Pitch Madison Advertising Report, 2022 estimates that AdEx in 2021 has registered an unbelievable 37% growth, traditional AdEx grew by 31% and Digital by 50%. It also forecasts a 20% growth for 2022.
2021 was no doubt a challenging year with the devastating second wave of COVID-19 in picture. Like the first wave, the second wave too had impacted almost every business across sectors. Despite the challenges, in 2021 businesses have shown great resilience against the pandemic and to everyone’s surprise, Indian AdEx has registered an unbelievable growth - highest growth among all countries. As per the Pitch Madison Advertising Report, 2022 which was unveiled last week in 2021 total AdEx has grown by 37% and traditional AdEx by 31%. WARC estimates that global AdEx stood at $585 billion in 2021, registering a growth rate of 21%. India with a growth rate of 37% has regained its stellar position of being the fastest growing advertising market in the world, followed by Australia and UK both at 35%. US which is the biggest Advertising market and contributes 46% to global AdEx also grew by a substantial 22% on its massive base. India unfortunately continues to be a minor player on the global AdEx stage with a share of only 1.5%. In absolute terms AdEx has grown almost Rs. 74,000 crore, Rs. 20,000 crore higher than 2020 and over Rs. 6,500 crore higher than 2019, surpassing it by 10%. This is the highest growth that AdEx has registered in nearly the last 2 decades. The second highest growth of 28% was achieved in 2010.
TV AdEx put in a spectacular performance, registering a high spend of Rs. 28,151 crore which represents a 25% growth in 2021, preceded by a 11% de-growth in 2020. TV is the only traditional medium that has comfortably surpassed the 2019 number of Rs. 25,291 crore by as much as 11%. No other traditional medium, Print, Radio, Outdoor or Cinema has been able to cross the 2019 spend figure. TV though dropped four percentage share points from a high of 42% last year, to 38% in 2021, has registered a one percentage point increase over 2019. Compared to its 38% share in 2021, globally TV enjoys a share of just 22% and India shares the credit of being one of the top most TV advertising countries.
While Q1 started softly with a de-growth of minus 6% over 2019, each subsequent quarter has gained steam with TV AdEx growing in size. Q3 and Q4 of 2021 registered a sharp increase of 35% and 58% over respective quarters of 2019. Q4 marginally surpassed the high base of the corresponding quarter in 2020. This low growth is because Q4 2020 had the full IPL, whereas Q4 2021 had only half of the IPL which started in Q2 but got suspended and resumed in Q4. FMCG, E-Commerce and Education were the biggest contributors to the TV AdEx. However, FMCG, the most dominant sector with a share of 51% in 2020, lost as much as five percentage points and was down to 46%.
DIGITAL SUPERSTAR
The Digital AdEx juggernaut moves ahead unabated. According to the PMAR report, in 2021 Digital has grown by a phenomenal 50% taking Digital AdEx to Rs. 25,438 crore with a share of 34%, just four percentage points lower than the largest medium TV. The last time Digital grew by 50% was way back in 2012, when it added just Rs. 750 crore, but in 2021 it has added almost Rs. 8,500 crore. In the last 10 years Digital has grown at a compounded annual growth rate of 27%. Even Covid could not dent its onward march and it grew by 10% in 2020, when all other mediums de-grew.
With the festival and resumption of the IPL season, Q4 was the largest quarter, where Digital AdEx touched almost Rs. 10,000 crore and contributed 39% to the full year. Q2 contributed the least at 14%, because of Covid wave 2. In terms of verticals, Video contributed highest with a total share of 29%, followed by Social & Display at almost 20% each. E-commerce and Search now contribute 16% each to the overall digital pie. In terms of growth rate, E-commerce has grown significantly by as much as 50%. Display, Video and Search have also grown substantially at 30%+. Programmatic has firmly taken route in India and its share has been going up every year by a few percentage points and now stands at 42%. Almost all Digital spends in India are on Mobile with the latter commanding a 96% share.
RENAISSANCE IN PRINT
2021 was kind to Print, when Print AdEx registered a 39% growth, following a sharp 41% decline in 2020. Unfortunately, this steep growth does not make up for the sharp decline in 2020 and Print AdEx in 2021 is at the same level as it was in 2015. An encouraging trend noticed in 2021 is that Print volume in terms of CC has also gone up by 31%. Quarter 2 was severely depressed because of Covid Wave 2, but Q3 almost matched up to volumes of the same Quarter of 2019. In fact, in Q4, Print volume surpassed that of Q4 in 2019. Growth rates in all Quarters are predictably very good in CC terms, compared to Covid year 2020. But Print AdEx 2021 could not match up to Print AdEx of 2019 and shows a 16% drop in volume compared to the pre-Covid year.
