Mumbai : Ad-spend in India is set to grow 13% in 2016 with ecommerce players, telecom operators and mobile handset makers leading the way, forecasts ZenithOptimedia. The firm’s global ad report predicts that ad spend on television will grow 15% year-on-year in next calendar, while ad spend on print will be 10% higher and that on digital space by upwards of 20%, as the country is expected to benefit from sustained, healthy economic growth and strengthening personal consumption.
“It’s been over 18 months of the new government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Last year this time it had captured the collective consciousness of the country and we entered 2015 with a strongly positive consumer and business sentiment. This irrational exuberance has tempered down to a more rational optimism and all the current economic and sentiment indicators suggest that the forward view remains positive,” said Anupriya Acharya, group chief executive officer at ZenithOptimedia India.
“Ecommerce, telecom, mobile phones are expected to have the maximum growth followed by automobiles and FMCGs,” she said.
With ad spends growing at double-digit annual rates in India, the market is likely to expand by $3 billion between 2015 and 2018, the report says.
According to the ZenithOptimedia report, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam, which are known as fast-track Asian markets, are witnessing rapid growth on the back of western technology and practices. It also reveals that China accounts for 74% of ad spend in fast-track Asia, so its slowdown naturally has a large effect on the region as a whole.
The report says India is the only country among the BRIC nations of Brazil, Russia, India and China that continues to grow rapidly on a large scale, making it a distinct hotspot of ad spend growth.
China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Taiwan Thailand and Vietnam, which are also known as fast-track Asian markets, are witnessing rapid growth on the back of western technology and practices, it said.
The report predicts that ad spend in 2016 fast-track Asian markets will grow 8.4% in 2016, down from 8.9% this year, mainly due to a slowdown in China that accounts for 74% of total ad spend in these markets. The average annual ad spend growth in fast-track Asian markets was 14.7% between 2009 and 2014. Global ad expenditure is forecast to grow by 4.7% to reach $579 billion in 2016, helped by Summer Olympics in the US and UEFA European football championship.
Global advertising expenditure by medium
The internet is still the fastest growing medium by some distance.

Internet adspend is predicted to grow 18% year on year by the end of 2015, with an average of 13% annual growth between 2015 and 2018. Iinternet advertising will account for 29.0% of global ad expenditure across 2015, up from 25.5% in 2014.
By 2018,internet advertising is forecasted to attract 36.6% of all global advertising, overtaking television for the first time to become the world’s largest advertising medium.
Display is the fastest-growing internet sub-category, with 15% annual growth forecast to 2018.
Traditional display (such as banners), online video and social media are all included.
All three types of display have benefited from the transition to programmatic buying, which allows agencies to target audiences more efficiently and more effectively, with personalised creative.
Online video and social media continue to grow much faster – a forecasted annual growth of 20% and 22% respectively over the same period.
Paid search is expected to grow at an average rate of 12% a year to 2018, driven by continued innovation from the search engines, such as personalising search results, automatically matching search terms to content available on advertiser websites, and enhancing local and real-time search.
Looking at internet adspend by device reveals the dramatic ascent of mobile advertising (including internet ads delivered to smartphones and tablets, whether display, classified or search, and including in-app ads).
Mobile advertising will end 2015 up 71% year on year, with a forecasted average annual growth rate of 32% a year between 2015 and 2018, driven by the rapid spread of devices and improvements in user experiences. By contrast, desktop internet advertising is set to grow at an average of just 1% a year.
Television is currently the dominant advertising medium, expected to attract 38% of total spend in 2015. As mentioned earlier, however, it is now expect the internet to overtake television to become the largest medium in 2018.