Top 10+ Advertising Agencies in India - Portfolio & Pricing

Table of Contents

What is Advertising Agency?

An advertising agency is a specialized firm that handles the complete planning, and deliverance of marketing promotions for organizations. It is also referred to as a creative or ad agency.

Why Should I Advertise?

Advertising is the driving force of a business; it enables you to keep your customers informed and updated about the new products and services you introduce to the market. It helps you with spreading awareness about your offerings to your existing and potential buyers. Many business owners, when beginning with advertising, feel it is all about selling. This mindset, however, is wrong as advertising is a collective process that facilitates the overall prosperity of the business and makes consumers acquainted with a wide range of choices available to them. 

Talking about today's economy, we live in an era where new businesses are readily being launched; thus, the competition is immense. So, if someone starts a business, it essential for them to make their target audience aware of what they are all about. And, advertising is the only way for a company to reach its customers. Here are a few reasons you should advertise if you own an online or offline business. 

• It helps you introduce a new product to the market.

• It enables you to expand your market.

• It facilitates mass marketing and drives more sales.

• Advertising, if done right, helps you get an edge over your competition.

• It is instrumental in enhancing your goodwill.

• It familiarizes your customers with new products and services.

• It established a direct link between you and your consumer.

• It allows you to promote a specific product instead of the whole range, thereby achieving higher ROI.

• It facilitates the work of a salesman.

The benefits of advertising might look fascinating, but creating and executing a profitable advertising strategy is a challenging task that troubles almost all business owners. Here is when top advertising agencies in the world come into play. 

What are the Biggest Challenges Faced by Digital Advertising Agency?

The current competitive business ecosystem often poses multiple obstacles for even the best advertising agencies in India. Here are some major challenges that are commonly faced by advertising agencies in India:

1. Client Retention:

Many ad agencies start off with one or two clients, but find it difficult to attract new ones. Sometimes when an advertising agency increases the monthly retainer by implementing a hike, clients move over to other rivals that give them a better deal. This puts a lot of pressure on the advertising agency owners and has a negative impact on their cash inflow.

2. Unviable Client Expectations:

The most common problem faced by even the top advertising agencies in India is that clients have unrealistic expectations. Sometimes advertising firms simply do not have the resources, expertise or funds to work on complex client projects. This portrays their advertising agency in a negative light and gains them bad reviews in the long run.

3. Late Payments:

Most advertising agencies do not sign a formal contract and start off projects based on verbal agreements. Once they perform the required services, the firms raise a bill and request for payment. Very often, clients do not pay on time and keep delaying payments for extended periods of time. This leads to a lot of time wastage as team members have to pursue clients with reminders to receive their rightful dues.

4. Lack of Expertise:

Digital marketing is an upcoming field, and there is not a lot of budding talent in this specialized domain. Though many people have the formal educational qualification required to pursue a career in advertising, they lack practical experience and fail to deliver if hired for a particular job. Most candidates are not aware of essential digital marketing skills such as search engine optimization (SEO), content management and social media marketing. Hence, even the best advertising agencies find it difficult to recruit talent and face a high of attrition.

5. Maintaining A Productive Workforce:

Advertising agencies find it tough to maintain an engaged workforce. They need to constantly devise new methods to keep employees productive and increase collaboration between team members. Advertising agency owners struggle to provide adequate work-life balance too as many projects have strict deadlines and heavy work pressure. This impacts morale negatively and often makes employees leave advertising firms for easier work prospects.

What are some of the Major Services Provided by the Advertising Agency?

Advertising agencies can help any organization improve their brand recognition and gain a credible reputation in the market. Here is a list of some vital services that are performed by the top advertising agency services provider in India:

1. Search Engine Optimization:

Advertising agencies help companies improve their rankings in search engine result pages. This increases the organic web traffic towards a website and ensures that it gets optimum visibility in the virtual world. All kinds of websites, blogs, and infographic pages can benefit from search engine optimization as it will result in higher lead conversion.

2. Content Marketing:

One of the most useful services that advertising firms offer is the creation and management of quality content. The purpose of content management is to create solid brand awareness, generate interest in products/services and engage with audiences in an interactive manner. This is the prime reason that top advertising agencies in India help companies manage articles, blog posts, and social media content effectively.

3. Social Media Marketing:

Most advertising agencies can handle various social media channels for organizations, and ensure that they remain active by engaging with target customers. They use advanced tools to schedule regular content for platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Advertising companies also monitor all vital parameters and analyze performance through data analytics to drive more traffic organically.

4. Pay Per Click:

Advertising agencies in India specialize in pay per click (PPC) marketing campaigns where a publisher is paid every time that your advertisement is clicked upon by a potential lead or customer. The most popular type of PPC is GoogleAds as it is used by millions of organizations worldwide. Some other channels through which digital marketing agencies use PPC are Twitter Ads, paid ads on Facebook, and sponsored links on LinkedIn.

