India’s advertising industry is entering a powerful new phase of growth. In 2025, the market reached ₹1,21,339 crore and is expected to grow to ₹1,40,001 crore by 2027, driven by rising digital adoption, stronger domestic demand, and policy-led initiatives like MSME digitisation and Make in India.
Digital media is now the main growth engine, led by video, social, and search, while retail media is emerging as a major disruptor by directly linking advertising to commerce outcomes.
At the same time, traditional channels are evolving, and brands are moving toward data-driven, automated, and omnichannel strategies.
Together, these changes show how media, technology, and commerce are coming together to shape a more connected, experience-led future for advertising in India.
The Dentsu–e4m Digital Report 2026 highlights how deeply digital has entered everyday life in India and what this means for brands.
We recently wrote about how India’s consumer market is evolving rapidly now, let’s look at how advertising is changing alongside it.
Read more – 13 Key Consumer Trends Shaping 2030
Now, this blog highlights five key takeaways from the Digital Advertising Report 2026.
Table of Contents
- Why Digital Is Now Leading India’s Marketing Landscape?
- Why Full-Funnel Advertising Matters More Than Ever?
- Which Industry Verticals Are Driving Ad Spends?
- How is India’s Digital Advertising Landscape Evolving?
- How Will Digital Ad Spends Grow Across Formats?
- 5 Key Trends Shaping The Blueprint of Indian Media Industry
- 3 Structural Shifts Redefining Indian Media
- Conclusion
1. Why Digital Is Now Leading India’s Marketing Landscape?
As audiences move toward digital video, streaming platforms, and short-form content, advertisers are following them.
Brands now prefer channels that offer clearer tracking, stronger engagement, and direct links to business outcomes. Here are the key trends shaping this shift:
- Digital media: Digital media now contributes ₹71,621 crore, making up 59% of total ad spends. This makes digital the biggest channel for brand growth today.
- Traditional media: Traditional media still matters, but its role has changed. Television, with a 21% share (₹25,964 crore), continues to offer large reach through sports, entertainment, and regional shows.
- Print: Print, with 14% share (₹16,594 crore), remains strong in local markets and trust-based categories. But now, these channels support digital instead of leading the customer journey.
- OOH: Even in a digital-first world, outdoor ads still matter and OOH contributes 4% (₹4,724 crore), helping brands stay visible in real life.
- Radio and Cinema: Radio and Cinema each hold 1% share, showing they remain niche but useful channels for targeted reach.
Overall, advertising budgets are being reallocated toward personalised, performance-driven, and commerce-ready media.
This evolving mix shows how the industry is moving toward agility, precision, and digital-led scale, where success depends on connecting digital, physical, and retail touchpoints into one seamless customer journey.
2. Why Full-Funnel Advertising Matters More Than Ever?
Today’s consumers move across video, social, search, and shopping before buying. Traditional marketing can’t keep up. Therefore, full-funnel advertising connects the entire journey, from awareness to conversion, in one strategy.
Unlike performance marketing that focuses only on quick sales, full-funnel builds awareness, guides consideration, and drives purchase together. With retail media and rich first-party data, brands can now reach the right audience, personalize messages, and measure real impact.
For example, brands can reach consumers across multiple Amazon touchpoints — from shopping on Amazon.in to streaming on Prime Video, browsing MX Player, using Alexa, or paying through Amazon Pay.
Together, these platforms deliver access to 63% of India’s digital audience, helping brands stay visible wherever customers spend their time.
What makes this powerful is the impact of full-funnel strategies.
Brands using full-funnel advertising are seeing 110% lift in consideration, 193% increase in purchase rates, and 109% growth in new customer acquisition. This shows that connecting awareness, consideration, and conversion in one journey delivers real business results.
3. Which Industry Verticals Are Driving Ad Spends?
The Indian advertising landscape is currently being reshaped by three primary pillars: established consumer goods, rapid e-commerce expansion, and technological integration in telecom and finance.
While many sectors contribute, three specific verticals represent a significant portion of the total ad spend:
In 2025, e-commerce led ad spending growth, rising 40.8% year-on-year, as brands competed harder to capture online and quick-commerce demand. Telecom followed with 24.2% growth, driven by 5G rollout, new service bundles, and digital content offerings.
BFSI, automotive, and real estate also increased their advertising steadily, supported by improving consumer confidence, wider access to credit, and recovery in urban demand. This rise in ad spends is closely linked to business expansion across these sectors.
4. How is India’s Digital Advertising Landscape Evolving?
India’s digital advertising has become the main focus for brands, growing 19% in 2024 and reaching ₹71,621 crore by the end of 2025.
This rapid expansion is sustained by a 18.6% growth rate through 2026, with projections suggesting the market will reach ₹98,034 crore by 2027.
At that stage, digital media is expected to command 70% of total Indian advertising spends, driven by mobile-first usage, AI-led adtech, and robust digital public infrastructure like UPI and ONDC.
The distribution of these spends highlights a strong preference for high-engagement, measurable formats:
- Social Media: Leads the market with a 29% share (₹21,057 crore), fueled by social commerce and creator ecosystems.
- Online Video: Follows closely at 28% (₹20,004 crore), supported by the explosive rise of OTT and short-form content.
- Paid Search & Display: Contribute 23% and 16% respectively, remaining vital for intent-led marketing and broad-reach visibility.
5. How Will Digital Ad Spends Grow Across Formats?
The digital landscape is undergoing a significant shift as high-engagement formats like video and social media begin to dominate the market share.
