MUMBAI:  If you thought the days of print advertising in India are numbered, you may have to change your mind. In fact, the print advertising in the country has been bucking the global trend of continual decline. The industry not just grew by 3% but also crossed the Rs 20,000-crore figure last year, an annual Pitch Madison report by the Exchange4 media group stated.

The report added that India is the only market where Print still has a dominant share in the advertising industry at 30% with the overall industry pegged at Rs67,603 crore, the report added.Advertising in regional languages contributed 75% of the total share. Print continues to draw its strength from its large diversified category portfolio and has as many as 2,00,000 advertisers, compared to TV which has only around 12,500 advertisers.

In terms of advertising expenditures, the report forecasts that the first half of 2020 will see a subdued demand on the back of the current slowdown, however the demand is expected to pick up in the later half. 
“I believe Adex will grow dramatically over the next 5 years given that we are one of the larger growing economies of the world and already growing at twice the rate of global Adex (11% vs 5.4%). Despite this India’s contribution to global Adex is under 2%, which is bound to go up. Advertisers need to experiment more with media and do things differently,” Sam Balsara, Chairman, Madison World, said.