The TAM Media Research and Medianews4u have partnered for the 3rd consecutive year to release the South Story Decoded report- the handbook that delves deeply into the advertising volumes of South Regional Markets of Tamilnadu Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra – Telangana.

In his opening remarks during the report launch, LV Krishnan, CEO, TAM Media Research Ltd, spoke in detail about the growth and decline of the South market.

“The last one year has been crazy where we have seen the pandemic taking effect on almost all the businesses including the advertising. Despite that, the South Story decoded has been released primarily because of the fact that there is a set of Data Covid warriors- the people who have done data analytics, coalition as well data release to ensure the fact that the data reaches the users side in real quick time. So that the decision making can happen continuously, it’s very important to give a salute to the Data covid warriors.”

He further did a presentation on South Story Decoded 2021. He presented some of the anecdotes captured in the report, how the four South Indian states have recovered from the pandemic and advertising in 2021 and beyond.

He said, “The overall ad revenue dropped to Rs 55,000 from Rs 70,000 crore in 2019, which means a de-growth rate of 21 per cent. Television witnessed a drop of Rs 23,000 crore from Rs 27,000 crore- a decline of 15 per cent, but interestingly TV has taken a larger share of the pie with almost 42 percent share of the total ad spends.”

He continued,” Print has declined almost by 35 percent and Radio by 40 percent. While Print and Radio are catching up, we see outdoor and Cinema declining 77 and 80 percent respectively. The interesting element is the growth of digital media in the entire gamut, not only they have grown by 10 percent, but they are slowly catching up with TV in the total share of ad spends.”

“In the south market, digital grew by 10 percent, the share of Digital spend has increased from 13 percent to 21 percent in the overall share of spends. There is a huge gap between the Television and Digital in the Southern Market compared to the National market,” Krishnan added.

According to the report, Kerala has got affected the worse with pandemic and has had their worst fall in terms of the total ad spends with a 29 percent decline.

He further elaborated on how the story is changing as we enter 2021.

The festive-themed ads dropped by 29 percent in South India, whereas on a national level, the festive-themed ads dropped by 27 percent only. He elaborated on the Instadia advertising during IPL and Southern franchises contribution in IPL 13.