Industry leaders believe it should be about TV ‘and’ digital, not TV ‘or’ digital: Panel
A panel discussion held in the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2023 unveiling re-establishes the importance of linear television and how the AdEx for the industry is expected to grow
As the media industry continues to see domination from television as a medium, the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2023 held in Mumbai on Thursday held a panel discussion on how this medium has grown over the years and has been changing the media landscape over the years.
The panel titled ‘Continued Growth of Linear TV in today's media landscape' was chaired by Amol Dighe, CEO, Investments & Business Development at Madison Media and consisted of Sandeep Mehrotra, Head - Ad Sales, Network Channels, SPNI; Ashish Sehgal, Chief Growth Officer, Advertising Revenue, ZEEL; and Amrutha Nair, Head of Entertainment, Ad Sales and Strategy, Disney Star.
The discussion revolved around growing ad revenue in the television industry and what the future of this industry entails.
Amrutha Nair talks about how growth in India’s GDP will have a huge impact on television ad ex growth: "Television as all of you know, today reaches out to about 210 million households in the country, which roughly translates to about 900 million people, which is by far the largest medium that you can have in the country. Despite its reach of 210 million homes, it still covers only two-thirds of the country. What it means is there is another 30 or 33 percentage that gives us huge headroom for growth. I think as broadcasters, our focus will be in the future to build our penetration in those segments. As consumption grows, demand will follow."
She also noted that the India ad ex ratio to the GDP is around 0.3% and that of the developed economies is in the range of 0.7% to 1.5%. "Even if you were to compare it with comparable economies, it's much higher than India. So, in the coming years, media ad ex is expected to have a dramatic growth and hence, keeping in mind these two aspects, television is expected to grow in double digits," she said.
Sehgal spoke about how linear television is extremely important for broadcasters and how they should protect its future. “Linear TV is the most important and critical medium for broadcasters for growth and currently the revenues for any broadcaster is about 80% coming from linear business and hence very important for us to keep growing it and at the same time, even keep protecting it."
Mehrotra also explains what television means to brands, marketers and consumers. “There are brands who need a narrative, there are brands who need a story and what better medium than anybody and everybody sitting in this room on telling those stories? So, there is a great future for all of us. The only thing there is a word of caution. There is something which is called confirmation bias."
Reiterating the importance of TV in the media planning mix, he says that when it comes to TV and digital, the operating word in between should be "and" and not "or."
