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Media buyers' mood upbeat on spends: afaqs! Ipsos survey
The survey - afaqs! Indian Media Buyers' Forecast - conducted by afaqs! in association with Ipsos suggests that the current mood of the industry is quite optimistic, as 73 per cent of the respondents believed that media spends would increase or remain the same.
In the past, there have been quite a few studies listing out media spends across industries and categories, most of them quite beneficial for the industry. However, when afaqs! spoke to several media and advertising practitioners, they wished for a study that could predict the future of spends.
That is when afaqs! decided to take up the task. We commissioned IPSOS to conduct the study - Indian Media Buyers' Forecast. The idea was that we would not predict actual numbers, but just help people understand the overall mood of the media planners and buyers to gauge the atmosphere.
IPSOS connected with media planners and buyers which included top level executives from the leading media agencies who were asked whether media spends will increase or decrease in the coming month. Other questions included which media platform - television, print or radio - will see an increase or decrease, which sectors would spend more (or less) and which television channels are expected to see an increase or decrease in spends.
To get a national perspective, interviews were done across four cities - Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai. Forty one per cent of the respondents came from Mumbai, 33 per cent were from Delhi, 21 per cent from Bengaluru and 5 per cent from Chennai.
The study was not restricted to the network agencies as the results would have skewed towards multinational brands. Respondents were also included from independent media agencies which handled large local brands. The ratio between the multinational and independent agencies is 85:15.
This survey deals with predictions for the coming month. We sincerely hope that this study will help and guide the industry practitioners.
The database of 141 mid-senior level people across large and small agencies was generated from four cities-Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.
For forecasting spends from different categories only those respondents who handled those sectors were considered, which is why the base is low for certain categories.