We all could agree that this year was toughest for the economy of the nation especially for the business sectors of course media agencies have also been affected by this crisis. Media business took a major hit with both the big and small companies shrinking their ad budgets. Apart from AdEx, media measurement also came under the scanner which makes the business further slow down its process in this year of uncertainty. Most industry experts are pinning their hopes on 2021 with vaccines for COVID is about to be open on the nation. CEO of IPG Mediabrands, Shashi Sinha also agrees about the year 2020 being the toughest
They are expecting the year 2021 will be better, Sinha admits that the first half of the year was a complete loss and they started to rise p only after the last two quarters. Chief Executive Officer at Dentsu Aegis Network India, Anand Bhadkamkar has calculated that the year 2020 has caused a de-growth of 15 to 18 % on the overall of the business across the sector. Chief Client Officer & West Head of Wavemaker India, Shekhar Banerjee said that the year 2020 is a mixed bag, the media agencies were no different like every other business. According to him, they experienced the year in two phases, April to June was the time where they took heavy damage as India went into nationwide lockdown. During the festival season, they had a strong rebound. IPL was clubbed with Diwali and has witnessed nearly Rs 3000 crore worth of advertising which was commented by him. The impact of the lockdown was maximum on print, radio, cinema, and OOH sector is what unanimously believed by the experts.
Everyone believes that 2021 is the year where every business to go back to their original tracks. The New Year should give us much better results with the base as low as 2020 is what Sinha believes. Since the last two quarters had improvements then this year would show greater results to the business. Despite all the problems that pandemic has caused which lead to the lockdown Banerjee believes that his agency did some of the best work for their customers in 2020. He added that they believe there is a better way to grow their client’s business and this results in the growth of their people.