September 1, 2026 · Arjun
India’s advertising market is now mostly digital, and that changes the argument
Indian advertising spend reached Rs 1,21,339 crore in 2025, growing
8.3%. Digital took Rs 71,621 crore of it — 59%
of the market, growing 19% — and is projected to reach 70%
of a Rs 98,034 crore market by 2027.
The composition matters more than the total
Within digital in 2025: social Rs 21,057 crore, online video Rs 20,004 crore, paid search
Rs 16,581 crore, display Rs 11,581 crore, and
retail media Rs 17,601 crore — the last growing 55.86%.
Retail media growing at that rate is the single most striking line. It is a format that barely
existed as a category five years ago and is now comparable in size to paid search.
Television’s decline is orderly, not sudden
Television held 21% of the market in 2025 and is projected at 15%
by 2027. That is a steady erosion rather than a collapse, and it means the money moving into
digital is arriving continuously rather than in a lump.
Why this shapes what we build
A market that is majority-digital and still shifting has a particular characteristic: the
buyers moving in now are not programmatic natives. They are teams who ran television and print
budgets and are being asked to run digital ones, and they are being handed tooling designed for
specialists.
That is the gap we are building into. Not another console for people who already have four,
but something a competent marketer can operate without a certification — a small set of formats,
a price stated in advance, and reporting that leads with what the money returned.
The Indian market is also where the regulatory ground is firmest. The DPDP Rules were notified
in November 2025 with an eighteen-month compliance runway. Building here, to that standard, from
the start is considerably easier than retrofitting to it later.