Retail media took 19 percent of 2024 digital ads
India's digital ad spend reached Rs 88,912 crore in 2024. That is a measured 2024 number published in September 2026, not a current run rate, and the line that matters to a marketplace brand is ecommerce and retail media at Rs 17,215 crore.
- Rs 88,912 crore is measured 2024 spend published in September 2026, up 13.5 percent on 2023 and rounded in the report to 14 percent.
- Ecommerce and retail media accounted for Rs 17,215 crore in 2024, 19 percent of digital spend.
- The Rs 21,684 crore retail media figure for 2025 is a forecast, as are Rs 99,137 crore of digital spend and the 60 percent share of total advertising.
- Retail media's forecast growth of 26 percent runs at more than twice the 11.5 percent forecast for digital overall.
The DS Group-WPP Media Decode 2.0 report puts India’s digital advertising spend at Rs 88,912 crore in 2024, up from Rs 78,320 crore in 2023, and at 58 percent of a total advertising market of Rs 153,000 crore, itself up from Rs 140,963 crore. Storyboard18 reported it on 21 September 2026. The growth works out to 13.5 percent, which the report rounds to 14 percent.
Check the year on every number here before using one. Rs 88,912 crore is a 2024 actual carried in a September 2026 story, not a live run rate. The 2025 figures in the same report are forecasts: Rs 99,137 crore of digital spend, described as 12 percent growth and computing to 11.5 percent, at a forecast 60 percent of total advertising. A 2024 actual and a 2025 forecast do not belong in the same sentence without the label.
The line for an ecommerce operator is ecommerce and retail media. In 2024 it was Rs 17,215 crore, 19 percent of digital spend. The 2025 forecast is Rs 21,684 crore, growth of 26 percent against 11.5 percent for digital overall, which lifts retail media’s forecast share of digital to roughly 22 percent. Search is put at about 22 percent of digital. On the report’s own numbers, retail media is on course to sit level with search.
The surrounding surfaces, all 2024 measured: online video 732 million users, social media 655 million, connected TV 50 million households, forecast to exceed 65 million.
For a brand spending on Amazon, Flipkart, Blinkit and Zepto ads, this changes where the budget argument sits. Retail media is not the residual line funded after the Meta and Google plan is signed. At 19 percent of national digital spend it is a planning category in its own right, growing at more than twice the rate of digital as a whole. Two consequences follow. Your marketplace bids compete against a pool that deepens every quarter, so cost per click drift is structural rather than a targeting fault. And a split that still treats retail media as leftover budget is behind where the market has already gone.
Zane’s analysis draws on original reporting by Storyboard18. Read the original report.