France and India to lead beauty and personal luxury ad spend growth: Zenith report

Ad spends across India's beauty and personal luxury market will grow by a total of 15.2% by 2022 compared to 2019 numbers according to Zenith’s Business Intelligence – Beauty and Personal Luxury report. India, along with France, will grow as a result of strong consumer demand as beauty ad spend in India was stable in 2020.  

 

Globally, a decreased consumer demand for cosmetics and fragrances amid continued social distancing will restrain the recovery in beauty and personal luxury advertising to 1.7% in 2021. This is below the 4.4% growth rate for total ad spend across 11 key markets included in the report. 

 

Beauty ad spend will total US$7.5bn across these markets in 2021, and then rise to US$7.7bn in 2022, growing by 2.6%, compared to 4.5% for the market as a whole. 

 

E-commerce to compensate for falling reach of TV, magazines 

 

Beauty and personal luxury brands have historically spent more of their budgets on magazines and TV than the average brand. This is based on the beauty industry thriving on its ability to create emotional connections through imagery. Zenith's report estimates that in 2020 beauty brands spent 18.3% of their budgets on magazines advertising, 4.3 times more than the average brand, and 42.2% on television, 1.6 times more than average. 

 

With these mediums expected to become less effective, beauty and personal luxury brands, which were relatively slow to adopt digital advertising, spending 34.1% of their budgets digitally in 2020, compared to 53.1% for the market as a whole, are now looking to move to the medium.

 

According to Euromonitor International, 11.8% of beauty and personal luxury sales were through ecommerce in 2019, compared to 13.2% for the market as a whole. However, technologies like video-on-demand and connected TV, and social platforms like Instagram and TikTok, are creating new premium environments that showcase beauty and personal luxury brands effectively. Brands have also greatly stepped up investment in their ecommerce offerings since the start of the pandemic as a matter of necessity, as bricks-and-mortar retail sales shrank. 

 

Zenith estimates that the beauty category increased its spending on digital advertising 2.8% in 2020, despite the pandemic. This was twice the 1.4% growth rate of digital advertising across all categories, as beauty and personal luxury brands began to compensate for previous underinvestment. 

 

Christian Lee, global managing director, Zenith, said, “Beauty brands were forced to accelerate their ecommerce strategies in 2020, some pioneering the use of virtual and augmented reality to allow consumers to try on and model products online. Continued innovation in ecommerce technology to improve the consumer experience will be key to unlocking brand growth for 2021 and beyond.”