The Hindu Business Line : Media rakes it in with Budget day ad spend

COMPANIES, especially banks and insurers, doubled their advertising spend on Budget day. Advertisers spent Rs 28 crore to book space on Thursday in leading financial dailies and news channels compared to the Rs 13.5 crore they spend on a normal day, according to Starcom Worldwide, a Mumbai-based media agency.

Budget-centric advertising has emerged as a new window to attract huge numbers of the educated male audience, said Mr Karthik Jayaraman, Group Head, Print & Out-of-home Investment, Starcom. Advertisers had spent Rs 12 crore more than their daily ad spend on the day Mr Jaswant Singh presented his Budget last year, compared to the Rs 15 crore more spent this year, indicating a 25 per cent rise in incremental ad spend.

Mr Ashish Bhasin, Director, IMAG, Lintas India, said financial services companies such as insurers and premium goods and automobile makers, which typically target educated males in metros and semi-metro areas, are usually the ones that advertise more on Budget day. For example, a few years ago, a top mutual fund had paid Rs 8 lakh for a front-page space in one of the `pink' newspapers. "That space was sold for Rs 21 lakh this year," Mr Jayaraman said.

According to a study done by AdEx India, a division of TAM Media Research, the top ten categories that advertised during the Budget, on basis of duration, included travel and tourism, insurance, airlines and writing instruments, while top advertisers included LIC, Citigroup Private Bank and Malaysian Tourism. Insurance firms topped the list of Budget-centric advertisers in the financial services category this year. They paid 136 per cent more this year to secure TV time around the Budget presentation. The study monitored 14 channels. Some of them were channels such as AajTak, DD-News, Star News, Zee News, Headlines Today, NDTV India and NDTV 24x7, Sahara Samay, CNN, BBC, and business channels like CNBC.

Ads related to Internet banking, phone banking and retail banking are some of the new ones that have started to compete for eyeballs amid Budget programming, the TAM study stated. Falling taxes and duties have also ensured the demise of the `pre-Budget theme' ads, where many advertisers, especially automobile makers, promoted their products at "pre-Budget rates."

"Earlier, advertising was used to promote pre-Budget buying by consumers. With stabilisation of duties and tariffs, it was hardly seen this year," said Mr V.M. Wabgoankar, Director (Business and Brand Strategy), Leo Burnett India.

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Media rakes it in with Budget day ad spend