Indian adspend to rise

NEW DELHI: Digital advertising expenditure in India will rise at almost three times the rate recorded by traditional media this year, GroupM, the media buying arm of WPP Group, has predicted.

According to the company, TV will generate Rs16,525 crore in ad revenues in 2012, up from just over Rs14,000 crore in 2011. Print will also yield Rs15,250 crore this year, having come in just below Rs14,000 crore over the previous 12 months.

Digital ad sales will leap from Rs1,515 crore to Rs1,969 crore in this period, overtaking outdoor, which will grow from Rs1,697 crore to Rs1,841 crore. New media will also pull further ahead of radio, where figures will rise from Rs1,458 crore in 2011 to Rs1,618 crore.

More broadly, digital sales were predicted to jump by 30% in 2012, compared with an 11% expansion for traditional channels. This year's expansion will mirror that from 2011, when traditional media grew by 13%.

Similarly, digital revenues increased by 33% in 2010 and 21% in 2009, totals coming in at 22% and 3% respectively for other channels.

Praseed Prasad, GroupM's national director, digital trading, told Livemint that infrastructural improvements and the roll out of the 4G mobile network will help fuel the growth of digital going forward.

“FMCG [and] consumer goods players are looking to move their money spent on television towards video online," Prasad added.

Max Hegerman, the head of digital at JWT, estimated that brand owners in the telecoms, automotive and financial services firms currently spend around 12% of their budgets on digital.

This totals stand at between 15% and 20% for apparel manufacturers, compared with a modest 5% for consumer goods firms, although the latter figure has improved from less than 2% a few years ago.

"There is a need for partnerships to build a core digital capability as the perception of the medium is changing from being a repository of information towards creating engagement with consumers," Hegerman said.

Previous data from Google, the online giant, suggested that India's online audience should increase in size from 100m in 2011 to 300m by 2014.

Data sourced from Livemint; additional content by Warc staff, 26 June 2012

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