India’s retail-media ad spend rose 50% to ₹220 billion in CY25
ICICI Securities estimates digital advertising accounted for about 63% of India’s ad market in CY25, with e-commerce and point-of-sale advertising up 50% to ₹220 billion. The commerce-media segment was equivalent to 85% of television ad revenue.
What happened
ICICI Securities says digital media is India’s largest media segment, with digital advertising reaching Rs 947 billion in CY25. Commerce-linked e-commerce and
Key facts
- Digital advertising forecast to reach ~80% of global ad revenue by CY29P, from ~72% in CY24
- India digital media grew more than 30% year-on-year in CY25
- Digital advertising represented ~63% of India's ad market in CY25, versus ~56% in CY24
- India digital advertising revenue crossed Rs 947 billion in CY25
- Indian advertising market grew 13.5% to Rs 1.5 trillion in CY25
- E-commerce and point-of-sale advertising rose 50% to Rs 220 billion in CY25
- E-commerce and point-of-sale advertising equalled 85% of television ad revenue in CY25
- Global retail-search ad share projected to rise from ~33% in CY24 to ~46% in CY29P
Why this matters
Strategic buyers should prioritize partnerships or acquisitions in retail-media measurement, shopper-data infrastructure, ad-tech, and point-of-sale display networks to capture rapidly shifting brand budgets.
What to watch
- Quarterly disclosure of retail-media revenue, ad inventory growth and advertiser counts from major Indian marketplaces and quick-commerce operators.
- Whether retail-media growth continues to exceed overall digital-ad growth after the CY25 surge.
- Cost-per-click, return-on-ad-spend and share-of-search trends in high-spend FMCG, beauty, electronics and fashion categories.
- Adoption of common attribution, third-party verification, clean rooms or standardized retail-media measurement frameworks in India.
- Quick-commerce order growth, average basket size and geographic expansion, which determine the scale of high-intent ad inventory.
- Evidence of television budget reductions or agency planning changes that explicitly reclassify commerce media as a primary reach-and-conversion channel.
- Retailer moves to increase ad load, introduce offsite audience activation, or require supplier media commitments for preferred visibility.
- Build retailer-specific media plans rather than treating commerce media as a single channel; prioritize platforms with category-level conversion and incrementality data.
- Shift budget tests from awareness-only digital and a portion of trade promotions into sponsored search, onsite display, shoppable video and point-of-sale media.
- Negotiate access to first-party audience, campaign-level sales data, clean-room or secure measurement capability, and transparent ad-load commitments in retailer contracts.
- Create a common retail-media scorecard covering new-to-brand customers, incremental sales, repeat rate, margin after ad spend, share of search and offline sales halo.
- Prepare creative and product-feed infrastructure for always-on marketplace search and rapid campaign refreshes across e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms.
- Expect retailers to bundle media inventory with assortment, placement, fulfillment and trade terms; separate media ROI decisions from supplier negotiations where possible.