Did this festive season marked the highest revenue period for Indian Media: Percept Media's Study

The study forecasts a good growth of 9% in Festive advertising spends as compared to last year.

The festive marks the highest revenue period for Indian Media. Over the years the contribution of the Festive Period to Full year media revenue has reduced ' yet it still continues to be the best quarter of the year, contributing about 30% of annual revenues.

The study forecasts signs of a healthy growth during the 13 weeks of Festive with volume growth of 15% in Newspapers & 18% in Television. The value growth is forecasted to be 9%, considering the different categories driving TV growth & Tier 2 towns leading growth in Print media.

Even during festive period the Top 10 categories for TV and Print are very different ' with TV having a lot more of FMCG while Education, Independent Retailers and Real Estate are the mainstay for Print. Across both Print & TV, Independent Retailers, Four Wheelers & Cell phones categories are found to be in the top slots.

Contrary to Popular belief, major TV growth is expected through News, Movies, Regional & Niche/Speciality channels. Sports as a genre has de-grown over the last year

In the case of Print, Metro based editions are stagnating while the Regional papers and editions in smaller markets are showing a big growth in space consumption. Mysore, Madurai, Coimbatore, Kozhikode, Kota, Ludhiana, Raipur, Jabalpur are some of the markets outside metro cities which are showing higher growth (for Print).

A deeper dive shows that the Main Edition advertising in Metros is showing a dip of 2% which is made up by the growth in the Tier II markets.Smaller market show robust growth across Main Editions and City Supplements. The Revenues from main editions are expected to have fallen even more as most major newspapers sensed this and offered special schemes for Full Page advertising ' which would have lowered the yield.

Radio registers a growth of 35% in advertising minutes during Festive viz-a-viz non-festive months. Based on Industry Sources, however, YOY no growth in forecasted for Radio medium. Similarly Outdoor is forecast to remain at the same levels as last year.

Marketers naturally hope for a BIG festive season. This year we have seen a lot more offers during this critical buying period. The sentiment after the festive season is driven more by ground reality and hence reflects the true situation. It is seen that immediately after the festive high, advertising take a dip. Television, in 2010 took a 10% dip and Print a massive 41% dip! In the 4 weeks immediately after Deepavali. What will happen this year? The market sentiment this year looks a little bleak. A drop in print main issue advertising doesn't augur well for the print industry.

Said Shripad Kulkarni, CEO ' Percept's Media AOR Company Allied Media - " Cricket had sucked in major budgets on TV and the pre festive period did scare the print industry ' with a big dip in adspends in the months of June ' July this year. Advertisers ' however have come back on to Print for festive period. The extra emphasis on City Supplements and on weekends suggests a finetuned "Last mile' role on the Path to Purchase of Consumers ' given to Newspapers given by the Marketing Industry. Metros are still big markets but growth here is slowing down and smaller markets are growing faster for most categories ' so more emphasis on Regional media beyond metros was only expected and will continue to gather momentum. As of now it looks like the period after festive may play a spoilsport. But who knows ' one of the sunsrise industries (and there are many) may suddenly revv up and bring some cheer to the media".

The Study compared the TV time and Print Ad space consumption for 2010 v/s 2011. Of the 13 weeks ' actual data for 9 weeks is already released by Nielsen Ad Ex, which ' alongwith Industry Information on Time and Space availability on TV and Print Media - was the basis for this detailed analysis forecast. The study covered Display, Financial and FD categories only for Print.