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Expert Speak: Festive Season 2022 AdSpends & Trends

Festive season 2022 emerges as a positive one, especially as consumer demand increases. Experts see television taking a lead in AdSpends with digital coming in as a very close second.

With the past couple of years going through a rough patch, this year marketers and agencies are looking forward to rolling out campaigns that capture the overall sentiment of the festivities. Talking about the festive season 2022 AdSpends & trends, experts foresee a positive movement.

Festive Season 2022 AdSpends – Sentiments & More

The festive season holds a special place in the Indian market, for consumers, brands, and agencies alike. After 2 years of a major setback, this year the sentiment around festive marketing is a lot more optimistic. Spending habit in each category is on the rise – from household items to personal care leading to an increase in visiting stores for discoverability and shopping. 

Ashish Bhasin, RD&X Network

Ashish Bhasin, Co-Founder and Chairman RD&X Network says, “This festive season is extremely important for us as an industry because this period is what will decide whether the year was a good one or not. The early signs of the season appear to be good. In India, almost 40-45% of the annual spends happens between Ganpati & New Year as we are a very festival-driven country.”

Bhasin explains that this includes both national-level celebrations like Diwali and state level like Durga Puja as well. This period is an extremely crucial part of the year for marketers, and so far the initial signs have been good and there is optimism.

Mithun Cotha, Senior Vice President – Data, Listening and Insights, GREY Group India anticipates that this year, the ad spend is expected to grow by 15-20%. He adds saying, “With Consumer Confidence moving from  57.7 pts last year to 77.3 pts during Aug 22’, and with macros like GDP, NIFTY is indicating a strong consumer sentiment during the upcoming festive season are supporting the projected increase in ad spends.” 

The Sports Aspect

With IPL and Asia Cup, agencies and brands sports spending this year is on the rise as well. Rammohan Sundaram, Country Head & Managing Partner – Integrated Media, DDB Mudra Group commented, “There is a lot of action in sports in the latter half of the year and it began with the Asia cup and will go all the way till the T20 World Cup. While there is pressure on some of the impact buys where we are seeing slides in yields for channels, and pricing is moving towards effective rates than cost per rating points, it is impacting fiction-driven shows on a lot of channels, which we hope will be compensated with non-fiction buys.”

He further explains that certain categories are facing the heat because their primary audiences do not watch fiction, which is somewhat of a challenge we are seeing especially in our HSM buys on C&S.

Saini shares that important sporting events like the T20 World Cup will boost the AdSpends further. Spends will observe an uplift not just in the Metropolitan regions but also in rural areas.

Biggest Spenders Of The Season

This year retail sector seems to shine the brightest of the lot. In the last few years, the offline crowd was at bay due to the pandemic, and the need and want for on-ground and physical burying habits have accelerated rapidly. 

There’s both, the availability of finance and the propensity and desire to spend. Particularly, following the COVID years, this year the want to spend seems to have risen this forming a good base for Festive Season 2022 AdSpends. 

Ahmed Aftab Naqvi, GOZOOP Group

According to Ahmed Aftab Naqvi, Global CEO & Co-founder, GOZOOP Group,  all domains under the retail branch are expected to witness a massive surge in footfalls and consumer spending, therefore projecting them to be the biggest spenders. While on the other hand, he projects that the travel & tourism and hospitality industries may remain comparatively stable and recover from the slow development of the last two years.

Speaking on the budgets this year, Kumar Awanish, Chief Growth Officer, Cheil India believes the Ad Spends for this year should range between 27,000 Cr to 28,000 Cr, primarily driven by Television and Digital. Additionally, he also thinks that FMCG, Ecommerce, Consumer Electronics and BFSI sectors will also contribute a large section in this season. 

Weighing in on the importance of the rural sector in the country during the festive time, Bhasin says, “A lot of growth comes from rural demand and this demand to date depends a lot on monsoons. As of now, the indications are that the monsoons have been reasonably decent. If all of these fall in place by Diwali, I think we should see good consumer demand.” 

