Colgate India puts 60 percent of ad money in digital

Roughly 60 percent of Colgate-Palmolive India’s advertising money now goes to digital, with the remainder behind television. Prabha Narasimhan, Managing Director and CEO of Colgate-Palmolive India, said: “If I was going to give you some numbers, I think we’re about roughly 60% of our money now goes behind digital and the remaining behind television.”

On television, Narasimhan said: “What we’re seeing is a steep drop off in TV viewership.”

The spend is not only moving, it is growing. Advertising and promotion was historically 12 to 13 percent of sales and now sits near 16 percent, reported at 15.8 percent. Q1 advertising and promotion expenditure was Rs 252 crore, up 34 percent year on year. Storyboard18 describes the quarter only as Q1, with no financial year attached.

The heaviest spending sits at the premium end. For the premium portfolio specifically, and not the company overall, the A and P to sales ratio runs in the 50 to 60 percent range. That portfolio is growing at six times the growth rate of core brands, and its sales contribution is now 2.5 times its earlier percentage contribution. Both are relative measures. No absolute revenue, size or share for the premium portfolio is given, so it cannot be sized from what has been disclosed.

For a smaller brand in oral care or an adjacent personal care shelf, this is a cost-of-attention problem. A category leader taking A and P from 12 to 13 percent of sales to nearly 16 percent, and pointing the majority of it at digital, is bidding for the same impressions you are, in the same categories, at the same moments. The auction does not weight for company size. You will feel it as CPM drift on Meta and Google and higher cost per click on marketplace and quick commerce ad slots.

The workable response is not to match the budget. It is to decide where you are willing to be outbid and where you are not. Narrow the categories, keywords and pack sizes you actually defend, hold share of voice there, and give up the rest rather than spreading a thin budget across a front that a company spending Rs 252 crore in a quarter is also standing on. Track your blended CPM month on month in the affected categories. If it moves before your own bids do, you are looking at somebody else’s budget, not your targeting.