Here is a breakdown of the digital spending forecast:
Online video and social media are primarily driven by high-engagement trends like short-form content and creator-led commerce, outpacing traditional formats like paid search and banners.
6. 5 Key Trends Shaping The Blueprint of Indian Media Industry
Here are the five key trends reshaping India’s media blueprint.
6.1 Retail media goes full-funnel
Retail media in India is evolving from a pure performance channel into a full-funnel media engine that blends content, commerce, and data to drive both brand building and conversions.
This evolution is being shaped by four key shifts redefining how retail media operates across the funnel:
- First-party insights for precise reach: Retail platforms use rich shopper data to target the right audience with higher relevance and lower wastage.
- Full-funnel engagement from content to commerce: Brands can engage users from awareness through content and drive seamless in-app purchases.
- Omnichannel measurement across touchpoints: Campaign performance can be tracked across media exposure, engagement, and actual sales.
- Evolution in marketing org structures: Teams are restructuring to integrate media, e-commerce, and brand functions for unified growth.
6.2. AI-Driven Personalization & Emotionally Intelligent Media
AI will shape the future of media experiences by making them more personal, contextual, and emotionally aware over the next decade. This transformation will take shape through three major developments:
- Predictive & contextual personalization (next 2 years): AI will understand what users need in the moment, based on context, behaviour, and intent and show the right content or ad in real time.
- AI and human hybrid creativity becomes the norm (next 2 years): Creators and marketers will increasingly use AI to scale content variations, while humans focus on ideas, storytelling, and brand voice.
- Emotionally intelligent ambient media (5–10 years): Media will adapt to users’ moods and environments across devices like wearables, smart homes, and cars, creating seamless, always-on experiences.
AI-powered media will help brands deliver more relevant, engaging experiences at scale, but trust will depend on ethical use of data, transparency, and respect for privacy.
Brands that balance smart personalization with responsible AI will build deeper connections with consumers.
6.3 AI-Governed Media Ecosystems & Technology Sovereignty
Over the next decade, media and commerce will increasingly be shaped by AI-governed ecosystems, where intelligent systems manage discovery, targeting, transactions, and data flows.
- AI will manage media systems, while data control shifts back to users and nations.
- Media ecosystems will be AI-driven, with a stronger focus on data ownership and trust.
- Future media will be governed by AI, consent-led data use, and local technology control.
As AI systems mature, technology sovereignty will grow in importance. With data increasingly treated as consumer-owned intellectual property, individuals will have greater control over how their data is licensed and monetised.
For brands, this means earning access through transparency, responsible AI practices, and clear value exchange, moving from passive data extraction to permission-based engagement.
6.4 Immersive & Spatial Media Experiences
Media will move beyond screens into interactive, immersive environments powered by spatial computing and extended reality.
People will explore stories as places, experience products in context, and move seamlessly from discovery to purchase. As these experiences mature, brands that design intuitive, inclusive, and culturally relevant immersive journeys will unlock deeper engagement and new ways to connect, learn, and shop.
6.5 The Rise of Attention and Cultural Influence
Attention has become the true measure of impact as impressions lose relevance. Deeper engagement emerges through time spent, interaction, and cultural participation, pushing brands to create meaningful, conversation-worthy ideas that drive lasting relevance.
Attention will become the key currency of media effectiveness as advertisers shift from impressions to attention minutes and emotional engagement. Measurement will prioritise depth, interaction quality, and emotional response.
Brands delivering immersive, meaningful experiences will achieve stronger impact in a crowded media landscape.
Example: Spotify demonstrates how attention, not impressions, is becoming the true currency of media effectiveness.
In India’s fragmented media landscape, Spotify’s opt-in, audio-first environment ensures brands earn focused attention rather than interrupting users. With users actively choosing to engage, ads are heard, not ignored, creating deeper emotional connection and recall.
By limiting clutter (“one ad at a time”) and placing messages in contextually relevant moments, such as during self-care or wind-down sessions, Spotify captures users’ high-attention states.
This shows how brands can move beyond reach to build meaningful engagement, cultural relevance, and long-term impact, aligning perfectly with the shift from exposure metrics to sustained attention and emotional resonance.
Success metrics will move from short-term clicks to long-term cultural impact. Brands will be judged on sustained attention, community influence, and contribution to social conversations.
7. 3 Structural Shifts Redefining Indian Media
Over the next decade, Indian media will be shaped by three fundamental shifts:
- First-party data moving from targeting to decision-making, attention shifting from exposure to experience, and media planning evolving from siloed campaigns to unified omnichannel journey design.
- As privacy tightens and digital clutter increases, growth will come from restraint, relevance, and coherence, not scale alone.
- Brands that use data to guide meaningful interactions, design participatory experiences consumers opt into, and orchestrate connected journeys across online and offline touchpoints will build stronger trust, deeper engagement, and more durable competitive advantage.
8. Conclusion
India’s advertising industry is moving into a new growth phase where digital is no longer just a channel, but the foundation of how brands build, engage, and grow.
With digital media leading ad spends, retail media connecting advertising directly to commerce, and AI reshaping personalization, planning, and measurement, the future of brand growth will be defined by how well companies integrate media, technology, and customer experience into one connected strategy.
Disclaimer: This report is based on insights from the Dentsu–e4m Digital Advertising Report 2026. The views shared here reflect our key takeaways and interpretations of the findings.
If you’d like to discuss how we can help enhance and optimize your Omnichannel and growth marketing strategies, we’d be happy to set up a consultation call. Feel free to reach out to us at alibha@daiom.in
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