13% growth in ad spend is positive development: ZenithOptimedia India

Anupriya Acharya, Group CEO, ZenithOptimedia India, tells Pradyuman Maheshwari that the actual ad spend growth in India for 2015 will be at 13% as against 12% forecast last year, primarily driven by higher than expected growth on TV at 15%.

You speak about rational optimism for the year ahead. But given your overall forecast for ad spends as 13%, will you say that 'achche din aanewaale hain' or would it be that "they could well have been 'kharaab', so be happy with this one"?

The rational optimism is to contrast it with the irrational exuberance that was there last year this time given the new government. But to answer your question… I would say, at 13% it's a positive movement and if we have sustained momentum, it should go up further in the coming years.

But even as forecast reports such as yours paint a rosy picture, friends in various media sales jobs rue that sales aren't happening in right earnest...
That's right... at an informal level one can get different reports depending on who one is talking to. For example, most sellers will tell buyers that the market is booming and most buyers will tell sellers that it's a tough market. Our report, however, is based on closely tracked data, including inventory sold, impact properties hitting media, annual reports of media companies, secondary research on economic parameters and key categories, actual movement on pricing coupled with market intelligence on key deals.

Real estate for instance has taken a severe beating...
That's right… but actually sometimes that's when it's really advertised.

Your forecast for 2015 was a 12% growth. How has it been in 2015 looking at actual spends. And what about specific sectors... the forecast percentage versus actual?
By the time we close 2015, it looks that the actual growth will be at 13%, primarily driven by higher than expected growth on TV at 15%.

You've mentioned automobiles to see have a good growth, but we have seen modest rise there with very new brands too cutting price?
Yes, as a category, AdEx on automobiles are quite volatile, say compared to FMCGs which are fairly stable in terms of growth/ degrowth. But this year we have seen a healthy 25% plus growth in automobile spends. New brands cutting price also need to advertise it

"In 2018 we expect the internet to overtake television to become the largest single advertising medium," the report says. Would this apply to India too? And if not, by when do you think will the internet overtake television?
It does not apply to India at this point in time. But if quite a few things kick in well and collectively like 4G, broadband highways, consumer earning and spending potential - and this coupled with the marketer-advertising fraternity accelerating their understanding of this space then it is not impossible to expect it in the next 7-8 years. I must also point out that interestingly, this is not because of slow growth of internet but because in India TV is also growing and far from saturation point.

Lastly, given that we are the world's largest democracy, second-most populous country... with a smart and creative advertising fraternity and have very active marketers, isn't a matter of shame that we are sooooo far behind China?
Well, China's GDP is five times of India and their currency ten times stronger. We need to accelerate growth on all fronts in our country and media, marketing and advertising are a subset of it. Collectively, we can and we will.

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