MAM
Telecoms’ ad spend to return to 2019 levels of spending in 2022: Zenith
New Delhi: Telecom advertising will grow at an average rate of 4.5 per cent a year till 2023, as the sector recovers from an 8.7 per cent decline it suffered in the pandemic-ravaged 2020, according to Zenith’s Business Intelligence – Telecommunications report published on Monday.
The agency predicts that as spend by telecom companies in the 12 key global markets, including India, will rise from $17.8 billion in 2020 to $18.7 billion in 2021, and then return to its pre-pandemic level of $19.5 billion in 2022.
Smartphone sales will start to spring back this year once consumers feel more confident in their future. Consumers are becoming more willing to finance and purchase handsets independently from their network providers, giving manufacturers and retailers a greater incentive to advertise handsets themselves. Meanwhile, the networks will seek to recoup their investment in 5G licences and infrastructure through new services and more expensive data packages. According to Zenith, all these trends will help fuel healthy growth in telecoms advertising over the next three years. It predicted that telecoms adspend will grow 4.7 per cent in 2021, 4.4 per cent in 2022 and 4.3 per cent in 2023.
Traditionally, telecoms brands are known to spend more on television and radio advertising than the average brand – in 2020 they spent 42 per cent of their budgets on television and radio, while the average brand spent was 30 per cent. Their ad spend in digital is relatively less than average. In 2020, 49 per cent of their budgets went to digital channels, compared to 56 per cent for the average advertiser, but digital advertising is also the only channel in which telecoms adspend is increasing.
However, Zenith's estimates show that as audiences migrate online, telecoms companies will be refocusing on communicating their brand narratives to mass digital audiences and, by 2023, digital advertising will account for 54 per cent of all telecoms advertising. As per the forecast, telecoms brands will increase their digital adspend at an average rate of five per cent a year between 2019 and 2023.
"Telecoms companies have been the unsung heroes of the pandemic, shifting our lives online and keeping us connected to entertainment, work and commerce. Their challenge is to go from being unsung to being acknowledged and appreciated for their efforts. The spread of 5G and the reality of our new-found virtual lives give telecom brands the opportunity to move into the limelight,” said Zenith global chief strategy officer Ben Lukawski.
The analysis also showed that telecoms brands are cutting back their spending on traditional television and radio as their reach declines, but less rapidly than brands in most other categories. Zenith forecasts that between 2019 and 2023, telecoms brands will reduce their television adspend by an average of 2.0 per cent a year, compared to a 3.5 per cent annual reduction across all categories. They will also reduce their radio adspend by 2.8 per cent a year, compared to 4.1 per cent a year for the market as a whole.
It also predicts that India will be the fastest-growing market for telecoms advertising between 2020 and 2023 by some distance, with 11 per cent annual growth. According to eMarketer, only 31 per cent of the population currently has a smartphone, but this proportion is rising rapidly due to launch of low-price handsets such as the JioPhone.
“The telecom sector in India in 2021 is anticipating a robust growth on the basis of an increase in tariff pricing, demand for data, growing number of mobile users and hopefully the launch of 5G in the last quarter. This will lead to a substantial increase in media investments by the key players especially on television and digital,” said Zenith India COO Jai Lala.
Russia is another market with relatively low but fast-growing smartphone penetration, and here telecoms adspend is forecast to rise rapidly too, by eight per cent a year. Most of the other markets in this report except for France are forecast to grow by between three per cent and six per cent a year to 2023.
“The rollout of 5G services will allow mobile operators to supply bundled voice, data and entertainment services to the home and compete directly with landline broadband,” said Zenith head of forecast Jonathan Barnard. “This will spur greater competition to put together the most attractive services at the best prices and help stimulate a sustained recovery in telecoms ad spend to at least 2023.”
The report covered 12 markets – Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the UK and the US, which between them account for 73 per cent of total global ad spend.
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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.
