GUEST COLUMN: How the digital marketing industry evolved in 2025

MUMBAI: At first glance, 2025 looked like just another year of steady growth for India’s digital marketing industry. Budgets rose, platforms expanded and campaigns kept coming. But beneath that apparent momentum, a deeper shift was underway. In this guest column, Bharat Subramaniam, founder & managing director of BigTrunk Communications, examines how 2025 quietly redefined the role of agencies, reshaped expectations around data, creativity and technology, and set the foundation for a far more complex and opportunity-rich 2026, one where strategic intelligence, not scale alone, will determine who leads the industry.

The digital marketing ecosystem in India moved through a defining inflection point in 2025. Agencies shifted from being campaign executors to becoming strategic partners as the market expanded rapidly and brands demanded deeper intelligence, sharper personalisation and integrated thinking. It became increasingly clear that scale alone would no longer be a competitive advantage. Strategic intelligence, data maturity and omnichannel fluency emerged as the true differentiators. With the market valued at USD 5.15 billion in 2024, and entering a decade of accelerated growth driven by rising digital adoption across smaller cities, agencies realised that a volume oriented approach was no longer enough. This transformation now sets the stage for a more complex and opportunity rich 2026.

Market Momentum Shift

Growth in 2025 reflected a broader shift in India’s digital behaviour. Digital advertising was projected to rise more than 20 percent to reach INR 59200 crore, overtaking traditional media for the first time. The government’s Digital India mission, public WiFi expansion and 5G rollout unlocked unprecedented reach in tier two and tier three regions. As digital consumption matured in these markets, agencies learned that the real opportunity was no longer only in reaching new audiences but in understanding their context, intent and cultural nuance. Many firms strengthened capabilities across mobile advertising, search, social and creative development to tap this rapidly evolving consumer base. With the market projected to grow at a compounded annual rate of more than 30 percent until 2034, scale and sophistication are now advancing together.

Strategic Realignment Needs

The rise of Web 3.0 conversations pushed agencies to rethink long term capability planning in 2025. Marketers increasingly sought partners who understood data pipelines, audience segmentation and content intelligence, and who could guide decision making rather than simply execute briefs. Agencies responded by blending performance marketing with stronger advisory roles, helping brands navigate a landscape where creativity, community and conversion must coexist. Social networks continued to lead brand discovery, driving agencies to deepen experience design and platform specific creativity. 2025 marked a shift where clients stopped asking for campaigns and started asking for clarity, with measurable impact expected from every digital intervention.

Influencer Ecosystem Growth

Influencer marketing evolved into a more structured and outcome driven discipline. The industry, expected to exceed INR 100 billion in value by 2027, became central to brand storytelling, particularly with micro influencers building trust and relevance in non-metro regions. Agencies refined authenticity metrics, strengthened co creation frameworks between creators and brand teams, and aligned campaigns more closely with performance measurement. Influencers were no longer simply amplifying awareness. They began driving discovery and commerce in equal measure, establishing new expectations from agencies operating in social and online reputation ecosystems.

Technology Integration Imperatives

The year highlighted a widening gap between agencies that embraced technology and those that stayed cautious. Martech adoption accelerated as brands demanded unified dashboards, predictive insights and automation led content delivery. The priority shifted from acquiring technology to operationalising it quickly and intelligently. Emerging conversations around AI driven personalisation, privacy centric targeting and cookieless advertising encouraged firms to experiment aggressively. Agencies strengthened analytics implementation, in app and website development and full funnel optimisation, with AI driven personalisation and privacy centric targeting gaining momentum. Creativity and technology are now inseparable, forming the foundation for a 2026 where AI led workflows are expected to become mainstream.

Challenges and Opportunities Ahead

Agencies look toward 2026 with both optimism and caution. The pace of transformation is exceeding talent readiness, making skilling one of the most urgent priorities. Platform fragmentation, content fatigue and rising costs of digital visibility are putting pressure on performance. Brands expect deeper insights, higher accountability and more agile collaboration. The year ahead will be shaped by AI assisted content creation, predictive media planning, retail media network expansion, regional language dominance and new forms of consumer discovery beyond traditional search. Opportunities are equally compelling as influencer commerce matures, immersive formats grow and automation becomes central to execution. The agencies that will define 2026 will be the ones that innovate at the speed of consumer behaviour rather than the speed of technology, combining creativity with data intelligence and MarTech fluency to deliver lasting transformation.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect our own.