At 46%, TV leads in political ad insertions in Jan-Mar 2023: TAM report

As many as 9 State Assembly Elections are scheduled to be held across India in 2023. Of these Tripura, Meghalaya, and Nagaland have already held their State Assembly elections in February this year. Now, Karnataka is readying for Assembly polls on May 10 and currently high decibel election campaigns are underway by political parties of all hues.

Political advertising takes up a huge chunk of the ad space across media in the run-up to the voting day. In its report on political advertising during the January-March 2023 period, TAM shares some interesting numbers across TV, Print and Radio mediums.

As per TAM report, Television saw a steady growth in ad insertions of the Political Parties – growing from 22% in January to 32% in February and further to 45% in March. Political ad insertions grew by 46% and 44% on TV in Feb’23 and Mar’23 as compared to Jan’23 and Feb’23, respectively.

Political ad insertions in print publications increased by 29% in Mar’23 as compared to Feb’23. Political ads in print started out with 32% in January, with a slight dip at 30% in February before climbing to 39% in March.

Political Ads on Radio witnessed the highest ad insertions during Jan’23 at 47%, which was higher that the peak TV ads of political parties. However, in the subsequent months it saw a decline – 27% in February and 26% in March.

In terms of ad volumes the Congress party dominated political advertising on TV with 20% share of the ad volumes in Jan-Mar’23 followed by PMK with 18% share. The BJP was placed third with 15% share.

The Top 5 political advertisers together added 75% share of the ad volumes on TV.

The top 2 National Parties, Congress (18%) and BJP (14%), together had 32% share of the print ad space in Jan-Mar’23.

On Radio, the Top 5 political parties together added 87% share of the political ad volumes during Jan-Mar’23. The BJP was on top with 45% share of the ad volumes during Jan-Mar’23.