How digital is overtaking TV advertising, LV Krishnan explains

Addressing the question of whether digital as a medium has overtaken television, LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM Media Research, highlighted that TAM has already seen Rs 40,000 crores of advertising spent on the digital medium and has overtaken television from advertising spend level.

When comparing the growth of ad duration/insertion for both TV and digital medium from 2019 to 2022, digital has grown by over 90% to reach 194 impressions while TV grew only 25%.

Krishnan also emphasised that some of the sectors that have consistently increased their advertising on digital mediums include services, banking and finance, consumer durables, education, etc.

“All of them were earlier heavily investing in television a couple of years back and are now emerging as the big spenders on digital platforms,” he added.

Commenting further on whether digital ad spends are already higher than television, Krishnan stated that TAM had predicted digital to account for over Rs 31,000 crore of advertising spending, actually compared to around Rs 40,000 crore of television ad spending.

“But today, Google has already crossed Rs 25,000 crore of advertising revenue, Facebook India covers Rs 17,000 crore, and the two e-commerce platforms, Amazon and Flipkart, have delivered ad spends of Rs 6,000 crore,” he said.

In the views of Krishnan, the content taste of the audience is now moving more towards regional and local relevance.

Statistically, the four South regional GEC consumption has seen 21% time spent in 2022; next is Hindi GEC which has slightly declined to 23%; Hindi Movie which has increased to 14%, Other Regional Movie rose to 4%; south Regional News increased to 3% while Hindi news declined to 3%, as per the data revealed by Krishnan.

“Today, regional and local relevance is becoming increasingly important and because digital is catering to that particular localisation of content action, that's where you see the growth and they are eating into the television market substantially,” he said.

Furthermore, Krishnan also pointed out that in the case of linear television, it is the national brands that are emphasising it.

“It essentially means that no longer are brands or audiences interested in knowing which platform the consumers are watching content. What they are basically interested in seeing is good engaging content and if that good engaging content is available on a national platform which includes the likes of a Hotstar or a Prime Video, the consumers don't have a problem at all actually,” he said.

He also went on to add that television is no longer a family platform and is now becoming individualised and personalised in nature.

“While the total consumption of video in the home has doubled up because of streaming platforms, television’s contribution to that particular total video viewing has declined,” he said.

Moreover, he also went on to add that like television was a platform for ‘delivering reach’, digital is also emerging as the same, except the fact that there may be plenty of channels contributing to the reach, rather than just 10 channels.

“Television is held together today by tentpole properties, actually. So, it's no longer a game wherein every content that is put on television will work. It's those tentpole properties, be it sports, news or soaps, it is one or two of these properties that are making or breaking that particular television channel,” he added.

Additionally, he also went on to highlight that there are two advantages to television and said, “On broadcast TV, you identify the core group that you are catering to and deliver to them on a continuous basis, which means that you’re not looking at increasing the consumption of content but rather bringing in new audiences.”

“On the connected TV - which is the new future of television that's shaping up - you can pocket in certain audiences, geography, localities and profiles and stay connected with the audiences through localised, regionalised, hyper-local content on a continuous basis,” he added.

“If you look at the number of advertisers between 2019 and 2022 on television, the advertisers in television have come down from 10,000 to around 8,500. During the same period, digital has grown from 26,000 advertisers to 87,000 advertisers,” he stated.

Moreover, brands indulging in TV ads also declined from 16,000 to 13,000, but digital flourished and went from having 33,000 to reach 1,08,000, added Krishnan.

“The television growth is largely coming from the same advertisers, primarily in the FMCG and durable categories who are reinvesting some more extra money every year into television, whereas the digital growth is coming from a long line up of long-tail advertisers who are investing into digital platform and saying let me try digital in nature,” he stated.

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