Indiantelevision.com Team

(16 March 2010 8:40 pm)

MUMBAI: As the global market steadily walks out of the slowdown crisis, the worldwide advertising industry will have to spread across new geographical areas, segment markets and localise to achieve long-term growth.

While addressing the audience at the Ficci Frames 2010 here, WPP Group chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell said, “In a bid to achieve long-term growth, media players have to understand the market capacity of each region and then locate, incentivise and maintain cosumers and people with localised strategies.”

The push will also come significantly from web as today, youth are “magnificantly”attracted to this medium - not just in terms of time spent by them on this platform but also because of their desire to work for web-based companies.

“Mobile will also act as a major slimulant gobally to propell this growth. Indian too, with its 425 million users growing at a rate of 25 million a month, will witness a positive growth in its advertising spends,” he adds.

Sorrell further notes that internal communication driven by new-age technology, global union of retailers with manufacturers and the transfer from global co-ordination to glocal (global and local) co-ordination with bring about a massive upswing across the wordwide advertising industry.

Meanwhile, for 2010, WPP will focus on the BRIC nations which Martin expects to constitute one-third of the company’s overall business pie in the next 4-5 years.

“Last year, India comprised 3 per cent of WPP’s overall revenue and now, we are expecting a double digit growth from the sub-continent,” he said.

In 2008, WPP posted a revenue of $400 million from India. WPP saw profits fall by 11 per cent to $1 billion in 2009 as the economic downturn bit hard into its business, but India again showed a positive growth.

In january and February, while our business has returned to stability globally, our revenues are 7-8 per cent up in India,” he says.