Crypto, EdTech, Consumer Durables/Consumer Tech, FinTech and Auto are some of the other categories that are expected to invest in Festive Season 2022 AdSpends.

Also Read: Kaustuv Paliwal shares insights on how MuscleBlaze opened a conversation for women into fitness

Digital & TV Going Neck-To-Neck

According to experts, digital and television spends will be going almost parallelly. With the changing consumer behaviour, digital is seeing increasing ad spends from tier 2 & 3 places across India, which has been a significant propeller of growth for the platform.

Kumar Awanish, Cheil India mentions, “If there will be any difference between television and digital, it will be marginal and in single digit. Television in this case will be slightly higher than digital. Maybe in the range of 4% to 8%.

The sheer scale of reach in digital over the last 2/3 Years especially penetrating the rural markets has already brought digital to the forefront and while there is ample proof for digital driving sales, we can’t deny the fact that digital is the place for consumers to discover and evaluate. So it starts from here ( digital)  before the final conversion – be it offline or online.”

Kamaljit Saini, Puretech Digital

Echoing similar thoughts Kamaljit Saini, Sr. Vice President – Digital Marketing, Puretech Digital says, “In my opinion, the TV will continue to account for the major share of ad spends anywhere in the range of 40% to 43%. Digital will surely be competing neck-to-neck with TV and is expected to get the 2nd largest pie of overall spends. Digital spends are expected to be anywhere between 33% to 36% of the spending followed by Print and OOH.”

Himanshu Arora, Social Panga

Himanshu Arora, Co-Founder, Social Panga comments, Digital for Bharat, is where the next set of spends going to come and the festive season elevates the spend to the next level.”

Festive Marketing 2022 Trends

Innovative digital ads, Web3 marketing, and D2C business models are a few trends that the experts foresee for the festive season 2022.

Tech has been adding another layer of communication to festive marketing for a few years now. Last year, Cadbury’s Shah Rukh Khan ad is one such example.

“Some of the marketing trends like, digital transformation, shoppable posts, audio ads, in-game advertising, connected TV and shorter video ad formats will continue to have their dominance in 2022. NFT and Metaverse are still straddling between readiness and scare. D2C brands are exploring and expanding in multiple ways to attract consumers and penetrate reach while others are prioritizing D2C as business of choice. Gen Z  is the centre of attraction for all the brands.” adds Awanish, Cheil India.

Commenting on the same, Mithun Cotha, GREY Group India says, “The quest for deeper engagement will make way for increased Phygital deployments. Here we will see the convergence of Social, TV, print, and outdoor mediums via AR/ Metaverse experiences. This will provide enhanced and differentiated connections with the audience.”

One must watch out for Online Video and Connected TVs (OTTs) platforms.

“OTT is one of the fastest growing marketing mediums which advertisers are already taking cognizance of and realizing the shift in viewing behaviour.” points out Kamaljit Saini, Puretech Digital. 

Concluding 2022

With digital taking a stronger position in the AdSpends pie, increasing consumer demand from Bharat, and newer marketing trends such as Metaverse, put 2022 in a better position.

“I think we should comfortably see 15% growth to that of last year keeping all mediums in mind,” comments Sundaram. 

Arora too shares the sentiment as he says “Indian advertising to be around $11 billion in 2022 compared to $9.7 billion last year.“

Naqvi on the other hand explains that the pandemic taught us the importance of making use of digital platforms and integrating it in your businesses in a much more productive, effective and calculative manner, slightly higher when compared to 2021 and significantly projecting a substantial growth in 2023.

Encapsulating the growth, Bhasin concludes “This decade or possibly the century belongs to India. As clients, agencies and advertisers; we should be confident in our economy and move with optimism and aggression. We have one of the best manpower and brains in the world, it is a great opportunity particularly as a digital transformation is happening across the globe, I think India is poised for a very good few decades ahead of us.“

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