TV ad volumes up by 17% in Week 24: TAM AdEx

Ad volumes on television have been on an increase in the last few weeks. According to TAM AdEx report on television advertising in the period Week 19-Week 24 (3rd May –13th June, 2020), after a slight decline in Week 23, ad volumes grew by 17 per cent in Week 24. Comparing Week 24 to Week 19, there was a growth of 63 per cent in Television ad volumes. Average ad volumes grew by 32 per cent during Week 22-23 compared to Week 19-21.

The report further states that average ad volumes/day grew steadily during April’20 –June’20. In June’20, average ad volumes/day grew by 42 per cent, compared to April’20. A continuous growth is observed in count of categories, advertisers and brands between Week 19 and Week 23, however, Week 24, a marginal decrease in count of advertisers and brands is seen. The number of advertisers in Week 24 stood at 1,179, a plunge from 1,234 in Week 23; while the number of brands saw a decline to 1,903 from 1,967 in Week 23.

There were over 550 consistent advertisers between Weeks 19 and 24, with Hindustan Unilever having the highest share of 23 per cent. Reckitt Benckiser India is a distant second with a share of 8 per cent.

According to the report, Week 23 recorded the highest number of new advertisers and brands in past 6 weeks at 249 and 417, respectively.

Monthly Ad Trends

A positive growth in ad volumes was observed across Top 5 channels genres in May’20 compared to April’20. Given the current situation, News continued to have the largest share of the ad pie at 35 per cent and saw a 16 per cent growth month-on-month. GECs’ share has started picking up now, with the genre garnering a 24 per cent share of the ad pie. GECs also recorded the highest month-on-month growth of 25 per cent. Movies follow with a share of 23 per cent of the ad pie and 20 per cent growth month-on-month.

Among languages, Hindi News, GEC and Movies lead in each genre. Hindi (National + Regional) news had 35 per cent share of ad volumes, followed by Tamil News. Hindi GEC channels had 21 per cent share, while Tamil and Malayalam followed with 12 per cent and 11 per cent share, respectively. Among Movie channels, Hindi Movies had a whopping 44 per cent share, followed by Bhojpuri Movies with 9 per cent share of ad volumes.

The Top 10 advertisers on TV between March’20 and 13th June’20 had 40 per cent share of ad volumes. Seven out of Top 10 advertisers were from the FMCG sector, with HUL on top having 16 per cent share of ad volumes. Reckitt Benckiser India followed with 8 per cent share of ad volumes during this period.

Advertising by OTT Players

According to the report, a sharp growth of 94 per cent is seen in OTT platforms’ advertising in January-13th June’20, compared to January-June’19. The month of April’20 witnessed highest advertising by OTT players on Television with 245(000) ad insertions.

Disney+ HotStar topped among OTT players with 21 per cent share, followed by ZEE5 with 16 per cent share, Amazon Prime Video (14 per cent share), Voot (13 per cent share) and Sun NXT (8 per cent share).

With a share of 28 per cent, GEC was the most preferred genre for OTT platform advertising, followed by Movies with 26 per cent share.

Social Advertising by Govt

Given the COVID-19 situation, more than 2 fold growth in Social Ads by the Government on television was seen in the March-May’20 period, compared to March-May’19. In April’20, there was 3.5 times more Social Ads from the Government compared to April’19, with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare topping the list.

Not surprisingly, 80 per cent share of ad volumes on TV were corona themed; among social ads, majority of the ads were by the Central Government. With the Government efforts to keep people informed and observe all measures to keep themselves and their families safe from infection, Corona-related ads peaked in April’20.