As long as you have consumers, you will attract advertising: Vikram Sakhuja

Shrugging off the disruptions of the year gone by, businesses and agencies are looking for a strong revival in 2021. Over the next few weeks, Adgully – as part of its annual TRENDING NOW endeavour – will be presenting the strategies and views of a cross-section of industry leaders as they go about reclaiming lost time and market opportunities and build for a stronger future, armed with the lessons of 2020.

Vikram Sakhuja, Group CEO, Madison Media & OOH, lists a host of business in 2021 leading to the adoption of digital media. These include:

• Need for greater localisation and more optimisation of TV advertising will lead to greater role of Video.
• More online transactions will lead to sustained growth in performance and exceptional fillip to e-commerce marketing;
• Social Media obsession will continue to fuel Social Media Advertising, Influencer and Content Marketing;
• Both branding and performance will grow with e-commerce companies adopting relatively more of the former and traditional companies relatively more of the latter. Search and Display will be steady but will be used more in performance than branding.
• Need for greater marketing ROI will lead to greater use of data and technology for audience targeting will increase.

Despite the growing march of digital and its widespread adoption during the pandemic times, Sakhuja firmly believes that 2021 will not be the year when digital advertising spends will outpace TV ad spend.

The year 2020 led to a momentous shift in the way we function as a society. According to Sakhuja, the major learning for traditional media business has been to use their medium’s strength to retain consumers. “As long as you have consumers, you will attract advertising,” he affirms.