Mobile

By 2018 more than 50% of digital ad spend in India will go to mobile

The new magic number in the Indian internet world is “500 million” – the number of internet users we expect in India by 2018. In early 2015, we were at 300 million. India took 10 years to reach the first 200 million mark,

Early 2015: 300 million
2104: 243 million
2013: 213 million
2012: 155 million
2000: 54 million

Mobiles are being used everywhere in India! Source: Twitter

In the next 3 years, India expects a 40% growth to hit the 500 million mark. Earlier too, India has seen a growth of over 35% y-o-y, but when the user base is big, currently at 300 million, it is no small task to maintain a 40% growth rate. Luckily, mobile, especially smartphone users, are growing rapidly in India.

Sales of smartphones in India doubled from 156 million units in 2013 to 364 million in 2014 — that growth is set to continue and take India past 500 million internet users in the coming few years, the bulk of whom will be on mobile devices.

These days it is not uncommon to come across ventures in India launching their product on mobile only.

Digital Ad Spend in India

With the growth of internet usage in India, we expect digital revenues to grow too. The following data is from the Economic Times (April 14, 2015) & eMarketer.

The current ad spend on mobile internet is still tiny in 2014/15. Hence it is easy to achieve a higher “percentage” of growth. By 2018, more than half of digital ad spend will go to mobile (total digital ad spend $1,775 million, mobile 942 million).

India’s media and spending is just 1.1% of the global total, according to eMarketer. This year, ad spending will rise 8% to just $6.6 billion, and a little over $900 million will go toward digital ads, which works out to about 14.2% of total ad spend, the third smallest share worldwide, ahead of only Argentina & Indonesia.

By 2019, digital ads will command a share of more than a quarter of total ad spending in India, ahead of even France, Spain, Italy and Brazil.

	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018
Total media ad spending* ($M)	5,558.6	6,114.5	6,603.6	7,032.8	7,490	7,939.4
Digital ad spending** ($M)	568.6	739.2	938.8	1,173.5	1,455.1	1,775.3
Digital ad spend as % of Total media ad spend	10.2	12.1	14.2	16.7	19.4	22.4
Mobile Internet ad spending*** ($M)	26.2	78.7	173.2	346.5	589	942.5
Mobile Internet ad spend as % of digital ad spend	4.6	10.6	18.4	29.5	40.5	53.1
Mobile Internet ad spend as % of total media	0.5	1.3	2.6	4.9	7.9	11.9
Note : Converted at the exchange rate of US $1 = Rs. 60.96
* includes digital (desktop/laptop and mobile), directories, magazines, newspapers, outdoor, radio and TV includes advertising that appears on desktop and laptop computers as well as mobile phones and tablets, and includes all the various formats of advertising on those platforms; excludes SMS, MMS and P2P messaging-based advertising. * includes display ( banners, vedio and rich media ) and search; excludes SMS, MMS and P2P messaging-based advertising; includes ad spending on tablets.

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BG Mahesh

Internet application ideator and implementor. Been there and done that since early 1990s. I like to present data to the common man in the simplest manner on the internet.