens a retailer’s app.
It begins with discovery, consideration, research, and intent. It continues through commutes, malls, retail districts, airports, and other physical environments before eventually reaching the point of purchase. That is why festive planning needs to look beyond the transaction.
Retail media can provide the commerce signal. Programmatic out-of-home can take that signal into the physical world, connecting brands with consumers along the journey to purchase.
The opportunity for marketers is to build a festive media strategy that connects these environments rather than planning each one in isolation.
