BENGALURU: Quite like their brick and mortar counterparts, eCommerce players in India offer discounts galore during the run-up to  Navratra-Duhserra. This year also, the three big payers – Flipkart, Amazon India and Snapdeal ran television campaigns to grab as much of the online rupees as they could during the five or six special days.   Flipkart’s sale’s moniker  was ‘Big Billion Day 2016, Amazon called it ‘The Great Indian Sale’, while Snapdeal called its offering  ‘Unbox Sale’

Note: This paper is on the changes in the pecking order in terms of television ad spots among the top 10 brands, and does not reflect the performance of a particular industry or genre per se.

As per Broadcast Audience Research Council of India (BARC) data top 10 brands *Across Genre : All India (U+R) : 4+ Individuals,for week 39 (24 to 30 September 2016), of the total 164,881 television ad spots shared by the top ten brands, as many as 119,314 (72.4 percent) spots were by the seven FMCG brands that included beauty,oral care and healthcare, food beverages and confectionary;27,390 (16.6 percent) ad spots were booked by two automobile players – Honda and TVS; and 18,177 spots (11 percent) by one eComm player – Snapdeal.

Comparatively, in week 40 (1 October to 7 October 2016), the number of television ad spots by the top 10 brands increased 12.6 percent to 185,593. The break up in week 40 was:  108,088 (58.2 percent) spots by six FMCG brands (down 9.4 percent in terms of absolute numbers);   23,554 ad spots or 12,7 percent were by the sole representative from the auto mobile industry – TVS; and 53,951 (29.1) spots by the three eComm players mentioned above.

In week 39, Patanjali was numero uno with a massive28,949 in terms of spots, which fell 24.7 percent to 21,785 spots in week 40 and brought the brand down to fifth position in the pecking order of ad spots. In week 40, it was healthcare brand Dettol that moved to pole position with 25574 spots. Please refer to Fig A for ad spots for week 39 and 40. Please refer to Fig A below for the top 10 ranks in terms of TV ad spots.

Snapdeal has another mini festival sale in the period between 12 and 14 October, while Amazon has announced 17 to 20 October as the Great IndianFestival days. Ad blitzkrieg’s by these two eComm players are on and data for next few weeks could yet see some interesting movements among the top ten brands in terms of ad spots on television.