Ad spend in India sees double-digit growth at Rs67,603 cr in 2019

The advertising market in India is expected to grow at 10.4 per cent in 2020 on the back of the 11 per cent growth recorded in 2019, says Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2020 unveiled at a function today.

Total advertisement expenditure (Adex) in India is expected to move up to Rs74,650 crore in 2020, an increase of Rs7,048 crore from Rs67,603 crore in the previous year, the report says.

Advertisement expenditure in India is set to grow dramatically over the next five years, with India already growing at twice the global rate, which is pegged at 5.4 per cent, it adds.

With the IPL, ICC T20 World Cup season and good spending by OTT, mobile wallet brands and e-commerce platforms, total advertisement expenditure in the country as all set to exceed estimates, according to the report. 

While the Pitch Madison Advertising Report predicts a subdued first half for Adex, it expects a buoyant second half, especially for the fourth quarter of this year. The projected growth figure for 2020 is at 10.4 per cent and the total Adex is expected to move up to Rs74,650 crore. Of the Rs 7,048 crore increase, Rs4,387 crore (62 per cent) will be come from digital media, the report points out.

Adex growth in 2019 was in fact retarded by the economic slowdown, woes relate to TRAI’s New Tariff Order and weak consumer sentiment, which limited growth to 11 per cent against the projected growth rate of 13.04 per cent. 

However, on the upside, Rs6,695 crore was added to the Adex in absolute terms, which will be the second-highest addition to Adex in a single year in the whole of the last decade.

“What a year 2019 has been when media found itself battling serious headwinds. It started with the largest medium television battling the NTO order and got further bruised by the collapse of the popular FTA channels and ended with the dull festive season on account of the economic slowdown in Q3 and Q4, the only blip we saw was surprisingly in the second quarter because of IPL, World Cup and the Lok Sabha elections,” Sam Balsara, chairman and managing director, Madison World, said.

“As we see it, the year can be neatly divided into two halves, H1 and H2 and the two halves behaved differently, H1 grew very well at higher than our forecast at 20 per cent on the back of the three events but H2 collapsed with a growth of just 3 per cent over H2 ’18. In fact, H2 ’19 grew by as much as 7 per cent compared to H1 ’19, whereas in all previous years so far H2 has been the larger contributor to the year,” he added.

On a global scale, Balsara said Adex in the 12 largest markets is now estimated at $498 billion against $9.7 billion in India. "Interestingly India grew by more than twice the average global growth rate of 5.4 per cent, but we lost our pole position of being the fastest-growing advertising market in 2019 to Russia and slid to the second position,” he said.

He said TV continued to be the largest contributor to Adex with a 37 per cent share, but with lower growth rate of 8 per cent. Print followed with a 30 per cent share of Adex but with a low growth rate of just 3 per cent in 2019 – the fifth consecutive year that print has grown the least of all mediums. "Digital that grew by 32 per cent last year now contributes a whopping 23 per cent to Indian Adex. I may mention though that globally digital has crossed the 50 per cent mark," he pointed out. 

He said TV is expected to continue to lead ad growth in 2020 too, with a growth rate of 28.4 per cent, against 27 per cent in 2019 with a share of almost Rs20,000 crore. TV will continue to be the largest medium with a 36 per cent share of AdEx, but will have a subdued growth rate of 6.8 per cent. According to the report, print will lose 3 percentage points in terms of share of Adex and end up with a 27 per cent share, yet registering a 2 per cent growth.