Thailand's media ad spending could recover and grow by 10% this year if the fresh outbreak is controlled, says Media Intelligence (MI), a media planning and creative agency.
This outlook assumes the new outbreak is contained. The 10% year-on-year growth would mean media ad spending of 81 billion baht this year.
From 2022 to 2023, media ad spending is expected to reach 90 billion baht, a level last seen in 2019.
"The vaccine roll-out and recovery of the Chinese market would be a boon for Thailand's export and travel sectors," said Pawat Ruangdejworachai, newly appointed president of MI.
In the first 14 days of January, ad spending fell 10% from the same period last year, he said.
"Everyone learned from the situation during last March's lockdown. If the outbreak is controlled, advertisers may return to spend more in February, with further plans during the summer," said Mr Pawat.
In 2020, the media industry took a severe hit from the pandemic, with ad spending plunging 18.3% year-on-year to 73.7 billion baht.
In the first scenario of 10% growth this year, the internet is expected to see the biggest growth in ad spending among media peers with a 16% jump to 22.7 billion baht, followed by out of home, up 13% to 10.3 billion, and TV up 8.5% to 40.5 billion.
With the fresh outbreak, people are watching more news programmes and TV, but this does not mean ad spending on TV will grow in line with viewing time as content consumption occurs on many platforms and brands tend to limit their marketing budget during a downturn, he said.
Ad spending on the internet will continue to grow, particularly on entertainment-related applications such as TikTok, which has 12 million users in Thailand, said Mr Pawat.
In a second scenario where the outbreak is not controlled and a partial lockdown is needed, ad spending would grow 5%, he said.
The new outbreak struck before the high season for advertising from February to April.
This scenario sees ad spending on the internet surging 15% to 22.5 billion baht, while out of home and TV spending both grow only 5%, Mr Pawat said.
In the worst-case scenario, where the outbreak is uncontrollable and people panic because of a major lockdown, media spending this year is expected to see flat growth or even contract, he said.