ÌÇÐÄÆƽâ°æ

As India’s content consumption moved increasingly to online platforms, advertisers also followed their audiences to the digital world. Among the various industry verticals in the country, the telecom sector devoted ** percent of its total ad expenditure in 2025 to digital. The e-commerce sector followed second and was the only other vertical to allocate over ** percent of its ad spend to the medium.

Ad spends by format

Online ads made up the highest share of the digital media expenditure by the FMCG sector that year, spending ***percent of their digital budget on it. However, most Indian business verticals preferred social media ads to online video ads. 

Social media ads win the popular vote

This is not surprising when one looks at the massive social media user base across India. As of January 2025, YouTube had an advertising reach of around *** million users across India. This was the largest audience base reached via advertising in the country that year, followed by Instagram and Facebook with a reach of approximately *** million and *** million users, respectively. So long as social media platforms continue to facilitate a wider audience reach, advertisers will lean towards them for higher return on investments.