Indian digital media records 46% of Rs 1 lakh Cr ad spends: Report

India’s advertising market recorded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6–7% over the past five financial years, crossing the ₹1 lakh crore mark in FY2025. Digital advertising emerged as the fastest-growing segment, now accounting for 45-46% of total ad expenditure, up from 24% in FY2020.

In FY2026, digital advertising is expected to grow by 9-11%, while traditional media, such as television and print, is likely to remain flat. This widening gap between digital and traditional media highlights the ongoing shift in content consumption habits in India. In FY2020, traditional media held nearly 65% market share, which declined to 46-47% by FY2025.

Television is facing pressures on two fronts: broadcasters are losing advertising revenue as audiences migrate to over-the-top (OTT) platforms, and distribution networks are seeing a decline in subscribers due to a shift towards optic fibre-based services. The direct-to-home (DTH) industry alone lost over 10 million subscribers between December 2020 and 2024.

Print media is also experiencing challenges, including stagnant circulation, increased use of digital news apps and advertisers shifting towards digital platforms. Overall, readership in print declined by 500 basis points between FY2020 and FY2025.

Pushan Sharma, Director at Crisil Intelligence, said, "The shift is evident in the ad spend patterns of major consumer-facing sectors such as fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), automobiles and e-commerce. FMCG companies now allocate 55-60% of their ad budgets to digital, up from 30% in fiscal 2020. This includes content creator collaborations, targeted ads and other digital formats. Automobile companies have also increased their digital ad spends to 35-40% in fiscal 2025, compared with 15-20% in fiscal 2020. Similarly, for e-commerce players, digital channels now account for up to 60% of ad spends."

In FY2020, most digital ad spending went to search (40-42%) and social media (31-33%). YouTube had a 10-12% share, with the rest going to OTT platforms and other digital formats.

By FY2025, social media's share increased to 40-45%, driven by creator-led content and the popularity of short-form videos. YouTube's share rose to 20-22% due to its wide urban and rural reach, presence across devices, pre-installed smartphone access and availability of free content supported by advertising. The remaining share was distributed among OTT platforms, music apps, digital news and search. As user preference shifted toward visual and influencer-led content for product discovery, the share of search declined by 5-6 percentage points, reflecting a more mature and diverse digital ecosystem.

Elizabeth Master, Associate Director at Crisil Intelligence, said, "This shift is closely linked to India’s digital evolution. Smartphone users rose to 700 million in 2024 from 500 million in 2019. Mobile data in India is among the cheapest in the world, averaging just $0.16 per gigabyte (GB), compared with $2.50 globally. Average daily screen time has increased to over five hours a day from four in 2019, with OTT and social media accounting for 60% of it. A growing share of time is spent on passive browsing of short-form videos or trending content, highlighting the ongoing shift to instant, immersive formats without deep engagement."

The trend towards digital advertising is expected to continue, with traditional media players also increasing their digital investments. Despite this growth, a significant portion of India’s digital ad spend, especially on social media, goes to foreign-owned platforms such as Meta and Google.