Is it 2021 or 2020(1) for ad and marketing agencies?
Here we are, already two months into the new year and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel……..maybe?
We lost many people last year. Grief and sorrow of the spared loved one’s was, unfortunately, commonplace. The slew of stories coming from people’s losses are still doing the rounds which makes us think, time and again, could we have done with a better year? With all the curveballs that were thrown at us, we couldn’t help but regurgitate the past, time and again. Even though it might bring us sadness, there is a lot to learn from a year that showed us that the world can change its ways in the blink of an eye, and we are far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for.
Talking about the markets, any and all industries have had to change their strategies in ways no one could have imagined. This change affected the ad and marketing agencies as well. The bitter fruit of reduced revenues were dooming the markets and many have even had to shut shop. But with careful revisitation to the drawing board, bundled with a cup of double-shot caffeine and a fresh new board-marker, major agencies went into big brain time to find solutions. Most agencies like McCann World group saw the shift in focus from offline to online media. When we say online, IT is the obvious coherence to the medium and it consequently saw the biggest boom in profits. According to a report published by TAM AdEx, an advertising monitoring and data powerhouse, there was a rise in ad spend through TV media, although marginal, in 2020. In fact, DDB Mudra Group’s Executive Director, Sathyamurthy Namakkal, insists that television media advertising will see a 20% to 25% increase in volumes in 2021. The same report also encapsulated information showing a rise in print media advertising in India by 90% in quarter 4 of 2020 as compared to quarter 1 to 3.
So what are we trying to say through this information?
The data suggests that both online and offline media has seen a boost in revenue (although not in equal amounts). Unlike what was previously estimated, this report indicates that there is a boost in offline media as well and the offline media advertising industry is looking to bear fruit in the coming year. But the reality is, with the trend naturally shifting towards the online media consumption market, it is more convenient to reach the masses through these online media sources. There are a lot of industries trying to leverage their position in the market no matter how adversely they have been affected by the pandemic. But the twist in this is that the most affected industries will sweat harder to advertise their product / service. In conjunction with this, there are a lot of sporting events like the IPL and an expectation of the Olympics to happen. Hence, the sporting genre is anticipated “to be a sport” for ad agencies (this could mean in the sense of competition as well).
Smaller ad agencies might even look to scoop up contracts from companies such as Hindustan Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser who are the top performing companies in the ad spend space. Many companies are even adopting Artificial Intelligence into their functions, to deliver better form to their services. For example, MasterCard has already induced AI into their Facebook replies, which uses natural language processing that deciphers what the customer requires and responds as if it were a real person. This helps them automate payments. The truth of the matter is that a business development approach for one company may not work for another company. The markets are seeing a new dawn but the best advice would be to consider all data (refer here for the reports) with a pinch of salt and measure your own metrics, being Qrious (as we like to call it!) from within, to get the best results!
