Ad spend to grow 14% to `80,678 cr this year

Mumbai, Feb 12: The advertising market is likely to grow at 14 per cent to Rs 80,678 crore this year, the fastest growing market globally, driven by strong macroeconomic factors, general elections and the Cricket World Cup 2019, according to global media agency GroupM.

The growth in ad spends in 2019, it noted, is nearly two times of the estimated GDP forecast of 7.5 per cent.

India will be the 10th largest market in ad spends and third highest contributor to the incremental ad spends, only behind China and the USA and the tenth fastest growing country with respect to ad spends across the globe.

Among the sectors, FMCG, auto, retail, e-commerce, tech/telecom are expected to contribute to two-third of ad expenditure in 2019.

“There are going to be two forces that will play out in 2019 and that is going to be the general elections and the Cricket World Cup and both of these are really exciting highly dynamic and have a major impact on the media market,” GroupM South Asia chief executive officer Sam Singh told.

The special events-election and sports-together are likely to contribute three-percentage increase this year, with there spends divided equally.

The agency expects the ad spends by political parties to be “similar but maybe 5-10 per cent increase” from the previous general elections.

“While we are estimating the global advertising expenditure to grow at 3.6 per cent, India would be witnessing the fastest growth at 14 per cent and reach an estimated Rs

80,578 crore. This would be approximately 2x of the estimated GDP growth in India,” Singh added.

In 2018, advertising expenditure is estimated to grow 15 per cent to Rs

70,602 crore against the agency’s estimate of a lower 13 per cent growth.

Singh noted that this year

37 per cent of incremental ad spends would go towards digital advertising, including mobile.

GroupM estimates the Digital Adex to continue to grow by 30 per cent in 2019 to Rs 16,038 crore, he said.

—PTI