MAM
Guest column: Holiday spirit to spur demand for advertising
NEW DELHI: The pandemic seems to be behind us. Though it hasn’t really disappeared, a slight ray of hope and safety has emerged from the talks of a vaccine soon becoming available. The effect of the prolonged lockdown has impacted economies across the globe, with India being no exception to it. In fact, for an economy which was already reeling under fiscal pressures, the pandemic and resultant lockdown only exacerbated things further.
To put things in perspective, look at the dismal performance of the economy in Q1. GDP contracted by a whopping 23 per cent in the June quarter of FY21 after having expanded by a not so impressive 3.3 per cent in the last quarter of FY20. With the first two quarters being wiped out, the third quarter numbers are only expected to be marginally good compared to the ones preceding it. In fact, the GDP in Q3 had expanded by slightly more than 5 per cent in FY19 and 4.6 per cent in FY20. The prolonged lockdown which completely shut down economic activity will have a paralysing effect on the Q3 GDP growth too.
A depressed economic growth has an all-pervasive impact on sectors, whether primary or tertiary. The advertising sector too has taken its fair share of hits. Most of the festive season this year has been under the shadows of the pandemic. Bigger festivities have been a complete washout until Diwali. But from here on there seems to be a light of hope.
With the world slowly opening, advertisers are likely to spend the remainder of the festive season trying to cover up for what was lost during the lockdown period. A paradigm shift in the overall marketing scenarios following the pandemic will obviously need a change in advertising strategies, creatives and mediums. This is likely to bode well for the advertising world.
What will drive advertising going forward?
With Diwali witnessing a slight uptick in activity, a lower spread rate of Covid2019 will help in maintaining the momentum from here on out. The focus now shifts to year-end festivities starting with Thanksgiving towards the end of November and moving towards Christmas and New Year.
One factor that will drive demand from consumers is the very fact that across the board they have been weary of spending big and focusing on saving in a scenario where job losses and pay cuts have been bothering them. Targeted advertising towards the consuming class will hence drive the fortunes of the industry over the next couple of months until New Year.
The large swathe of middle and upper middle-class consumers are key in the Indian context. This is exactly the layer of society which has been able to weather the economic storm of the pandemic to some extent. With salary structures crawling back to normal, spending habits too can be expected to return to pre-Covid levels.
In the changed mindset that we are presently living, fine tuning advertising to the temperaments of consumers will become essential. While products suited to the changed environment, where safety takes precedence over all else will be in demand, pricing will be the next crucial element to target consumers.
Though a bumper season is not what it looks like, a rejuvenated spirit among advertisers will surely buoy spirits keeping them high enough to be prepared for a better festive season next year. After all hope is the only reality!
(The writer is founder & CEO of VDO.AI. Indiantelevision.com may not subscribe to his views.)
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
