Digital advertising is no longer the challenger line item. According to a new ICICI Securities report, digital formats are on track to account for roughly 80% of global ad revenue by 2029, up from about 72% in 2024.
In India, the flip has already happened. Digital media has overtaken television as the largest and fastest-growing segment of the media and entertainment industry.
The India numbers that matter
The report lays out a market that is compounding fast:
- Digital media in India grew more than 30% in 2025, the fastest-expanding segment of the M&E sector.
- Digital’s share of ad spend jumped to about 63% from 56% in a single year.
- Digital ad revenue is closing in on the Rs 1 trillion mark.
- The overall Indian ad market rose 13.5% to Rs 1.5 trillion in 2025, outrunning the broader media sector’s 9% growth.
- Commerce-linked digital advertising — e-commerce and point-of-sale promotions — grew 50% in 2025, equal to about 85% of TV ad revenues.
That last stat is the sleeper headline. Retail media in India is now within touching distance of television as an advertising pool, and it barely existed as a formal category five years ago.
Why performance marketing is doing the heavy lifting
ICICI Securities credits performance marketing for much of the shift: targeted, measurable, attributable engagement is what pulled budgets out of broadcast and into feeds, search and marketplaces.
The report frames this as a structural change rather than a cyclical one — consumer behaviour, advertiser priorities and platform revenue models are all moving in the same direction at once. Globally, it flags retail search advertising and in-game advertising as the categories set to gain the most share.
What this means for your 2026 plan
If digital is heading to 80% of global spend, the competitive edge stops being “are we on digital” and starts being “are we better at digital than the next brand bidding on the same impression.” Three implications:
1. Retail media deserves a real budget line, not scraps. Commerce-linked spend growing 50% a year means auction density on marketplaces is rising fast. Brands that treat Amazon, Flipkart, Blinkit, Zepto and quick-commerce ad units as an afterthought will pay tourist prices in 18 months. Lock in share of voice while CPCs are still forgiving.
2. Measurement has to catch up to the mix. When 63% of spend is digital and a big chunk of it sits inside walled retail ecosystems, last-click reporting will double-count and mislead. Blend platform data with incrementality tests and marketing mix modelling. If you cannot answer “what happens if we cut this channel by 20%?”, your attribution is decoration.
3. Do not read “TV is losing” as “TV is useless.” Television still anchors mass reach in India. The smarter play is a barbell: broad reach for salience at the top, ruthless performance and retail media at the bottom, and creative that travels between the two without being remade from scratch.
The creative bottleneck
Here is the practical squeeze. As digital’s share climbs, the constraint moves from media availability to creative volume. Retail media, in-game placements, short video and search assets all demand different formats, and each needs enough variants to keep the algorithms learning.
Teams that win the next three years will be the ones that industrialise creative production — modular assets, clear naming conventions, a testing calendar — rather than the ones that simply raise budgets.
The money is going digital. The advantage will go to whoever can feed it fastest.
Source: Devdiscourse
