At the launch of the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2022, Nagaraj Krishnamurthy, Chief Strategy & Analytics Officer, Madison Media, explored new perspectives in media planning The launch of the Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2022 on Wednesday witnessed the gathering of the industry’s top leaders. The much-awaited report, unveiled by Sam Balsara, Chairman and Managing Director, Madison World, predicted a 20% increase in AdEx for the year, taking the advertising expenditure to almost Rs 90,000 crore. The report also tracked the different sectors that are driving this growth and the ever-evolving scene on the ground for all stakeholders in the A&M industry. At the launch event, Nagaraj Krishnamurthy, Chief Strategy & Analytics Officer, Madison Media, explored the new perspectives in media planning in his keenly analytic session.   Krishnamurthy explained that the pandemic has compelled players across the media industry to both consolidate as well as diversify in a market that has shown such rapid change in such a short period. “There is a huge opportunity in front of all of us, collectively, and we have to talk about how we all can be part of it. Private consumption, that is to say, what all customers are spending in a year, has gone up by two and half times in the last 10 years.”   Noting that annual consumption on average had gone up to Rs 3.76 lac per household from 1.6 lac per household annually, with approximately 319 million households making up the total market, Krishnamurthy said India has more than double the number of households than the world’s largest economy, the US. “So another huge advantage is that almost all product categories across India are underpenetrated, meaning that there is huge space for companies to grow,” he added. However, Krishnamurthy explained that the biggest challenge to this opportunity is the huge disparity in the households across the country whether it is income inequality, region, language, culture and other areas. This means there need to use multiple means and methods to reach out to as wide a consumer base as possible. He explained that brands, no matter what category of good or service they provide, would have to use a robust mix of media channels and platforms to reach out to different markets. Krishnamurthy noted that the pandemic had played a major role in not just accelerating the already ongoing shift to digital, but there had also been a lot of displacement in terms of how different geographies were accessing data. Krishnamurthy shared the numbers and showed that there has been a lot of shift in how people and which people are consuming what media. He explained that brands also need to keep pace with these factors so as to be able to advertise to their target audiences, be it age, gender, income level and more, leading to increasing synergy between industry players to continue to make the most of this opportunity. The PMAR 2022 is a prediction of ad spends in the year to come, as well as the performance of the industry over the past year. Created and curated by the Exchange4Media group and leading agency Madison, the report is a comprehensive guide to the trajectory of all different facets of advertising and marketing, industry performances, and the ever-evolving space.