After a downfall in ad spends due to the global pandemic, India will witness an estimated ad growth of 23 %, says the GroupM futures report ‘This Year, Next Year’ (TYNY) 2021.
The report further forecasts India’s advertising investment to reach an estimated Rs. 80,123 crores this year. This represents an estimated growth of 23.2% for the calendar year 2021 over Rs 65,053 crore in 2020. The pandemic resulted in a fall of -21.5% in 2020.
The reports also forecast India to be the 9th largest market on ad spend in 2021. India will be the 6th largest contributor to incremental ad spend in 2021 globally and also the 2nd fastest growing market among the Top 10 countries.
Of the INR 15,000crs of incremental ad spend in 2021, the digital share would be at 40%. The digital share of overall India ad spend is estimated to be at 35% in 2021. The Non- (TV & Digital) share of overall India ad spend is predicted to be 20 % in 2021.
With FMCG and e-commerce laying the foundation, Auto, Telecom, Retail, Durable are predicted to be growth drivers of India ad spend in 2021, states the TYNY report.
The print has witnessed the most profound impact in value followed by TV, Outdoor & Cinema. At the same time, Digital remained to be the least impacted medium.
Television is estimated to grow at 18% to touch ad spends of Rs 35,914 crore. In 2020, the medium declined by 14% to Rs 30,436 crore. Digital is expected to grow at 28% to reach Rs 27,700 crore.
GroupM also released a report on trends that will influence the Ad industry.
According to the report, The 2020 pandemic turned out to be an opportunity in crisis for OTT industry in India.
The reports further stated that, In India, the homegrown broadcaster & independent OTTs at an early stage only had adopted hybrid multi-tiered monetisation model by giving the audience the choice of both free, ad-supported content & premium subscription offering. This gives advertisers plenty of opportunities to reach consumers through engaging video formats and achieve real outcomes in a device-agnostic world.
The report says that In 2021, this advertising channel will continue to have a lion share in programmatic spends & will also bring incremental budgets from the traditional/linear TV pie. With increased spends, we will also see advertisers adapting to more evolved, efficient & effective programmatic buying methods like PMPs (Private MarketPlace) to get a unified consumer view & thus maximising the ROI from video spends.
The Customer-Convenience Imperative
E-commerce platforms have become an indispensable digital channel to reach target audiences. With increased spends, we will also see advertisers adapting to more evolved, efficient & effective programmatic buying methods like PMPs (Private MarketPlace) to get a unified consumer view & thus maximising the ROI from video spends.
The industry is recognizing that creativity is the first step to grabbing attention and enhancing the influence, and media buying should aim to match advertising messages with real consumer behaviours, not just attributes. Brands need to embrace AI to boost personalization at scale, stated the report.
Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer, Wavemaker India said, “It has been an interesting year for digital marketers as the nation-wide lockdown brought about exponential growth in certain trends which were already on the up – whether immersive experiences like gaming, the rise of audio or influencer marketing. People have started gaining interest in localized content and now OTT – audio or video, has become a major part of their entertainment. We are also moving towards an era of fragmented social media, where creators will take precedence over communities. Also, with the consumer becoming more conscious by the day, we will see empathy becoming a constant thread in brand communications.”
Sharing some light on the trends, Bharat Khatri, Country Head, Xaxis India said, “Brands are aggressively looking at deploying new tools, data & cloud infrastructures which has resulted in the acceleration of digital transformation post Covid-19. With the increase in demand for different platforms, creativity and localized content, the advertisers have plenty of opportunities to reach consumers through engaging via different audio/video formats & achieve real outcomes in a device agnostic world. In short, the brands are continuously looking out for new ways to reach out to connect with their consumers and make the relationship stronger. We also see that Gen Z has been making a lot of their decision based social media platforms and this coincides with the rise in new age ecommerce platforms.”