Slowdown hits media, print biggest casualty: GroupM

According to GroupM, the media buying and planning giant, estimates of advertising expenditure, digital media is the silver lining in the gloom of numbers for all other media.

GroupM India has rejigged all the growth numbers that they had projected in early 2013.

The current projections, the earlier projections and last year's actual numbers are given below:

Of particular worry would be the numbers for print, originally estimated to grow at 4.8 percent and now corrected to a measly 0.7 percent.

H2 2013 Original Revised

TV 7.6% 5.9%

Print 4.8% 0.7%

Radio 5.7% 2.5%

Digital 30.0% 30.0%

OOH 3.8% 3.8%

Cinema 1.4% 12.2%

Total 7.3% 4.7%

(Growth rates v/s H2 2012. H2 defined as July-Dec).

To further dampen spirits, in pre-Onam period, FCT on Kerala channels has fallen by 13% versus same period last year (4 week run up to Onam). Onam is a good indicator of mood amongst advertisers for rest of festive season.

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The positive and negative highlights, according to GroupM, are as follows:

Positive

1) Political parties and government spending to increase owing to general elections in 2014 and state elections in 2013

2) Automobiles: Many new launches lined up in the forthcoming months

3) Media to continue on new channel and program launches

Negative

1) FMCG facing pressure on raw material prices and manufacturing processes

2) Telecom: handset manufactures heavily dependent on imports of smartphones and feature phones

3) BFSI: Interest rates not relenting, financial markets under performing

Overall, this is not great news as media, as always, looks up to the approaching festival season for a rescue.