What is the Difference Between Branding and Advertising?

One of the inevitable failures of marketers is to properly identify the difference between branding and advertising. Let us try to understand the difference between these two concepts in a simple manner.

The American Marketing Association has defined a brand as anything that helps to retain customers and infuse loyalty towards a product or company. It could be a logo, symbol, colors, or name design. Branding focuses on creating a unique identity for an organization and what it stands for. For example, an airline company may use blue as its official brand color and wings as a logo to signify the freedom provided by its flights in the skies.

Advertising is all about communicating with your customers and letting them know what products or services do you have for them. An advertisement serves as a point of contact between an ideal customer and your organization. It is a formal and paid announcement to the public by an advertising agency to convince potential clients to invest in your product or service. It is possible to generate advertisements through any medium, such as newspapers, radio, television and the internet.

While the terms branding and advertising sometimes result in confusion due to their similarity and inter-connectivity, they are entirely different concepts. It is important for advertising agencies in India to understand the difference between the two terms so that they can plan for more effective marketing campaigns. 

What are the Main Advantages of Hiring a Specialized Advertising Agency?

Choosing one of the best advertising agency services in India is one of the most crucial components for long term success. Whether the organization is a new start-up venture, a medium-sized enterprise or a giant corporation, an advertising agency can lead to huge revenues and profits. Here are some benefits that your company can accrue by outsourcing advertising to an external agency:

1. Professional Marketing Campaigns:

The largest advertising agencies work with companies to create objective-driven marketing campaigns. They possess specialized knowledge about how to prepare attention-grabbing marketing promotions. Advertising firms can use themes for campaigns, determining audience-appropriate channels, and devise novel ways to engage with customers. Since business owners and managers have no expertise in the field of advertising, it is useful to get top advertising agencies in India to manage your portfolio.

2. Advanced Market Research:

It is not possible for business owners to conduct detailed market research so that they can target their clients effectively. Advertising agency can segregate target customers on the basis of demographics, income, and psychographics, and use sophisticated tools to analyze their characteristics. This will help in creating better advertisements and digital content so that it can have a greater impact on audiences.

3. Saves Time and Money:

Most employees and business owners are heavily pressed for time as they have a million tasks to manage within a limited time. Investing in a professional advertising agency can save time as all the work-related carving niche campaigns will be handled by an external firm with better expertise. Most digital marketing campaigns also provide a high return on investment, hence will save money in the long run.

4. Great Brand Reputation:

If an organization chooses one of the best advertising agencies in India, it can easily build a great brand name in the competitive market space. Digital advertising agencies can develop logos, designs, and symbols that will catch the audience's interest and ensure that companies develop a strong brand identity. This will enable an organization to differentiate itself from other rivals in the market and forge a meaningful relationship with valued clients.

Types of Advertising Agencies

Advertising is a broad field and can be subdivided into several smaller sections. When looking out for the best advertising agencies in the world, determine your advertising needs, and find an advertising agency in India that suits your requirements. A creative advertising agency makes a difference you're advertising than competitors, Also you can use online advertising agencies for saving costs. Here is a quick overview of the different types of advertising agencies you can pick.

1. Full-service agencies:

As the name suggests, these types of biggest advertising agencies in the world are large in size and offer an exhaustive range of services. They deal with all the possible stages of advertising, ranging from creating and optimizing ads to placing them on the right channels. These agencies have different departments, with specialist people handling various roles. They start by gathering data and analyzing your business and proceed further accordingly. 

2. Interactive agencies:

These leading advertising agencies are experts in establishing communication with media houses and your target audience. They utilize modernized modes of communication to facilitate online advertisements, sending personal messages, and emails. They focus on producing interactive advertisements that are innovative and feature new concepts. 

3. Creative boutiques:

Similar to interactive agencies, creative boutiques focus on making innovative advertisements. However, they do not perform any other function other than creating actual ads. These best digital advertising agencies are small in size and have their own directors, copywriters, and creative advertisers. 

4. Media-buying agencies:

These agencies focus solely on getting your advertisements placed with the right advertisers. They buy a place for your ads and sell the time in which the ad will be placed. These agencies schedule slots for your advertisements on TV channels and radio stations. They also ensure whether the ads have been placed or telecasted at the right place or time or not. 

5. In-house agencies:

In-house agencies are full-service agencies that are hired by an organization. Most big companies prefer having their own advertising team instead of outsourcing their work. These most popular advertising agencies work for one organization only and perform as per the requirement of the organization.

If you are a new business, it is better to pick full-service agencies as they will help you manage the overall advertising of your brand.

Role of Advertising Agency In Business

For new businesses and business owners, advertising can be an overwhelming and confusing task. To begin, it is essential to know what role does an advertising agency play. It is not necessarily a marketing agency; however, a full-service provider can offer both ranges of services under the same hood. Here is the role an advertising agency can play in empowering your business. 

