Ad spends in India to grow at the rate of 12-13% YoY til 2024: GroupM Report

• India is the world leader among other larger media markets in advertising across mediums and will continue to give a stellar performance in terms of numbers with high single digits.
• On the other hand, the global economy has weakened in 2019 and will remain similarly soft in 2020.

GroupM's report reveals that India is the world leader among other larger media markets in advertising across mediums and will continue to give a stellar performance in terms of numbers with high single digits. The growth rate in ad spends is estimated +12 - 13% each year from 2020 to 2024, similar to 2019 levels.

India, along with Brazil, is expected to overtake France’s position in terms of advertising numbers.

On the other hand, the global economy has weakened in 2019 and will remain similarly soft in 2020. Despite solid growth in the US and UK, overall conditions lead us to predict deceleration in advertising growth this year vs. 2018 and in 2020 vs. 2019.

Global advertising, excluding U.S. political advertising (large enough to distort global growth rates by +/-1% each year), expanded by +5.7% in constant currency terms during 2018, capping the third year of better than +5% growth and the best year of the current economic cycle. However, 2019 appears set to grow nearly a percentage point slower, at +4.8%, and growth is expected to slow by another percentage point in 2020 and 2021. GroupM forecasts +3.9% growth next year and +3.1% growth the following year. Growth is expected to range between +3–4% through 2024.

Although worse than recent years, the report notes that this would amount to a similar pace of growth to what was observed during 2012–2014. GroupM estimates that the total global advertising market during 2020 will amount to $628 billion as we define advertising here, but would likely approach $700 billion on a broader definition that includes spending on direct mail and directories around the world.

Prasanth Kumar, CEO, GroupM South Asia said, “In 2020, India faces challenges and uncertainties across sectors, just like other markets. However, this also brings opportunities for brands to innovate. This will be propelled by greater use of technology and better content across media.”

GroupM report concludes by saying that 'media is only a means to an end.' Therefore, the report suggests that marketers' goal should be to optimize the mix of external and internal resources that drives business growth.

It furthers states that investments in internal marketing infrastructure, marketing technology software and external services are among the other ways to support marketing excellence. Ensuring that processes are in place to optimize the balance between those elements of marketing will be more impactful than the choice to invest or stay away from any one type of media as it grows or declines in the years ahead.