Campaign, the trade magazine for the advertising industry published by Lord Heseltine’s Haymarket Media Group, will be launched in India next month with the aim of tapping into one of the world’s most dynamic media markets.

The fortnightly publication initially will have a controlled circulation of 17,000, with annual subscriptions of 2,500 rupees (£30) sold in parallel.

It is one of four magazine launches planned by Haymarket in India, where it publishes four titles through a local joint venture, including What Car? and Autocar. Campaign in India will be staffed locally and edited by Anant Rangaswami, a former vice-president of TBWA India.

“You only have to look at what is going on in the industry – it is a boom town,” Rupert Heseltine, deputy chairman and son of Lord Heseltine, said. “People want to know what is going on in India and India wants to know what is going on in the world.”

Campaign’s arrival in India is symptomatic of a buzz in the advertising market, which is growing at a rate of 20 per cent a year, compared with about 3 per cent in Europe. The growth of the economy is feeding unprecedented spending in India, where 250 million people who constitute the consuming classes are exposed increasingly to Western brands. Capital-rich Indian companies are spending more on marketing, both domestically and internationally.

V. Shantakumar, the managing director of Saatchi & Saatchi India, said: “The big agencies are all looking in here. They go where the clients go . . . but we still have a skew to local businesses in revenue terms and we’re getting significant organic growth from existing clients, which are expanding at breakneck speed.”

No foreign agency has as big a footprint in India as WPP, one of the world’s largest communications services groups. It entered the $4 billion (£2 billion) advertising market ahead of its rivals and now accounts for half of all billings. It has nearly 6,000 employees in India, where it generates about $250 million in annual revenues through a portfolio of agencies.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, still sees huge potential in India as advertising remains at only 0.4 per cent of GDP, which is better than other booming Asian economies.

“By international comparisons, India is underbranded and underadvertised,” he said. “It seems to be an iron law that growth in the advertising sector in emerging markets is roughly twice that of GDP. So there is a natural gravitational pull to increasing spending.”

According to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and by PwC, India’s internet advertising sector alone will grow at 43 per cent a year until 2010, when it will be worth $232 million. Television, radio and print are all forecast to report healthy double-digit growth for the next five years. The reach of the print media is 222 million people, which has drawn many foreign magazine publishers to India. Maxim and Marie Claire are present already, while Vogue and Glamourare being launched this year.

The media and advertising markets face hurdles, however – not least the chronic shortage of suitable employees. Graduates have a range of job opportunities and agencies regularly complain of a high turnover of staff.

If managed, it may be a small gripe. “I would rather have the problems of growth at 20 per cent than have a lot of people stuck in a rut at 3 per cent,” Sir Martin said.

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