TAM Media’s analysis of the festive ad spends projections for the South markets

The marketing world moves at the speed of light. But after the pandemic that speed has further increased as brands are enthusiastically geared up for the festive season. Adgully hosted the third edition of CMOs’ Charcha 2022 in Bengaluru last week. Keeping in mind the post-pandemic revival story, the theme for CMOs’ Charcha 2022 was ‘The Festive Blueprint for Brands’. 

With businesses and brands bullish on growth, expectations are high for the festival season this year, which rolled out with the Raksha Bandhan-Independence Day festivities, and will be followed by Janmashtami, Ganesh Mahotsav, before flowing into Onam and forward. As has been the norm over the years, festive season is the period when brands rev up their marketing activities and tap into the positive consumer sentiments. A major part of the annual sales happen during this period. Thus, not surprisingly, all eyes are on the festive season this year, as it would be the marker for how strong the country’s economic revival is post the pandemic and also set the future course of growth. 

CMOs’ Charcha 2022 saw Nitin Kamat, Chief Marketing Officer, TAM, presenting a ‘Festive Advertising Analysis’. While stating that TAM Media has completed two decades in the industry, Kamat said that TAM’s analysis would focus on the ad spends during the festive season this year, specifically the South Indian markets.

He pointed out that there is a shift in terms of how consumers are consuming media, which has further led to a lot of changes in the last two years. “The analysis that we are going to show will be from 2019, that is, the pre-Covid period, leading to 2020 during Covid, 2021 and 2022, wherein a lot of changes took place. The interesting part of it all is the evolution of the media thought-out,” he added.

Talking about TAM, Kamat said that the organisation was into monitoring space, where it monitored the three traditional mediums – TV, print, radio and digital. He added, “When I say TV, we monitor around 600-plus linear channels; for print, we monitor around 900-plus publications across India; while for radio, we monitor around 100-plus radio stations and FM stations. Digital is a very customised universe that we manage depending on client needs. So, we monitor around 3000-plus websites, a few of the OTT platforms and 100-plus YouTube channels. We recently also started monitoring Facebook display and video ads.”

Continuing further, Kamat said, “When you look at the numbers, taking 2019 as an index, there has been growth in television by 12% and in 2021 by 25%. With print, there was obviously a drop by -17%, but again we have seen a revival with 4% growth. Radio saw a drop of -21%, further leading to growth by 11% during the festive season. For Digital, there was a drop of 8% in the Covid period, but there is a big shift in terms of growth of 52% that can be seen. Continuing with this growth trend, we are expected to see a big boom during this festive season.”

He pointed out that during the festive season in 2019 – from August to December, advertisers’ contribution to Digital was 40%, print was 44%, and radio was 47%. “Post-Covid in 2020, we saw the industry shift mostly to the e-commerce space. There was a shift in market trends. Digital and e-commerce claimed most of the space, even as TV maintained its place, and life insurance gained in prominence. All these contributed to around 50% of the top 10 categories,” he added.

Kamat further said that in 2021, it was a very different trend, as health, e-commerce, auto, and property as categories started coming up.

With Onam, one of the major festivals in the South, set to be celebrated in September this year, there are different trends that TAM is trying to capture. Kamat noted that the Onam index in 2021 had vastly grown from 2019, with TV growing at 17%, print by 40%, radio by 24% and digital by 23%. “Even having those strict COVID restrictions there was some or the other growth that took place in all sectors and the festive season was celebrated well. This year, after two years, is a time where there will be no restrictions and we will be able to celebrate it properly,” he added.

From August 12th to 23rd, 2021, advertising grew with TV at 32%, radio at 44%, print at 47% and digital at 54% during the festive times of Onam. The festival ranked 6th as the most celebrated festival in India, with Diwali sitting at first, Kamat informed.

He further pointed out that not just festivals, even the Indian Premier League (IPL) was played during the COVID times. If we consider specifically IPL-related advertisements, they majorly took place near and around festivals, but there was not much growth during IPL. “There is definitely a lot of potential in increasing advertisement spending in this particular period. Ultimately the consumers are waiting for this particular season for consumption,” he noted.

Referring to a recent study that took place in the South on ad spending compared to overall national spending. Kamat informed that “in 2021, the estimated ad spending that we saw was around 20 to 350 crore and this year we are working on 26 to 731 crore. The growth rate average is around 18%.”

“Based on the present scenarios, we hope that we reach all the estimates that we have and I’m sure that we will be touching these numbers. By the end of the year, when we come up with a report, we might see us touching our goals and it will help us with more clarity on that,” Kamat said.

According to him, the most interesting trends that are emerging now are:

1. There are a lot of innovative ads
2. Hyperlocal will soon be monitored as geo-tagging emerges as a key feature

These are edited excerpts. For the complete keynote address watch below:

https://www.linkedin.com/video/live/urn:li:ugcPost:6963084594065629184/