DELHI: 2019 was a mixed bag of opportunities and challenges for the advertising industry. Television primarily witnessed a great drop in its growth with an ambiguous first quarter because of the new tariff order and a slow final quarter because of the economic slowdown. While the second quarter gave some hope with IPL, cricket world cup and general elections holding the trends up, the overall performance of the industry was disappointing. The growth, as shared by GroupM in its report, was in single digit numbers, at 9.4 per cent, less than half of what it recorded in 2018 and much lesser than the estimates of 12-14 per cent predicted during the beginning of the year.
Madison Media Ultra CEO and head investments Amol Dighe shared, “As we all know, categories like FMCG, Telecom, Ecommerce, BFSI, Auto, etc. have a significant share in all Mainline Mediums. Most of these categories were affected by the economic slowdown resulting in the slowdown of advertising spends as well. We had to revise the Madison Pitch estimates in terms of growth across mediums. The growth forecast for leading mediums like TV was revised downward.”
However, mainline agencies are positive that the growth trends will change for positive in 2020, as they are pinning their hopes towards seeing a revival in the economy.
Havas Media Group managing director Mohit Joshi said that the wrapping year was a bit challenging for the industry and firm and he is expecting it to improve in 2020. “2019 was a tough year but we managed to reach our aggressive targets. Economic slowdown did have an impact on the advertising spends especially on our auto and white good clients. For 2020, I see a slow Q1, however, I am hopeful that it will balance out in the next three quarters,” he shared with his fingers crossed.
Dighe is expecting more product launches with a revival in the economy in 2020. He said, “We are all hoping for a better 2020. We expect that consumer demand will pick up in 2020 as the government is taking steps to revive the economy, which will lead to higher spends on advertising. 2020 might see more product launches which were postponed due to the weak consumer demand in 2019.”
GroupM has predicted the growth for television to be 11.1 per cent in 2020, stating that the global economy will remain soft during the year. It has predicted that India will remain the world leader in advertising across media and ad spends will continue to grow at 12-13 per cent each year from 2020 to 2024.
The industry seems quite positive about the growth in the sector however economic uncertainty within the country and the ongoing situation of unrest will surely impact the overall performance, which will be interesting to see through the year.
