Indian ad industry expected to grow by 9.6% in 2015 – Pitch Madison report

Releasing the Pitch Madison Advertising Outlook report for 2015, Piyush Goyal, Minister of State with Independent Charge for Power, Coal and New & Renewable Energy, Government of India, acknowledged the role played by media and advertising in helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to communicate its message to the people of India which helped them win the Lok Sabha elections and said his government believes in the importance of communication. He said: “Communication plays a critical role in the success of various innovative schemes of the government. We are committed to improving the standard of living and quality of life of all Indians and communication through traditional and social media helps us in our outreach programmes for greater people’s participation”. He hoped the advertising industry will play a constructive and positive role in helping the government communicate its ideas and schemes to the people in India.

Some of the key findings of the report say that Indian advertising industry grew a whopping 16.4% in 2014 and is expected to grow by another 9.6% in 2015, taking the total advertising market to Rs 40,658 crore by end of 2015. Thus the advertising market over two years would have grown by 27.5%. The industry added Rs 5,200 crore to the market in 2014 alone. Part of this growth was contributed by the general elections and 5 state elections. Emerging e-commerce players also advertised heavily.

Print continued to be the largest sector in advertising and is expected to continue its dominance with a share of almost 4% with brand advertising crossing Rs 16,000 crore in print in 2015. TV will trail Print and reach Rs 15,500 crore in 2015. Digital has grown phenomenally in the last 5 years and is now larger than outdoor, cinema and radio put together and will be 12.6% of the total market. The search wagon though has slowed down with display, video and mobile playing a more prominent role than search.

FMCG category which has always been a dominant category on TV contributing to over 50%, now is also the largest contributor to print for the second year in succession, contributing though, just 13%. Other prominent categories that contribute to the TV market are telecom, digital, e-commerce and auto. The print market is constituted by many categories, but FMCG, auto, education and real estate together contribute 43 percent of the total print market.

2015 promises to be yet another exciting year of high growth for the advertising market. But the market will be characterized by some uncertainty in the area of media deliveries, given that BARC TV ratings are likely to appear in the second quarter using new Target Audience Classification System – NCCS, making comparison with TAM data on SEC classification, difficult and given the uncertainty that exists over the next round of Readership Survey.