English and Hindi publications put together, contribute to 63% of total AdEx volume. English publications have been the highest gainers in terms of Ad volume and grew 40% over 2020. Hindi publications, which are the largest volume contributors, also grew by 30%, Telugu by 37%, Assamese & Marathi by 33% and Bengali by 27%. All languages grew, the least to have grown are Kannada, Gujarati and Punjabi at around 18-19%. In terms of category shares there has not been much movement with Auto dropping by 2% percentage points from 16% to 14% and FMCG by 1% percentage point from 17% to 16%. Auto’s drop has been E-commerce’s gain with the latter increasing its share from 3% to 5%. Retail too has gained a percentage share point moving up from 5% to 6%. Three categories FMCG, Education and Auto make up 45% of total Print AdEx and are almost equally divided with marginal differences in share.
RADIO 2021: STRONG WAVES OF RECOVERY
Radio saw a 36% increase in spend (followed by a 44% de-growth in 2020). Radio AdEx has failed to recover fully and the estimation of Rs. 1,733 crore in 2021 takes Radio back to the year 2016, when it had registered a spend of Rs.1,749 crore. In terms of share, Radio AdEx which had registered 4% in the years 2015, 2016 and 2017, now stands at only 2%, which is similar to what it achieved in 2020. Q4 was the largest contributor, contributing 37% to annual AdEx and Q2 was the smallest quarter, contributing just 9% to AdEx. Q1 of 2021 was more or less similar to Q1 of 2020. But the remaining three quarters have all registered substantial growth over corresponding previous quarters signifying that the worst is over for Radio.
Infact, Q4 registered a 46% growth over the same quarter last year and a 21% growth over 2019. Almost all Radio operators to increase their revenue base, have now started looking at adjacent areas to augment their FCT base revenue. Digital engagement, content and newer distribution channels are some of the areas being focussed upon. Resumption of economic activities in Tier II and Tier III markets also attracted many local advertisers to Radio.
OOH 2021: TRAFFIC JAM CLEARS
Out-of-Home has bounced back in 2021 with a 69% increase over 2020, but falls way short of the figures achieved in pre-Covid 2019. According to the report, Rs. 2,178 crore were spent in OOH way below the Rs. 3,495 crore spent in 2019, but substantially higher than Rs. 1,292 crore spent in 2020. In fact, spends in OOH in 2021 are at similar levels to those achieved in 2014. In terms of Share, from a steady share of 6% which it enjoyed for many years till 2019, OOH has slipped to 3%, but has gained 1% share over 2020. Conventional OOH market grew at 63%, but Transit Media grew by almost 100% in 2021. However, when compared with the year 2019, Conventional OOH market degrew at 28% and Transit Media degrew by 63%.
Digital OOH in India, in keeping with global trends is beginning to take root. In 2021 there were 60,000 screens, up from 55,000 in 2020. DOOH spends also moved up phenomenally from Rs. 50 crore to 300 crore in 2021. Digital OOH now has a share of 13.77%, but is far below the global average of 40%. 70% of OOH spends came in the second half of 2021. And while Q2 was severely suppressed with a 70% drop compared to 2019, Q4 was a bumper Quarter when spends more than doubled over 2020 and surpassed 2019. 41% of annual spends came in Q4. The top 5 sectors that contribute to over 70% of total OOH AdEx are Real Estate which leads the pack with a share of 22% followed by Retail, FMCG, BFSI and Consumer Services.
CINEMA CONTINUES TO COLLAPSE
From a high of over Rs. 1,000 crore in 2019, AdEx has dwindled to Rs. 136 crore in 2021. This collapse is no doubt, not due to Advertisers losing confidence in Cinema Advertising, but because Cinemas were closed for long periods of time, in the last two years and because of audience’s hesitancy to visit places with large numbers of people in closed air-conditioned places. Out of a total of 6,700 screens pre Covid, as many as 800 screens closed down or were not active even when blockbusters like Sooryavanshi, Annatthe and Pushpa were released. Multiplex screens, numbered at 2,439 over 595 properties owned by 5 operators led by PVR, now account for 41% of all screens. As against 1,400 new movies released in 2019, new releases dwindled down to 69 in 2020 and 140 in 2021. Out of 140 releases across 10 languages, only 25 releases did good business. Most of the releases were in Hindi and Bengali. South Indian languages which normally have a high number of new releases remained virtually absent.
TOP ADVERTISERS OF INDIA IN 2021
