Mumbai: India’s advertising ecosystem has crossed a decisive structural milestone, with digital now accounting for 60% of the country’s total advertising expenditure (ADEX), according to the newly released Madison Advertising Report 2026. The study signals what Madison describes as a “Great Indian Media Reset”, where budget allocation—not expansion—has become the primary growth lever for advertisers.
Under the report’s expanded definition that includes Quick Commerce (Q-Comm) and MSME digital spends, India’s advertising market stood at ₹1,55,105 crore in 2025, growing 12% year-on-year. Digital contributed ₹93,156 crore of this total, while traditional media declined slightly to ₹61,949 crore, cementing India’s transition into a majority-digital advertising economy.
Digital absorbs all incremental growth
A defining shift highlighted in the Madison Advertising Report 2026 is that digital accounted for virtually all net ADEX growth in 2025. Traditional media collectively shrank in value even as the overall market expanded, indicating that advertisers are reallocating budgets rather than injecting fresh spending. On the legacy definition that excludes Q-commerce and MSME spends, the market grew 7% to ₹1,15,291 crore, with digital rising 18% and traditional declining 1%. When the expanded digital universe is considered, digital growth reached 22%, driven by the rapid scale-up of retail media networks, Q-commerce platforms and MSME-led performance advertising ecosystems.
Madison interprets this structural reallocation as a reflection of advertisers’ increasing preference for measurable ROI, attribution and conversion outcomes over reach-led tonnage buying.
MSME and Q-commerce: the invisible digital majority
For the first time, the report formally integrates MSME and Q-commerce advertising into digital ADEX, significantly reshaping the perceived size and composition of India’s media economy. MSME digital advertising reached ₹35,814 crore in 2025—around 38% of total digital ADEX—making it larger than the entire print medium and nearly comparable to linear television. At the same time, Q-commerce advertising surged from ₹300 crore in 2023 to ₹4,000 crore in 2025, reflecting the rapid expansion of platforms such as Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart.
Together, these segments lifted digital’s share of India’s advertising economy from 55% in 2024 to 60% in 2025, confirming that the country has already crossed the digital-majority threshold.
From expansion to allocation
The Madison Advertising Report 2026 argues that India’s advertising market has entered an early maturity phase. Historically, growth was driven by more advertisers entering media and existing brands increasing media volumes. By 2025, both levers have weakened due to audience fragmentation across platforms, proliferation of digital formats and rising media costs. As a result, advertisers are shifting from expansion-led strategies to allocation efficiency, prioritising channels and environments that deliver deeper attention and measurable business outcomes.
The study frames this structural evolution as a move away from the question of “how much to spend” toward “where each rupee works hardest”.
TV declines but large-screen video grows
While linear television advertising fell 5% in value and around 10% in volumes, the Madison study emphasises that large-screen video consumption remains resilient. Connected TV (CTV) advertising nearly doubled to about ₹6,000 crore in 2025. When linear TV and CTV are viewed together as a unified large-screen ecosystem, total large-screen advertising grew to ₹38,855 crore, indicating that advertisers are shifting away from mass-frequency buying toward premium, high-attention video environments rather than abandoning television screens altogether.
The report notes that video planning is increasingly executed holistically across broadcast TV, OTT CTV and YouTube CTV, reflecting evolving viewing behaviour and advertiser demand for measurable delivery.
Top advertisers already digital-first
India’s largest advertisers are ahead of the broader market in adopting digital-first planning approaches. The top 50 advertisers—together accounting for roughly ₹40,000 crore in media investment—allocate 58% of their budgets to digital and 32% to television. Among the top 10 advertisers, digital rises further to 61% of the mix.
The report observes distinct sectoral archetypes emerging within this shift. FMCG advertisers continue to operate a balanced twin-engine model combining television reach with digital precision. Automotive brands follow a multi-medium journey model with strong digital orchestration alongside experiential media. E-commerce players, by contrast, represent a performance-commerce archetype where digital functions as the operating system and television is deployed selectively around tentpole events. These patterns illustrate how category economics increasingly shape media architecture in India.
India closing the global digital gap
Globally, digital accounts for about 79% of advertising expenditure. India’s legacy digital share remains lower at 46%, but rises to 60% under the expanded definition and is growing faster than global digital (18% versus 13%). The Madison Advertising Report 2026 notes that India is transitioning later than mature markets but at a significantly faster pace, suggesting the country could approach a two-thirds digital share by 2027.
2026 outlook: Digital to reach 64% share
Looking ahead, the report forecasts India’s advertising market to reach ₹1,74,605 crore in 2026, with digital rising to about ₹1,11,976 crore and 64% share. Growth is expected to be led by continued expansion in core digital formats, strong MSME participation, rapid scaling of Q-commerce advertising and accelerating CTV adoption. Traditional media, by contrast, is projected to grow only about 1%, entering what Madison describes as a yield-management phase rather than expansion.
Strategic implications for advertisers and agencies
The Madison study outlines a set of structural shifts shaping India’s media future. Media planning is expected to start from digital infrastructure rather than channel silos, with retail media and MSME ecosystems emerging as core growth engines. Television is increasingly positioned as part of a unified large-screen system alongside CTV, while attention and measurable impact replace reach as the central planning currency. The report also highlights the growing importance of proprietary data, AI and planning intelligence, positioning agency evolution toward integrated growth-system design rather than traditional media buying.
The Great Indian Media Reset
Overall, the Madison Advertising Report 2026 portrays India’s advertising market as entering a new structural phase defined by digital dominance, platform ecosystems and performance-led allocation. Rather than signalling stagnation, the study argues the shift represents maturation: advertising growth will increasingly depend not on higher spending but on smarter deployment across digital-first media systems.
For brands and agencies alike, the conclusion is clear—India’s advertising economy is no longer transitioning toward digital; it is already operating within a digital-majority reality.
