By Indrani Sen

Last week, GroupM released ‘Interactions_2017’, an insightful and interesting report on global overview of digital marketing.  In the report there is no specific mention of how digital interactions are tracking in India, though along with many other countries of the world, India has also been covered. It is a must-read for Advertisers and Agencies in India, who can use it as a crystal ball for gazing into our digital future.

The report contains from highlights of countrywise data along with a snapshot of interesting developments of interactions in that country and Appendices with data on E-commerce, Interactions Ad Investment, Adult Internet Users, etc. I have used the data for BRICS countries to do a reality check on Digital India, which shows that we still have a long way to travel to reach the top of the table among the five countries.

Source: Intercations_2017

In spite of having one of the highest growth rates of mobile penetration, India is still at the bottom of the table with 33% of smartphone penetration as percentage of phone users.

Source: Interactions_2017

The dominance of TV in adult media usage was highest in India in 2014, when comparative data for all five countries were available. ‘Interactions-2017’ has shown the statistics for the other four countries apart from India from 2015 to 2017 (estimated) where figures from India have been shown as not available. Globally, on a population-weighted average, the media day grew by 9 minutes in 2016, riding on a 14 minute rise in online. It is expected that similar changes have also happened in India.

Source: Interactions_2017

The total value of e-commerce has doubled in India from 2014 to 2017 (estimated). However, a comparison of e-commerce per user shows that India is at the bottom of the table among the four original BRIC countries. This is due to the huge rise in the number of adult internet users in India which has almost doubled from 2014 to 2017 (estimated) as shown in the next table.

Source: Interactions_2017

The huge number of users is pulling down India’s performance when it comes to advertising investments in digital media/ interactions per user and is again pushing India to the bottom of the table with only 3 USD per user against 82 USD per user of China.

Source: This Year Next Year 2016 / Interactions_2017

What is encouraging for India is the share of digital interactions of all media investments has doubled from 2014 to 2017 (estimated). We need to invest in an accelerated rate in this area to improve our performance among the BRICS countries as apart from Brazil, all other countries have much higher share of digital interactions in all media investments. China, which leads the table, is estimated to have 57% (estimated) interaction share of all media investments against our share of 14.9% (estimated) in 2017.

Source: Interactions_2017

To sum up, it is evident from the statistics reported by ‘Interaction_2017’ that demonetisation has not been able to give the desired boost to digitising India. I think we may have to wait for another decade before we can even start dreaming of rising to the top of the digital interaction tables of the BRICS countries.

Indrani Sen is a veteran media agency and marketing services professional. She is currently an Independent Consultant and Adjunct Professor, Media Management at Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, Pune. The views expressed here are her own.