Advertising guru Martin Sorrell, executive chairman of S4 Capital, a digital advertising and marketing services company, is betting big on India's advertisement market.
The Indian advertising market is very vibrant, he told Moneycontrol at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20.
'It still is dominated by traditional media while the world is about 70 percent digital now. It's about a trillion dollars (marketing) spend in the world. And $700 billion is digital and $300 billion is traditional. The traditional piece is declining, going down by about 5 percent if you've got live sports. The streamers like Netflix and others have caught on to the strength of sports like the IPL (Indian Premier League)."
Sorrell also added that they have got a small operation in New Delhi and are very keen to expand it further. "I think we're very keen to see how we can expand it to even greater."
He is bullish not only on India, but the Indian advertising market as well.
"The two work in tandem. If corporate profits are strong, which they are in India, advertising is strong as a direct correlation. That's probably the tightest correlation that exists. So a vibrant India means a vibrant Indian advertising market. And the Indians are very strong technologically."
Indians have woken up to the importance of digital communication, they'll work even more to it in the future, he said.
He shared a story of him using Gemini.
"I was with our brokers. We were having a New Year's lunch. And we were talking to the analyst when I said I will instantly write a bicircular and I went to Gemini. In 10 seconds, I had the bi-circular. It is amazing."
He added that technology is impacting advertising methods too.
"Changing the speed with which we get advertising to market is super quick now and personalizing at a scale we never thought possible. We could produce for a Netflix campaign one and a half million assets before now we can do multiples of that on an individualized basis."
"Media planning and buying that's the profit driver employs about 250,000 people. They're not going to be 250,000 people driving that in the future. It's going to be much less. And if you think about that trillion dollars that clients spend, that should be analyzed algorithmically. And the outputs will be far superior, which a 25 year old media planner or buyer will be able to use much more effectively than trying to do it himself or herself," he added.
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