Ad spend in 2019 to grow by 15% as India readies for general elections

Both GroupM, Zenith predict ad expenditure growth rates of 14-15%

Two of the country's top media agencies — GroupM and Zenith — have said advertising expenditure (adex) in calendar year 2019 will grow at the rate of 14-15 per cent as India readies for general elections in April-May. This is ahead of the 12-13 per cent growth rate forecast by the two agencies for 2018, pointing to the marketing effort that political parties are expected to put ahead of the elections.

Top advertising executives that Business Standard spoke to last week had indicated the same, saying spending on political advertising during the 2019 polls would double to Rs 30 billion from Rs 15 billion five years ago. Social media would likely account for at least a fourth of the ad spends on elections, which is about Rs 8 billion, which would be a big jump over the 2014 expenditure, they said.

Tanmay Mohanty, group chief executive officer at Zenith, corroborated this point, saying India was experiencing a digital transformation, led by mobile. “Digital will continue to accelerate both in reach and consumption. Television will be on an upward curve. The expectation for radio is that it will digitise aggressively in response to streaming services while both cinema and out-of-home (OOH) will innovate and increase reach-led investments. Print, meanwhile, will thrive on regionalisation," he said about advertising categories in India.

Some of the other high-impact properties that will drive ad spends in 2019 will be the Cricket World Cup and Indian Premier League, both of which will also be held in the first half of the year, the two media agencies said in their latest forecast.

Thanks to all this advertising activity, GroupM said India would contribute $1.35 billion (or Rs 95 billion) of incremental ad spends in 2019, emerging as the third largest contributor to global spends after China and the US. "Even though India's total ad economy is a mere quarter of the others' combined heft. India's 14 per cent ad investment (or adex) growth is rooted in 7 per cent real consumer spending growth," GroupM's Futures Director Adam Smith, who has authored the report, said.

Apart from China, the US and India, seven other countries would contribute to adex growth in 2019, Smith said, including Japan, UK, Philippines, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and Russia. Together, these countries would contribute 83 per cent to adex growth (in 2019), with the balance coming from smaller nations.    

While GroupM's 2019 adex report pegs India's total ad market size at around Rs 800 billion, Zenith's forecast pegs India's ad market size at Rs 721 billion (for next year). At the end of 2018, India's ad market size, according to Zenith, will be Rs 626 billion, while GroupM's estimate pegs India's ad market size at Rs 693 billion.

Zenith also said markets like India would continue to play an important role in driving growth in global ad spends, as companies across categories increasingly indulged in brand-building and marketing.