“Without further Covid interruptions, Indian ad industry will see 35% growth in 2022”

Adgully is back with a new edition of its annual feature – TRENDING NOW – where we present the strategies and views of a cross-section of industry leaders as they go about reclaiming lost time and market opportunities and build for a stronger future, armed with the lessons of the pandemic period.

Over the next few weeks, Trending Now will bring insights from industry leaders on how their organisations are gearing up to seize the opportunities in 2022, break through the Covid disruptions and find growth and remain resilient.

In conversation with Adgully, Anurag Bansal, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer, DDB Mudra Group, speaks about his expectations for the advertising and media sector in 2022, as well as the challenges and opportunities in the year ahead.

What are the trends that you expect to dominate your sector in 2022?

In all aspects, 2022 is going to be a crucial year for the industry. On one side, the industry is reeling under the third wave of the pandemic and on the other side, markets are looking upbeat in their mid to long term views. Advertisers are inclined to harness this positive market sentiment with the best of the cutting-edge technology and stay ahead of market dynamics. This gives birth to new evolved trends in the industry. Agencies will be investing in tools, especially analytics & creative tools to build an intelligent creative system. It would allow them to use the constantly evolving analytics and data to create creatives at scale and at speed, which may cater to trending topics and immediate requirements.

These tools can be used to cater to fixed moments and other micro moments that are fluid in nature. Additionally, with the forthcoming loss of cookie data, it’s going to be important for agencies to invest in building infrastructure to gather first-party data in order to understand consumers at a deeper level, this data will be crucial to creating relevant cohorts and driving creative execution.

What are the challenges and new opportunities that you see emerging in the year ahead?

One big challenge that the industry is grappling with is the uncertainty caused by resurgence of different variants of COVID-19. In the previous two quarters, the industry witnessed slow but steady growth in consumer confidence and consumption. Economy was inching towards normalcy; most of us had prepared our plans to return to office, started meeting clients and other stakeholders in person, but the third wave has dampened sentiments again. Though we are much better equipped to handle this wave, it has made people nervous, indecisive and anxious.

Dealing, living, and yet progressing with COVID-19 among us, will be the one single challenge for coming years which will shape and influence our lives. I am quite excited about the opportunities that Metaverse will create for consumers, advertisers and the economy. We have started investing in technology to helps us craft virtual experiences, which can be extended to virtual worlds in the future, to sell virtual products for virtual consumption.

How strong will this sector’s growth be compared to the last two years as well as the pre-Covid period?

Every crisis teaches you something. The pandemic has vaulted all of us into the digital world in a very short span of time. The kind of digitalisation we have witnessed in the last two years had not been seen in the last two decades. Our ways of working, ways in which we consume content and entertainment, how we transact and run our lives changed dramatically since the pandemic. Digital spends by advertisers have been growing even before Covid, the pandemic has only given it a much-needed impetus.

Communication is increasingly becoming media-agnostic, and the growth has to be seen in that light. With the economy coming out of the pandemic and the explosion in demand, the expectation of growth in 2022 is in line with the market dynamics. If the recovery continues without any further interruptions from Covid-19, the Indian advertising industry will see 35% growth in 2022.