India’s Digital ad market pegged to grow at 31.96%: DAN Digital Report 2019

As of 2018, the Indian advertising market stands at Rs 61,878 crore ($8.76 billion) and is estimated to grow with a CAGR of 10.62 per cent till 2021 to reach a market size of Rs 85,250 crore ($12.06 billion). The digital advertising market size is around Rs 10,819 crore ($1.3 billion) and the estimated CAGR growth will be 31.96 per cent, while the market will expand to Rs 24,920 crore ($3.52 billion), as revealed by the Dentsu Aegis Network Digital Report 2019. 

According to the report, the advertising expenditure on the digital advertising formats is led by social media (29 per cent), followed by search (25 per cent), display (21 per cent) and video (20 per cent). 

Television and print take the largest share of media spends at 70 per cent aggregated, followed by digital media at 17 per cent. Digital will contribute 29 per cent of the ad market size by 2021, as per the DAN report. 

Currently, BFSI is the biggest spender on digital media with a contribution of 38 per cent of all their marketing budgets. This is followed by consumer durables (36 per cent), e-commerce (34 per cent) and telecom (31 per cent). FMCG spends heavily on the television (63 per cent) and the retail sector spends largely on print (54 per cent) medium of advertising. 

Digital transformation is being adopted at a substantial scale, which in turn, is increasing the adoption of digital media at a rapid pace. 

Currently, 18 per cent of all digital media is bought programmatically and has grown from 15 per cent last year. The major reason for the growth are technological advancements,  improvements in data science & analytics, implementation of algorithm to automate various procedures, better ad fraud detection and improved data policies & regulations. The rapid increase in the penetration of mobile devices and internet has led to 47 per cent of digital media spends on mobile devices and is expected to grow at CAGR of 49 per cent to reach spends share of 67 per cent by 2021. 

Machine Learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) will see heavy adoption and implementation in various media in the near future. DAN states that the main drivers of the growth of digital media will be voice, vernacular and video. Apart from this, some of the other drivers of digital media growth will be engaging mobile experiences based on augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). In the near future, data-driven decision-making and business strategies will be more transformative and will entail building and merging of different types of business models and its implementation. 

Commenting on the report, Ashish Bhasin, Chairman & CEO - South Asia, Dentsu Aegis Network, said, “Today, you no longer have to sell ‘digital’ to a client. This is the only medium which gives you a very measurable ROI, and almost an immediate impact. We have about 500 million people on the internet today and in the next three to four years, another 300-400 million people will join in. Concurrently, the next phase of internet users will speak regional languages and as a result, you will probably see a lot more advertising in regional languages on digital in the years to come.” 

Continuing further, Bhasin said, “Dentsu Aegis Network understands this scope. Consequently, we are over-weight on digital. Of our 3,500 people, more than 1,600 are in our digital agencies. Nearly 48 per cent of our revenues come from digital at a time when the market average in India is still 15-17 per cent. As leaders in digital, we recognise the need for an industry level research report which not only covers the market size, but also gives a direction towards which this industry is moving. The lack of detailed and accurate digital advertising spends is surprising for a medium that lends itself to measurement. It is to fulfil this gap that all the 8 agencies of the Dentsu Aegis Network – Isobar, iProspect, Merkle Sokrati, WATConsult, Dentsu Webchutney, SVG Media/ Columbus, Fractal and Amnet collaborated again for the 3rd edition of our Digital Report that extensively covers digital trends, spends and insights across all sectors. The report has now become the industry standard for Digital Marketing and this year the report summary will also be available on Alexa.”