Festive season ad spends outlook brightens

9% growth in ad spends seen; tier 2 markets and movies, news and speciality channels seen driving growth

BestMediaInfo Bureau | Delhi | October 27, 2011

A recent study by Percept Media forecasts a brighter festive season for TV and newspaper media. Both these media are subsidised for consumers through advertising and hence ad spends are critical for the media industry.

The study forecasts a good growth of 9 per cent in festive advertising spends compared with last year. The festival season marks the highest revenue period for Indian media. Over the years the contribution of festival season revenue to full year media revenue has reduced, but it still continues to be the best quarter of the year, contributing about 30 per cent of annual revenues.

The study forecasts signs of a healthy growth during the 13 weeks of the festival season with volume growth of 15 per cent in newspapers and 18 per cent in television. The value growth is forecast to be 9 per cent, considering the different categories driving TV growth. Tier 2 towns were seen leading growth in print media.

Even during festive period, the Top 10 categories for TV and print are very different. TV has a lot more of FMCG while education, independent retailers and real estate are the mainstay for print. Across both print and TV, independent retailers, 4-wheelers and cellphones categories are found to be in the top slots.

Contrary to popular belief, major TV growth is expected through news, movies, regional and niche/speciality channels.  Sports as a genre has de-grown over the last year

In the case of print, metro based editions are stagnating while regional papers and editions in smaller markets are showing big growth in space consumption. Mysore, Madurai, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Kota, Ludhiana, Raipur, Jabalpur are some of the markets outside metro cities which are showing higher growth for print.

A deeper analysis shows that the Main Edition advertising in metros is showing a dip of 2 per cent which is made up by the growth in tier 2 markets. Smaller market show robust growth across Main Editions and City Supplements. Revenues from main editions are expected to have fallen even more as most major newspapers sensed this and offered special schemes for full-page advertising, which would have lowered the yield.

Radio registers a growth of 35 per cent in advertising minutes during the festival season. Based on industry sources, however, Y-O-Y no-growth is forecast for radio. Similarly, Outdoor is forecast to remain at the same levels as last year.

Marketers naturally hope for a big festive season. This year we have seen a lot more offers during this critical buying period. The sentiment after the festive season is driven more by ground reality and hence reflects the true situation. It is seen that immediately after the festive high, advertising takes a dip. Television in 2010 took a 10 per cent dip and print a massive 41 per cent dip in the four weeks immediately after Deepavali. What will happen this year? The market sentiment this year looks a little bleak. A drop in print main issue advertising doesn't augur well for the print industry.

Said Shripad Kulkarni, CEO, Percept's media company Allied Media, “Cricket had sucked in major budgets on TV and the pre-festive period did scare the print industry – with a big dip in ad spends in the months of June- July  this year. Advertisers however have come back to print for the festive period. The extra emphasis on City Supplements and on weekends suggests a finetuned 'last mile' role given to newspapers by the marketing fraternity. Metros are still big markets but growth here is slowing down and smaller markets are growing faster for most categories – so more emphasis on regional media was only expected and will continue to gather momentum.”

The study compared the TV time and print ad space consumption for 2010 against 2011. Of the 13 weeks, actual data for 9 weeks was already released by Nielsen Ad Ex, which, along with Industry Information on Time and Space availability on TV and Print Media, was the basis for this detailed analysis. The study covered display, financial and FD categories only for print.

Info@BestMediaInfo.com

Info@BestMediaInfo.com