Compressed 21-day festive AdEx to rise with GST reforms spurring spending: Ashwin Padmanabhan

New Delhi: India’s festive advertising playbook is undergoing a dramatic shift. What was once a season-long blitz spread across a two-month window has now condensed into intense, shorter bursts lasting no more than 21 days, said Ashwin Padmanabhan, Chief Operating Officer, WPP Media (South Asia). He also urged caution when interpreting advertiser sentiment this year. 

Speaking exclusively to BestMediaInfo.com, Padmanbhan explained the structural change, saying, “Festive campaigns have come down to bursts of two weeks at the most. Larger festive campaigns max into about three weeks.” 

“The festive campaigns are now primarily split into two parts. A big tentpole around Dussehra, and then a smaller one closer to Diwali. Most people will spend before Dussehra, and some will spend before the next tentpole. In actuality, it has just come down to three weeks of intense campaigning,” Padmanabhan said. 

Despite early optimism, Padmanabhan urged caution when interpreting advertiser sentiment this year. The fact, Padmanabhan said, is that growth in volumes and consumer spending has been very patchy. It has not been uniformly good. Some places have seen growth, others have not, and in some cases, it has even declined. “For example, rural areas may grow in one quarter while, in that same quarter, urban areas go down. So, there has never really been uniform growth.”

He added, “Different SKUs, different brands, and different price points all have an impact on profitability, and ultimately, on the bottom line. So, it’s very difficult to predict.” 

That said, Padmanabhan gauged the sentiment, saying there does seem to be a bit more positivity going into the festive season, largely driven by the announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the GST reforms. 

He said the categories that fall into the 5% slab will benefit significantly from the GST reforms. “With the new GST regime, many advertisers have started moving from being merely positive to being optimistic,” Padmanabhan told BestMediaInfo.com. 

According to Padmanabhan, the sole driver of growth for the advertising industry is consumption and GST, as a trigger, will enable consumption, which in turn will drive advertising.

“Right now, advertising is not slowing because people don’t want to advertise; it’s slowing because consumers don’t have money to spend, and advertisers aren’t seeing ROI on sales. If consumption improves, products become more affordable, and buying becomes easier, advertising will inevitably rise,” he stated. 

He added, “The government seems sensitive to the fact that it must help drive consumption, and a large part of the reforms is designed to catalyse exactly that. GST reforms have a meaningful positive impact on the business.” 

While the festive season drives advertisers to optimise for impact, one medium is drawing particular interest - Connected TV (CTV). But Padmanabhan dismissed the notion that it should be treated as a separate digital silo.

“I won’t look at CTV as digital, first of all. When you look at the evolution of TV, it started with terrestrial distribution, moved to cable, satellite got added, and for many years, we knew it as cable and satellite. Today, we have cable, satellite and internet. So really, what you have is TV getting distributed to one more medium, which is the internet,” he said. 

According to Padmanabhan, most brands today are looking at CTV as TV being distributed on the internet, and not a digital investment. He elaborated, saying, “The audiences that they used to target earlier on cable and satellite have migrated to watching the same content distributed via the internet. They are adding CTV to that mix. It is that extension.”

With only three weeks of high-intensity advertising now defining the festive season, brands have far less time to capture consumer attention and convert it into sales. The compressed timelines demand sharper planning, bigger creative bets and flawless execution.

Yet, as Padmanabhan reminded, no amount of tactical fine-tuning can replace the fundamentals. The shorter the window, the more it hinges on whether consumers are ready to spend.