BENGALURU: The average advertisement revenue per private FM station for the quarter ended 30 September 2017 (Sep-17) increased 8.68 percent to Rs 1.674 crore from Rs 1.540 crore in the immediate trailing quarter. Earlier, the average ad revenue per station had declined for two continuous quarters – (Mar-17 and Jan-17). Maybe the ghosts of demonetization and the new GST regime have started to fade away for radio the industry?

Data provided by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) reveals that for the Jun-16 quarter, of the 245 private FM radio stations that were in operation at that time, 244 had reported ad revenue of Rs 468.08 crore or average of about Rs 1.911 crore per radio station. This number increased to reported ad revenue of Rs 502.13 crore from 259 of the 260 operating stations in the Sep-16 quarter with average ad revenue of Rs 1.931 crore per station. Ad revenues further increased to Rs 547.76 crore or Rs 2.006 crore per station reported by all the 273 stations that were in operation in Dec-16. 

In November 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetization effective immediately, and the long pending Goods and Service Taxes bill was implemented in July 2017. As a result, radio ad revenues plummeted by 10.09 percent for Mar-17 quarter and an even further by 14.61 percent for the Jun-17 quarter, despite the increase in number of operational private FM radio stations as more and more networks started operating more stations under their newly acquired phase III licenses. 

In Mar-17, radio ad revenue had declined to Rs 528.57 crore reported by all the 293 operational private FM station, or average ad revenue of Rs 1.804 crore. In Jun-17, ad revenue declined even further to Rs 477.51 crore as reported by all the 310 stations operational at that time. This was just Rs 1.54 crore average revenue per station, or a decline of 20.24 percent from the average ad revenue per station of Rs 2.01 crore in Dec-16. For the Sep-17 quarter, all the 322 operational private FM radio stations reported ad revenue of Rs 539.04 crore (1.674 core mentioned above). Please refer to the chart below: