MAM
Q1 ad spend in the US up by a lack lustre 1.5 per cent
NEW YORK: Advertising spends in the US rose by a meagre 1.5 per cent in the first quarter of the year, says Nielsen Media Research. The report says that ad spend declined in the case of network TV, cable TV, syndicated TV and national newspapers each falling about 5 per cent, compared to the corresponding figures for the same period last year. The report adds that TV gained from the Iraqi conflict.
The report states that local newspapers grew by 9 per cent; national magazines in the US grew by 14 per cent and Hispanic TV grew by a whopping 15 per cent.
Nielsen Monitor Plus report states that advertising spending increased in six of the ten reported media, with growth rates ranging from under 1 per cent to over 15 per cent.
Nielsen Monitor-Plus MD Jeff King was quoted as saying that 2003 is disadvantaged because the Iraqi war resulted in some preemption of regularly scheduled shows and possibly contributed to a slowing of the overall advertising growth rate.
The report also mentions that GM dropped 24 per cent of its budget for Q1; Ford picked up its pace and increased its ad spend by 55 per cent for their Escape, Expedition, Explorer, and Lincoln Aviator vehicles. The most significant growth was seen in the automotive category which collectively spent more than $2 billion.
Other major contributors included Sony (up by 47 per cent) and Walt Disney (up by 24 per cent). The report says that Sony and Disney’s growth was largely due to increased spending on motion pictures. Sony’s 2003 movies include Tears of the Sun ($22 million in advertising spending), National Security($17 million), Darkness Falls ($18 million), and Adaptation ($9 million), while Disney’s increase is largely due to spending on Recruit ($23 million), Shanghai Knights ($21 million), Chicago ($19 million), and Gangs of New York ($11 million).
The report adds that spending by the top 10 categories, which were also the largest categories last year, was $5 billion dollars for the first three months of 2003 (up 5 per cent).
Brand advertising slightly decreased. Also notable from the category perspective was last year’s high-flyer, pharmaceuticals, which increased only two percent.
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
