Indian Ad Budgets Poised For An Upsurge: Anisha Motwani

Anisha Motwani, Founder, Storm the Norm Ventures, is optimistic about an increase in spending on digital advertisements and an uptick in ad budgets in general. Excerpts of a conversation with BW Businessworld:

Do we expect advertising spending in India to continue on a growth trajectory, despite concerns about a cash crunch in some sectors and the consequent cutback on their ad spends?

If we look at the last 10 years’ track record, advertising spending has always grown year-on-year (y-o-y) in line with, or a little ahead of inflation, except in 2020. Interestingly, the recovery in 2021 and 2022 was extremely sharp with a growth rate double the average.

Putting this in context, on average, ad spending has always grown around 8-10 per cent over the last decade, but it doubled to almost 20 per cent in 2021-2022. Since then the spending has moderated and come back to its original trajectory of 9-10 per cent. So yes, this and next year’s ad spends are expected to grow in a similar range.

You seem bullish on the Indian advertising sector. What would you say, are the growth drivers?

This is a special year owing to the general elections and I do see that accelerating the advertising spends in a significant way. Combined with that are the major sporting events like IPL and others, tourism and hospitality, driving the revenue growth significantly.

What do you see as some of the biggest opportunities in the sector in the year ahead and do you see marketers poised to leverage these?

Television and video will continue to be the biggest revenue volume contributors at 60 per cent but it’s the digital share that is inching closer with almost 40 per cent of the revenue expected to come from digital advertising. However, the biggest opportunity within this is going to be programmatic advertising taking away a whopping 50-60 per cent of digital spends. Customisation with targeted online spends yielding a measurable ROI has become the barometer for allocating budgets to various channels.

What kind of challenges do you anticipate marketers facing in the year ahead?

There is a deluge of data that makes digital marketing an objective medium but on the other hand, reaching that targeted customer profile with a guaranteed conversion is becoming the biggest challenge. It is also becoming increasingly difficult to keep pace with customer expectations and maintain an edge, whilst being updated with the latest tech. There is the challenge of creating persuasive and engaging content continuously and presenting it in exciting ways repeatedly.

This high-volume tactical and at times topical messaging results in a brand’s core positioning getting diluted with no clearly defined brand image and values. A lack of creative standards, framework, guidelines, and siloed teams is leading to confused, inconsistent brands. The same technology and data can be used effectively to work with different systems that cannot just store and organise results but also filter out non-core communication with the right keyword controls.