Retail media and CTV to power India’s Rs 2 lakh crore adex in 2026: WPP Media TYNY

New Delhi: Retail media and Connected TV (CTV) are set to be the sharpest growth drivers of India’s ad market over the next two years, with WPP Media’s latest This Year Next Year (TYNY) report calling retail the country’s “fastest-growing advertising channel” and charting CTV as the next frontier within video.

According to the December 2025 edition of TYNY, retail media advertising in India is forecast to rise 26.4% in 2025 to Rs 24,280 crore and a further 25.0% in 2026 to Rs 30,360 crore (USD 3.4 billion). That would give retail media a 15% share of India’s total ad revenue by 2026.

CTV advertising

The India TV chart in TYNY shows Connected TV+ (CTV) growing even faster than the broader TV market from a smaller base. CTV ad revenue is projected to grow around 20% in 2025 and 22% in 2026, to roughly USD 760 million and just under USD 1 billion, or about Rs 6,800-8,000 crore over the two years. 

That would lift CTV’s share of TV / professional video ad spend from about 12% in 2024 to roughly 14% in 2025 and 17% in 2026, and take its share of India’s total ad market from under 4% to just over 4%.

These shifts come as WPP Media upgrades its outlook for the broader India market. The report projects India’s total advertising revenue to grow 9.2% in 2025 to Rs 1.86 trillion (USD 20.7 billion) and 9.7% in 2026 to Rs 2.0 trillion (about Rs 2 lakh crore).

Kate Scott-Dawkins, Global President - Business Intelligence at WPP Media, said India is “among the top growth engines” in the company’s refreshed global view for 2025 and 2026, with resilient consumer demand and a rapidly digitising media market offsetting global uncertainty.

Presenting the upgraded forecast, she said WPP’s TYNY report now expects global advertising spend to grow 8.8% in 2025, a sharp upward revision from the June estimate, led by stronger-than-expected momentum in markets including the US, India and Brazil. For 2026, the global ad market is forecast to grow 7.1%, excluding US political advertising, with total global adspend set to top USD 1.2 trillion in 2025.

The India chapter of TYNY 2025 describes the market as “resilient amid global economic uncertainty”, noting that the IMF’s current nominal GDP growth estimate for India stands at 10.2% for 2026.

At the same time, WPP flags signs of stress in household finances. Household savings declined between 2020 and 2024, with the share of bank deposits falling from 43% to 35% over the nine years preceding FY22-23, according to the National Accounts Statistics.

Despite this, consumer spending has held up in key segments. The 2025 festive season (September–October) “proved exceptionally strong”, with total retail sales crossing Rs 6 lakh crore (USD 67 billion), aided by heavy discounting from both online and offline retailers. But WPP notes that bargain hunting is intensifying and Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) usage is growing, underlining a more K-shaped pattern in demand.

Speaking to BestMediaInfo.com, Scott-Dawkins warned that marketers must watch for a potential squeeze on the lower and middle tiers of consumers. One risk to the outlook, she said, is that households may have less financial cushion left after several years of high inflation and rising credit use.

“If that buffer erodes further and any economic shock hits, lower- and middle-income consumers could cut discretionary spending faster than expected,” she said. She stressed that this is not WPP’s central scenario, but a downside risk to its growth forecast.

On a channel basis, WPP’s framework groups media into content, commerce, intelligence and location. In India, content-driven advertising – covering TV, audio, print, social and gaming – still accounts for the bulk of spend, but growth is shifting decisively to digital formats and to commerce-linked channels such as retail media.

Content

Total TV advertising revenue in India is projected to decline 1.5% in 2025 to Rs 47,740 crore before returning to modest growth in 2026, as linear viewership continues to fall at a mid-single-digit pace. Within TV, streaming and CTV remain the “bright spots”, growing from smaller bases even as traditional linear GRPs erode.

The video landscape has been reshaped by the Reliance Jio–Disney Star merger, completed in November 2024, and the launch of Amazon Prime Video’s ad platform in 2025. Together, these shifts are intensifying competition for both audiences and ad budgets. The 2027 IPL media rights auction for the 2028 cycle is flagged as a pivotal moment that could further accelerate the shift from linear TV to digital platforms, as broadcasters and streamers prepare for higher bid levels from the BCCI.

Audio advertising is forecast to grow modestly, with digital audio and podcasts offsetting 1–2% annual declines in terrestrial radio between 2025 and 2030. TYNY projects Indian audio ad revenue to reach Rs 2,900 crore in 2026.

