INS to urge government to increase print media ad spends

The Indian Newspaper Society (INS) plans to approach the government, seeking an increase in its ad spends in print media. Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur had informed the Rajya Sabha this week that there has been an almost 54% decline in the government’s ad spend in print in the last three years.

“We had taken this up a couple of months ago with the government. We need to revive this agenda now. Spending on print ads has dramatically gone down in the last three years. The government should increase the spending on print ads because people rely heavily on this medium. We will soon approach the government for this,” said an INS official.

In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, Thakur said that the government had spent Rs 429 crore on print media advertising in 2018-19, which shrunk to Rs 295 crore in 2019-20. It further fell to Rs 197.49 crore in 2020-21.

A similar decline was mentioned for the electronic media as well.

The INS has been consistently urging the government to provide financial assistance to print media in view of the massive losses suffered due to the pandemic. They had also requested Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to hike government advertisement rates by 50%.

The society recently wrote to Thakur, seeking an extension of the present Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) rates for print media till March 2022.

“Due to the pandemic, the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) has not been able to conduct their circulation audits for the last two years. The DAVP rates are indexed based on these audited numbers. So we have asked the government to allow the old DAVP rates to continue till March 31, 2022,” the official said.

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