Airtel to spend Rs 60 crore on outdoor

While Airtel's total spends are pegged at Rs 300 crore approximately, 20 per cent of the budget will go to outdoor

Recently, telecom giant, Airtel called for a media pitch. The participating agencies included TME (the media agency of Rediffusion Y&R), Starcom Mediavest, Madison, Percept, mediaedge:cia and Lintas Media Group. Some of these agencies went for the pitch along with their OOH outfits, such as Vector, Portland and Aaren Initiative.

While the overall account size is pegged at Rs 300 crore approximately, it has been learnt that 20 per cent of the spends will go to outdoor. According to the latest KPMG-FICCI Media and Entertainment report, in 2009, telecom contributed 19 per cent of the overall revenue for outdoor advertising.

Currently, Airtel's media duties are with Madison; while outdoor advertising is being handled by Portland, which is part of GroupM. According to sources, this time, the company is looking at assigning the entire portfolio to one agency. In case outdoor is given to a different agency, it will be solely with the objective of deriving better value.

Airtel is in the final phase of the evaluation process; and the results will be announced shortly.

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