Celeb endorsement on TV picks up in June, records 63% rise in Ad Volumes

Continuing with its analysis of TV advertising in the COVID-19 era, the 6^th edition of TAM AdEx’s report reveals that TV Ad Volumes continued to stabilise in the June-July’20 period, with Week 26 witnessing the highest Ad Volumes among weeks ranging from 23 to 28. Comparing Week 28 to Week 23, there has been a growth of 31 per cent in Television Ad Volumes. Average Ad Volumes/Day for the months of June’20 and July’20 remained almost equal at 982 hours and 987 hours, respectively.

Ad volume

A stable trend in tally of categories, advertisers and brands was seen during the last 6 weeks. There was a 7 per cent rise in average number of advertisers and brands during Weeks 26-28 compared to Weeks 23-25. At 2,161, Week 27 saw the maximum number of advertisers and brands. Unlock Week 1 (that is, Week 23) saw a rise in the tally of new advertisers and brands compared to Week 22. Week 26 saw a peak in count of new advertisers (245) and brands (358) in June’20.

Not surprisingly, given the consumer buying behaviour in these times, ‘Personal Care/Personal Hygiene’ sector topped with 22 per cent share, followed by F&B sector with a share of 19 per cent. The list of top 10 categories was dominated by the FMCG sector, with Toilet Soaps leading the list. The Top 50 categories hold a 75 per cent share of TV Ad Volumes.

Top Adviser

The report further states that during Weeks 23-28, the Top 10 advertisers together contributed 50 per cent share of the TV Ad Volumes. HUL alone had more than 1/4th of the Ad Volume share, followed by Reckitt Benckiser with a 6 per cent share. Over 680 advertisers have consistently advertised during Weeks 23-28 on Television.

During Weeks 23-28, 1,400+ advertisers exclusively advertised on Television, compared to Print and Radio mediums, with over 40 categories advertising only on Television compared to Print and Radio. These included Godrej Consumer Products, Cadburys India, PepsiCo, L’Oreal India, Glaxo Smithkline, among others.

Channel genre-wise ad volumes

GECs

Among GEC genres, Hindi GECs topped with a 22 per cent share of Ad Volumes, followed by Tamil GECs at 13 per cent. Malayalam, Bengali and Kannada GECs had an almost equal share of Ad Volumes. Weekly Ad Volumes for Hindi, Regional and English GECs saw a similar trend.

News

Hindi News (National + Regional) had a 33 per cent share of Ad Volumes, followed by Bengali News at 9 per cent. Three Southern language genres, except Malayalam, were among the Top 10 list of genres. Ad Volumes of Regional and National News channels saw a growth with a minor drop in Week 27.

Movies

Hindi Movies had a huge 47 per cent share of Ad Volumes, followed by Bhojpuri and Telugu movies with an equal share of 8 per cent. A continuous rise in Ad Volumes of the Movie genre was noticed, with a minor drop in Week 27. Ad Volumes of Hindi and Regional Movies were almost equal during Week 24-26.

Celebrity endorsements on TV

After a fall during the lockdown period, there was a 63 per cent rise in Ad Volumes of celebrity endorsed ads in June’20 compared to April’20. During the April-June’20 period, celebrity endorsed ads had a 21 per cent share of Ad Volumes on TV.

Virat Kohli topped the list of most visible celebrities on TV, with an average visibility of 10 hours/day across all channels. He was followed by Akshay Kumar who had an average visibility of 9 hours/day across all channels. Kareena Kapoor was a tad below at 8 hours/day. She was followed by Kiara Advani, who had an average visibility of 6 hours/day across all channels. MS Dhoni, Anil Kapoor, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Amitabh Bachchan had an average visibility of 5 hours/day across all channels. Shah Rukh Khan, who was last seen in ‘Zero’, had an average visibility of 4 hours/day across all channels.

Among all professions, Film Actress leads in endorsing brands with a 43 per cent share of Ad Volumes, followed by Film Actor (36%) and Sportsperson (15%).

During April-June’20, ‘Personal Care/Personal Hygiene’ sector topped in terms of ads endorsed by celebrities, followed by F&B sector. Celebrity endorsement was highest for the ‘Toilet Soaps’ category with a 12 per cent share of Ad Volumes. 7 out of Top 10 categories belonged to FMCG sector, while the remaining 3 were from the E-commerce Sector.

Sports Genre

With no sports events taking place due to the global pandemic, Live programming saw a drop in April-June’20, compared to January-March’20. However, Live programming showed a steady growth from May onwards, and in June’20, a 5-fold growth in live sports programming was witnessed, compared to April’20.

Soccer, the only substitute to Cricket, ruled the Ad Volume pie on Television with a share of 67 per cent. ICC led in the sports genre with 17 per cent of the total advertising share during April-July’20 (till July 11, 2020). The Top 5 categories accounted for almost 50 per cent of the total ad volume share of the Sports genre.

English soccer tournament Premier league was the second Live soccer tournament during the COVID-19 period. Weekday matches garnered 53 per cent more advertising, compared to Weekend matches of Premier League. The tournament attracted 16 advertisers from 24 categories promoting 47 brands.