India’s adex to grow 14% to reach Rs 80,678 cr in 2019: GroupM’s forecast

GroupM, the media investment group of WPP, today announced their advertising expenditure (adex) forecasts for 2019. As per the GroupM futures report ‘This Year, Next Year’ (TYNY) 2019, India tops the list as the fastest growing major ad market in the world. TYNY forecasts India’s advertising investment to reach an estimated Rs 80,678 crore this year. This represents strong estimated growth of 14 per cent for the calendar year 2019 (approximately 2x of the GDP growth). 

India will be the third highest contributor to the incremental ad spends, only behind China and the US and the tenth fastest growing country with respect to ad spends across the globe. 

The Cricket World Cup and Elections in 2019 are expected to boost ad spends. FMCG, Auto, Retail, e-commerce, Tech/ Telecom are expected to contribute to two-third of the adex. 

Speaking on the TYNY 2019 report, Sam Singh, CEO, GroupM South Asia, said, “While we are estimating the global advertising expenditure to grow at 3.6 per cent, India would be witnessing the fastest growth at 14 per cent and reach an estimated Rs 80,578 crore. This would be approximately 2x of the estimated GDP growth in India. This also makes India the 3rd largest adex growth to the worldwide ad spends. We expect sustained and stable media investment growth across categories in India.” 

This year, 37 per cent of incremental ad spends will go towards digital advertising, including mobile. The scale at which this digital transformation is witnessed, GroupM estimates the Digital Adex to continue to grow by 30 per cent in 2019 to Rs 16,038 crore. 

Prasanth Kumar, Chief Operating Officer, GroupM South Asia, noted, “Indian ad spends’ CAGR between 2014 and 2018 is at 13 per cent, and 2019 expected to witness a higher growth. India is unique among key markets and will witness growth in all media segments and not just digital. Offline media is poised to continue to grow and will contribute to being around 80 per cent of ad spends in 2019.” 

Television will continue to grow at a steady pace. This year, the growth rate for TV is estimated to be 15 per cent. 

Print is estimated to grow by 2.2 per cent and the share of print to all media is expected to be at 23 per cent. While it is expected for both English and regional languages to grow, regional will see slightly higher growth.Vernacular will continue to thrive on both TV and print. 

This year, Radio is expected to grow at 15 per cent, which is higher than the last couple of years. Cinema will grow at 25 per cent in 2019, as 2018 saw more titles winning audience at the box office. In 2019, GroupM expects cinema to shift from title-based advertising to continued advertising through the year. Lower tax on cinema tickets is expected to drive more footfalls to theatres. 

Trends that will shape the media industry in India in 2019 

GroupM also presented some of the biggest trends that will shape the media industry in India in 2019. The trends presented were around emerging technology, data, content creation and distribution put the consumer at the center and underline the theme of digital driving the change across all formats of media. The trends touched upon the TRAI tariff order implementation as well its potential impact of increasing original programming and investments on content across broadcaster networks. 

Tushar Vyas, President Growth and Transformation, GroupM South Asia, commented, “With the surge of technology, better insights and relevant engagement across different platforms, we are expecting marketers to build superior consumer connections for brands. 2019 will witness a faster growth in digital and we are expecting digital to be at 20 per cent media mix. As we are witnessing one in every three Indians digitally connected, we can expect the convergence of data, digital and content to deliver seamless and powerful solutions to brands as well as constantly adding inventive practices into the market.” 

‘This Year, Next Year’ is part of GroupM’s media and marketing forecasting series drawn from data supplied by holding company WPP’s worldwide resources in advertising, public relations, market research, and specialist communications. The TYNY report is the most comprehensive understanding of the estimated media spends by advertisers in the current year. It also highlights some of the industry sectors that will have a major effect on advertising spends across media.

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