TV ads increase with approaching festival season in India, cliche but true

TV ads increase with approaching festival season in India, cliche but true

Diwali-ad

BENGALURU: Navratras followed by Diwali is the biggest festival season for India. This period is considered auspicious for purchase of apparel, consumer durables, automobiles and of course – the Indian women’s favourite – jewellery, which was earlier led by gold and silver and now diamonds and platinum. This is also a favourite time for marketers, for media. Often, a major portion of annual sales targets for brands are achieved during this short period. A big bulk of annual advertisement and marketing budgets are splurged during this season. Discounts and offers are touted by advertisers to entice buyers. Television is the major medium used by most advertisers to convey brand messages, and viewers are bombarded with ads selling various products and services around and during the festival season. All this is cliché and known by anybody and everybody that is connected with marketing. This has been the case this year also, as the number of ads released by the top 10 advertisers has only increased.

Now for some statistics for 2017 until week 37 of 2017 with some caveat – the list is based only on the information of the top 10 advertisers as provided by Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) in its weekly lists and hence the actual percentages could be different; Advertisers and ranks could vary from week to week; and HUL ad data in this paper doesn’t include ads of some of its subsidiary/associate companies such as Ponds India, etc. Often some of these companies have also found a place in BARC’s weekly top 10advertisers list in 2017. Even without these numbers, HUL has been the biggest advertiser on television this year until the writing of this paper, which includes data for week 37 of 2017 (Saturday, 9 September 2017 to Friday, 15 September 2017).

A total of 28 advertisers have found themselves in the weekly top 10 advertisers lists between weeks 1 and 37 of 2017. They are: Hindustan Lever Ltd; Reckitt Benckiser (India) Ltd; Cadburys India Ltd; Brooke Bond Lipton India Ltd; Patanjali Ayurved Ltd; Procter & Gamble; ITC Ltd; Colgate Palmolive India Ltd; Super Cassettes Industries; Smithkline Beecham; Amazon Online India Pvt Ltd; Coca Cola India Ltd; Ponds India; Godrej Consumer Products Ltd,; Vini Product; Marico Ltd; Pepsi Co; Lalitha Jewellery; Johnson & Johnson Ltd; Godrej Sara Lee Ltd; Bharatiya Janata Party; Dabur India Ltd; Emami Limited; TVS Motor Company; Bharti Airtel Ltd; Jyothy Laboratories Ltd; Procter & Gamble Home Products

In 2017, the first few weeks witnessed the lowest combined total of television advertisement insertions of the top 10 advertisers. According to BARC, week 5 of 2015 (Saturday, 28 January 2017 to Friday, 3 February 2017) saw a total of 279,869 television insertions by the top10 advertisers, the lowest total in 2017 till week 37. The largest number of television advertisements is from the FMCG genre.

Of the total number of television ads by the top 10 advertisers in week 5, 192,939 ads or 68.94 percent were by FMCG advertisers. Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), an Indian FMCG company, is the biggest television advertiser in India. In week 5 of 2017, 95,638 insertions (34.17 percent of the total television ads by the top 10 advertisers) were by HUL. So far in 2017, the lowest number of ads by HUL at 87,458, or 28.42 percent of the total television ads by the top 10 advertisers was in week 10 (Saturday, 4 March 2017 to Friday, 10 March 2017). In that week, the top 10 advertisers had released 307,710 television advertisements, while the total number of television advertisements by the FMCG players in the top 10 advertisers list was 208,769 or 67.85 percent of the combined total of top 10 advertisers.

HUL released a massive 180,246 television advertisements, or 62.40 percent of the total television ads released by the top 10 advertisers, in week 34 (Saturday, 19 August 2017 to Friday, 25 August 2017). During that week, the FMCG advertisers in the top 10 advertisers list released 288,872 television ads or 73.68 percent of the combined total of television ads released by the top 10 advertisers.

The highest total number of television ads by the top 10 advertisers was in week 28 of 2017 at 427,057. In that week, FMCG brands among the top 10 advertisers list  released 290,620 television ads (68.05 percent of total ads by top 10 advertisers) and HUL released 142,260 television ads (48.95 percent of total ads by top 10 advertisers).

The total number of television insertions until week 37 of 2017 by the advertisers in the top 10 list was 12,897,001, of which 9,359,818 or 72.57 percent of the combined ads was by FMCG players in the top 10 advertisers’ lists. HUL has released 4,717,607 (36.58 percent)

Please refer to the figure below. It is quite obvious that advertisements by the top 10 advertisers have increased over the past few weeks. The tempo is likely the tempo will only increase.

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