Cracks on the screen: Can TV fix its slide with ads and smarter metrics?

A growing ad market, an evolved advertiser, and a metric that works are what TV needs to pull itself out of its downward slide. That appears to be a tall order

Godrej Consumer Products is the third- largest advertiser on television, behind Hindustan Unilever and Reckitt Benckiser. Cinthol, Good Knight, Kama Sutra, Park Avenue, and all the other brands under it, together earned it a revenue of ₹14,680 crore in 2024-25 (FY25). That year, its expenditure on advertising grew by two and a half times, to ₹1,020 crore. Over 95 per cent of this was spent on the ‘large screen’ — that is, television, both linear, and internet-enabled or connected.

 

“For us, it is not about digital or TV — it is about the large versus small screen, and we are