Key Findings:
· Average Ad Size in the Air-Conditioners category shows a decline since 2000, falling by 30%
· The Average Ad Size in this category was 85 cc (Column X Centimeters) in 2000 which has come down to 61 cc in 2003
· The Top 10 advertisers in this category contribute 90% of the advertising expenditure. LG Electronics has been the Top Advertiser in this category in 2002 and 2003.
· The Press Share of Expenditure of Samsung India Electronics and ETA General in this category has grown by three times, while that of Godrej, Indo Matsushita (National), Carrier, Voltas and Blue Star has dropped considerably.

The summer season is still on and so is our special focus on the Air-Conditioners category on Print Advertising. We had promised you at the beginning of this series that this would be an in-depth analysis on this category. This time, the AdEx India team really did some digging out to check out the trend of ad sizes in this category over the past few years. The results were plotted on to a graph as shown below.

The result is absolutely stunning! The Average Ad Size of an Air-Conditioner advertisement has fallen by nearly 30% since Year 2000. To explain this clearly, the average ad size in the Air Conditioners category in 2000 was 85 cc (Column X Centimeters), which has come down to 61 cc in 2003. There could be two reasons for this:
1) There are more and more players fighting for the same space available
2) Buying space in the Print Media is increasingly becoming a costly affair.

Let’s now move on to the Who’s Who in this category i.e., the biggest spenders over the past few years. The table below shows the Top Advertisers in this category in 2003 and 2002.

LG Electronics was the Top Advertiser in the Air-Conditioners category on Print in 2002 and 2003, accounting for nearly 20% of the Spends in both the years. Interestingly, the Top 10 Advertisers contribute 90% of the Advertising expenditure in this category. There are as many as 9 common advertisers in the top rankings for both these years. But, the table shows a shift in the rankings of many Advertisers. Samsung India Electronics, which ranked 7th in 2002 has jumped to the 2nd place in 2003. Hitachi, which is at the 5th position in 2002, is at the 3rd position in 2003, but its share in the Total AC Advertising has dropped marginally. Voltas, which was at the 2nd rank in 2002 has seen a much bigger drop of 10%, as a result of which it managed only the 7th position in 2003. Whirlpool too, falls from the 3rd Position in 2002 to the 6th Position in 2003.
Carrier and Videocon hold on to their positions (4th and 10th respectively) in both these years. MIRC Electronics (Onida), which was not amongst the Top 10 Advertisers in 2002, features at the 9th place in 2003. It replaces Blue Star, which was at the same position in 2002.

Let’s now have a look at Advertisers whose Press Share of Expenditure has considerably increased or decreased as compared to 2000.

The Spends for Year 2000 have been indexed to 100 to check the growth/fall. The graph shows that the maximum growers in terms of Share of Expenditure on AC Advertising on Print have been Samsung and ETA General whose advertising shares have become nearly three fold to those in 2000. Whirlpool shows alternate troughs and crests, but its net growth compared to 2000 is also close to three times. Godrej, Indo Matsushita (National), Carrier, Voltas and Blue Star are the ones whose shares have dropped from 2000.