Weak rupee is good news for the movie business
The weakening of the rupee against the dollar has been welcome news for the Indian film industry with forex

of total film revenue in 2008 and projects that this will be up to 11% by 2013. Last fiscal, the rupee depreciated by over 20% vis-a-vis the dollar from around Rs 39 to nearly Rs 50. In the last two years, movie-hall releases overseas grew by 22.7% annually. As the KPMG-FICCI report says, overseas releases contributed to Rs 500 crore in 2006, going up to Rs 971 crore in 2009.

Ad agencies smile again as spends rise
The advertising industry finally has a reason to believe that it is in for some good times again. It is getting an increasing number of pitches from sectors like telecom, fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and pharmaceuticals, all of which have increased their advertising spends. Other catalysts — like the

Indian Premier League (IPL) matches, the general elections and even the T20 world championship cricket matches starting this month — are leading it to believe that business will stabilize in the coming quarters. The icing on the cake is the overall positive sentiment over a stable government coming back into the saddle.

 

New OOH focused B2B website, Network2media, launched
A new B2B website that will focus on the out of home (OOH) industry, Network2media.com, has been launched. The news and features website was launched by Time Square Media Services. Network2media aims to offer a specialised media platform for OOH in India. The website will cover daily news pertaining to the OOH industry, and also have interviews and guest columns from Indian as well as international OOH professionals.

Digital media's ad spend rises 74%
The advertisement expenditure (adex) of the digital media, which includes internet and mobile mediums, has increased by 74% to Rs 680 crore in 2008-09, shows a survey by Group M. According to the survey, the digital media will see a growth of 25% this year as compared with just 7% for TV and a fall by 2% and 4% for newspapers and magazines, respectively.

Industry players attribute the adex growth to the size of the internet users, price factor, good return on investment and on the accountability of the medium.

In-film placement: Films becoming brands by themselves
The association of films and brands is age old, with marketers traditionally using film stars as brand ambassadors. But only in the last 2-3 years have marketers treated cinema as a full-fledged channel for brand communication. Instead of the traditional blink-and-its-gone appearances that brands used to make in star-studded filmy extravaganzas, now brands are hell-bent on extracting their every penny worth and they are doing it loud and clear. Brands now look beyond celebrities and advertising and are doing much more like product placements and co-promotions. Marketers have started weaving brand personalities more tightly into the brand/activation themes.

Multiplex-Bollywood talks stuck on film distribution agenda
After resolving the issue of 50:50 revenue-sharing agreement for the first week of release of a Bollywood film across multiplexes, the talks between multiplex owners and Bollywood producers are now stuck on who gets the right to distribute the new Hindi films and across how many locations. Multiplexes want any new Hindi film to get released in most of the 900-plus screens, while Bollywood producers want a selective distribution of their.