Over the two months of lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a spike in the media consumption on television and digital platforms. But this increase in consumption has not led to an increase in ad revenues, therefore the increase in consumption has not led to much revenue generation. That being said, industry experts are also on the belief that TV and digital platforms tend to grow faster than any other media sector once the lockdowns are lifted.
According to TAM Adex Data on the percentage growth of ad volumes on different platforms, we can see that advertisement volumes in the month of April digital platforms and television did not see a considerable drop compared to other media sectors. The fall for digital was the least at 26.13% and for the television broadcast the percentage drop was 46.15 % whereas Radio and Print witnessed a drop of 71.43% and 84% respectively.
“There is a spike in the number of viewers and ratings but how do you monetise that and so we have been seeing a slide in advertising. A lot of that growth is tied to the economy. We will see some advertising coming back when the economy starts to recover. And when that happens, I believe digital and broadcasting will be early to recover. Digital has already seen a spurt in consumption and in the case of broadcasting the advertising money comes from larger companies and these tend to the bigger and resilient ones. Sectors which rely on MSME and local advertising will be able to bounce back faster.” said Jehil Thakkar, Partner and Head, Media and Entertainment, Deloitte India regarding the drop in ad revenues.
Advertisements volumes are expected to increase once the sectors recover from the crises and in the case of FMCG, pharmaceuticals and retail the recovery will be quicker once the supply chain comes back to normal. Media sectors should start coming up with innovative solutions to get more people to invest in media.
Dinesh Singh Rathore, CEO, Madison Media Omega, considering the changes to come in media sector post the Covid-19 said, “Nobody is going to do numbers that they were doing before, but as compared to OOH, Cinema, Radio or Print, both TV and digital will perform much better. The first quarter, including April and May, has almost been a write-off, so before brands really start advertising they want some semblance of stability. People will want to wait for 2 to 3 weeks to see because they don’t want anything to go wrong once they start operating. They want a couple of weeks of stability before resuming communication.”