Print shows what WPP calls a “paradox”. Newspaper advertising is expected to grow 3.5% in 2025 and 4.5% in 2026 to Rs 17,090 crore, driven largely by government, political and retail-led advertising outside major agency groups. Magazine advertising continues its structural decline, falling 13.6% in 2025 to Rs 170 crore, even as luxury brands maintain a presence.

On the content side, the single biggest engine of growth is “other digital”, primarily social media and digital video.

This segment is projected to reach Rs 71,710 crore in 2026, up 11.1% over 2025, and account for 35.5% of India’s total ad revenue. Short-form video and micro-dramas are gaining popularity, though WPP notes that audiences are still modest compared with more mature formats.

Commerce

Commerce-driven advertising, led by retail media, is where WPP sees the sharpest growth in India. Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart are identified as the two largest retail ad players, while quick-commerce platforms such as Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart are growing advertising revenue at 100%-plus rates from small bases as they fight for share.

Search advertising, which WPP groups under its “intelligence” category, is projected to grow 8.9% in 2025 to Rs 21,550 crore. That would give it an 11.7% share of India’s total ad market, with more growth expected in 2026. Google’s rollout of AI Overviews in India is acknowledged as a potential disruptor, though WPP says the impact on search ad revenue is still evolving.

Location

Location-based advertising, which includes out-of-home (OOH) and cinema, continues to recover. Total OOH in India is forecast to grow 8.6% in both 2025 and 2026, reaching Rs 4,120 crore and representing about 2% of total ad revenue by 2030. Digital OOH is driving almost all of that growth. Cinema advertising in India has already recovered to pre-pandemic levels, placing the country among a small group of markets, alongside Japan and Mexico, where box-office-linked ad spends have normalised.

Scott-Dawkins said India’s demographics and digital adoption position it uniquely within WPP’s global map. On India’s rapidly evolving advertising environment, marked by aggressive growth in influencer marketing and AI-led tools, she said, “India is the most populous market worldwide, with a growing, emerging middle class and the place where you can see some of these companies like Google and Amazon really investing in rolling out some of these newer technologies early and first ahead of other markets speaks to India’s potential as a future engine of growth.”

She also cautioned that advertisers need to monitor the “K-shaped” split in consumer fortunes across markets. Higher-income households remain relatively insulated, while lower-income groups may be more vulnerable to any labour, asset-price or macro shocks after a period of high inflation.

Global advertising growth forecast

Globally, TYNY 2025 points to a structural rebalancing of media as digital, retail media and commerce take share from traditional channels. Digital, including the digital extensions of TV, audio, print and OOH, is expected to rise to 84% of total global advertising in 2026.

“AI’s influence on both the economy and the advertising industry is now unmistakable. You can’t open the newspaper without reading something about this. It is now starting to have a broader impact,” Scott-Dawkins said, outlining three layers where AI is accelerating ad growth – efficiency reinvestment in marketing, enterprise-wide productivity gains and a wave of new “AI-born advertisers” built on platforms such as Meta and Google Search.

Retail media will overtake linear TV worldwide for the first time in 2026, backed by closed-loop measurement and first-party commerce data. Gaming, newly broken out by WPP, is estimated at USD 10.7 billion in 2026, with growth rates above 25% but still under 1% of global ad revenue.

Commerce as a whole – spanning retail, travel and financial services media networks – will account for 15.6% of global ad revenue in 2025, or USD 178.2 billion, surpassing total TV ad revenue for the first time. It is projected to reach USD 268.3 billion by 2030.

Scott-Dawkins also highlighted a coming disruption as AI answer engines and “agentic shopping” begin to reshape how consumers discover and buy products. “One of the unexpected but interesting disruptions is the potential for commerce to be disrupted by intelligence and AI-driven advertising,” she said, pointing to partnerships such as Etsy–OpenAI and Walmart–OpenAI as early signals.

Traditional media, she added, faces mounting consolidation pressures as companies race to scale in a world where streaming, retail media and AI platforms capture disproportionate growth.

Summing up the implications for brands and media owners, Scott-Dawkins said the industry is now “at the cusp of the AI era of advertising”, with WPP preparing to introduce its Future of Advertising Intelligence Framework built on “personalisation, pervasiveness and proactive” communication.

The framework, due to be rolled out from January, is designed to help marketers navigate a world where campaigns are increasingly personalised, visible across surfaces and screens, and triggered proactively by AI rather than traditional search-led behaviours.