1. Helping you with the advertising and marketing plan

The main role of advertising and marketing agencies is to create advertisements and marketing plans for a business or its products and services. These largest advertising agencies in India get acquainted with your objectives and ensure your advertising and marketing tasks are acquainted within the budget. These advertising agency services focus on creating compelling campaigns that are intended to engage the potential audience. 

2. Creates advertisements for you

Advertising agency, generally those who are full-service, have in-house graphic designers and copywriters, along with a trusted printing partner, to create best-quality advertisements and promotional materials for you. A successful ad is all about the graphics it has and the quality of copywriting it possesses, and a renowned advertising agency ensures all of these needs are catered. 

3. Performs media purchasing

Creating ads is a part of advertising. What is more important is where the ads are being placed. Media purchasing, including placing ads in magazines, TV broadcasts, and newspapers and another role an advertising agency plays. These firms have in-depth knowledge of pricing and scheduling, which saves the time and effort of the business owner. 

4. Facilitates marketing

Several full-service advertising agencies take care of your marketing as well. Marketing includes driving sales and generating revenue, and advertising is a small subset of marketing. Thus, most full-service agencies offer several services, including web designing, publishing, driving sales, and of course, advertising. For online businesses, it is essential to look for top advertising agencies in the world that offer a comprehensive range of digital solutions to ensure you save a bit on your marketing dollars. 

5. They also help you with tracking results

Another vital role leading advertising agencies in India play is tracking and tweaking current advertising. If an ad or a marketing campaign is not meeting business objectives, the advertising agency will analyze the shortcomings and try figuring out new strategies.

Functions of Advertising Agency

So, we have already discussed the role an advertising agency plays with a business. Now, let's quickly hover over the functions of an advertising agency in India.

1. Attracting clients:

An advertising agency needs advertisers, and it always tries to get clients by publishing ads and contacting on person to person basis.

2. Research function:

An agency researches the features and quality of your product, along with its market possibilities, competition in the market, market situation, distribution methods, and buyer preferences. 

3. Advertisement planning:

An advertising agency plans an ad campaign for its client. It usually happens when the research function is completed, and experts utilize their experience to devise a result-oriented advertising-plan.

4. Creative function:

After the advertising strategy has been planned, the agency will facilitate copywriting, graphic designing, layouts, illustrations, and other aspects that are required to make the ad appealing and interactive. 

5. Media selection:

An advertising agency also helps with selecting the best channel for promoting your business. Media selection is a specialized function, as selecting the wrong media can be detrimental for its client's business. Some common media channels for advertising are television, newspapers, magazines, and the internet. 

6. Budgeting:

An agency also helps businesses with preparing their advertising budgets and use their funds economically. This step is crucial as over-expenditure can lead to the business owner running out of funds.

7. Coordination:

An advertising agency is also responsible for maintaining good coordination between themselves, business owners, distributors, and media channels.

Basic Systems of Compensating Agency for its Services

The way the best advertising agencies in the world are compensated can depend on the business, agency, and the agency's performance. Here are a few known systems of compensating agencies for their services.

1. Media commissions:

These commissions come from the media when the agency purchases space for its client. The traditional compensation is 15 percent but is mostly negotiated downwards. 

2. Fixed-Fee method:

The fixed-fee method works on a monthly subscription basis where a client pays a monthly fee for the services of an agency. This fee is usually higher than the media commissions, and if not, the client needs to pay up for the remaining amount. 

3. Cost-Plus agreement:

In this compensation method, the client pays the agency based on the work it does, along with some agreed profit margin. In this system, the agency needs to keep a detailed record of the work it has done for the client. 

4. Incentive-Based Compensation:

This method is becoming more and more prevalent as the more results an agency provides, the better the compensation it gets. In most cases, these incentives are provided only when certain targets are met. 

Apart from the above-mentioned systems, other compensation methods like Percentage Charges and Value-Based Compensation is also adopted by some of the biggest advertising agencies in the world.

The Advertising Industry in India - Statistics & Facts

The advertising agency in India is huge, primarily because of being the most crucial sectors of the media and entertainment industry. The Indian advertising agency is the second-fastest-growing advertising market in Asia, with a contribution of 0.45 percent to the national GDP. It is expected to reach the market cap of USD 54.39 billion by 2024, with a  CAGR of 26.30 percent. 

The advertising industry in India is divided into the following types:

• Print Advertising

• Television Advertising

• Online Advertising

• Radio Advertising

• Outdoor Advertising

Print advertising has the largest market share in the country, counting nearly 41.2 percent. Next to print advertising is television advertising at 38.2 percent. Online advertising has witnessed significant growth in the past few years and ranks third at 11 percent. Cinema advertising also holds a significant share and ranks in the fourth position with a total share of 10 percent. 

Here are the top industries that utilize advertising the most in India.

• Consumer Goods Industry

• E-Commerce Industry

• Telecommunication Industry

• Banking Industry

• Automotive Industry

• Others