MAM
Tam AdEx: Celebrity endorsements dominate 32 per cent of TV ads in H1 2024
Mumbai: The latest report from Tam AdEx India for January to June 2024 highlights a key role of celebrity endorsements in television advertising. This period saw 32 per cent of total TV ads being endorsed by celebrities, with film actors contributing more than 75 per cent of the celebrity ad space.
The food & beverages sector emerged as the largest contributor, making up 28 per cent of total celebrity-endorsed ads. The food & beverages, personal care/personal hygiene, and household products sectors collectively represented over 50 per cent of celebrity-endorsed ads. Among these, ads in the food & beverages sector saw a dominance of male celebrities, while the personal care segment was led by female endorsers. Categories such as toilet/floor cleaners and aerated soft drinks topped the list, with toilet cleaners alone holding an eight per cent share.
Film stars, sports personalities, and TV actors were the main contributors to the 32 per cent of ads featuring celebrity endorsements. The top three most visible celebrities during this period were Akshay Kumar and Shahrukh Khan, each with five per cent visibility, followed closely by Amitabh Bachchan with four per cent. Akshay Kumar maintained an impressive 22 hours per day of ad visibility across channels.
The dominance of the food & beverages sector was clear, while personal care/personal hygiene and household products followed closely. With 28 per cent of the overall ad volumes, the food & beverages sector continued to attract top male celebrities, whereas personal care remained the preferred category for female endorsers.
In the first half of 2024, Akshay Kumar was the most visible celebrity, followed by Shahrukh Khan, Amitabh Bachchan, and M.S. Dhoni. Six of the top ten celebrities, including Amitabh Bachchan and Kiara Advani endorsed more brands than they did during the same period in 2023. Sports personalities like M.S. Dhoni also made a notable impact. Additionally, power couples like Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt led the pack in couple endorsements, contributing to more than 18 per cent of the total ad space. Akshay Kumar and Twinkle Khanna followed with 16 per cent, making couple endorsements a growing trend.
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.
