Telcos' 4G push to help advertising sector grow 15% in 2016

Mumbai, Jan 3: Higher spending by telecom companies to promote their 4G services is expected to boost the advertising industry by 10-15 per cent in 2016, according to Deloitte India.

"The ongoing launch of high-speed 4G data services is set to become the next battleground for telecom firms. The industry is expecting operators like Airtel, Vodafone and the soon-to-be-launched Reliance Jio to spend millions of dollars on advertising over the next few months to grab market share," Deloitte India's Ashesh Jani told PTI.

He said the 4G services will also help in pushing the ad spends on mobile.

"Advertisers will be spending more money on video ads on hand-held devices in 2016. Advertisers will think mobile-first when making their digital advertising strategy. With more telecom operators ready to launch 4G services, video consumption on mobile will rise even more, thus pushing ad spends on video ads," he said.

As per an Internet and Mobile Association of India study, as much as 60 per cent of subscribers in the country access the net through mobile phones.

It is expected to reach 315 million by 2017. A recent report from Internet traffic tracking firm ComScore revealed that online video consumption here grew 100 per cent in the past two years alone.

"Digital media continued to show the maximum year-on-year growth, above 30 per cent in 2015. Video, mobile and social media are biggest growth drivers for it," Jani said.

The ICC T20 World Cup, which will be held in the country from March, is also expected to be a trigger in 2016, he said. In 2015, he observed that e-commerce players had increased their spending by 70 per cent and now accounted for 6 per cent of total TV advertising.

Online retailers have used radio extensively in their ad campaigns and have aggressively advertised on the medium to gain market, Jani notes.

The Cricket World Cup, IPL, and Bihar and Delhi assembly polls also contributed to overall growth in 2015 and this year too with four large states -- West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam -- going to polls, this will give a big leg-up to the advertising industry.

"Government ad spends rose drastically in 2015 with campaigns like the Make in India, Swachh Bharat and Digital India," Jani said, adding last year ad industry maintained its annual growth similar to that of 2014.

According to the Pitch-Madison Media Advertising Outlook 2015, the advertising industry grew by 16.4 per cent in 2014. It revised its forecast for 2015 to 13.8 per cent from 9.6 per cent.

PTI