WPP Group’s CEO Martin Sorrell who heads the largest advertising and communications conglomerate globally and owns agencies such as Ogilvy and JWT in India, told advertising and marketing leaders of India inc that they should increase usage of analytics and data in their business.

“There is a role for both the artist and the scientist in the advertising business. For too long, our industry has focused too much on the artist part,” said Sorrell emphasising that it was important to maintain the balance.

India is seeing a growth in both readership of traditional media as well as digital media. So why do international speakers and visiting dignitaries over-emphasise on the importance of digital when they visit India? This was a question thrown to Sorrell by renowned Indian ad man Sam Balsara, CMD of Madison World, at a gathering of a leading group of Indian advertising and media leaders in Mumbai today.

Sorrell said that the writing was already on the wall and the impending shift to digital media will certainly make its mark in India too. Quoting latest statistics from the US market, which according to Sorrell is “directionally the same to India”, he said that the two major factors that could lead to discontinuity in traditional media were the changing consumer habits.

In the US, while marketers spend 20 per cent of their ad budgets on traditional print media, it accounted for only 6 per cent of media consumption time. Similarly, 45 per cent of the investment went into television, it accounted for only 38 per cent of consumption time.

In contrast, while consumers spent 46 per cent of their time on the digital medium it accounted for only 25 per cent of marketing investment.

“There is going to be a disruption in the traditional business,” said Sorrell to underline his point.