India's booming digital marketing landscape

Authored by Sri Hari Cuddapah, Chief Business Officer at GenY Medium

The digital advertising spend in India is at INR 39,714 Cr. (as per Business Standard). This has grown exponentially from INR 16,974 cr. in 2020. Many enterprise brands have now increased digital marketing’s share of budget to as high as 60% of their overall marketing budget. There are underlying growth drivers that are enabling this. 

Firstly, increase in internet population. As per ET, there are now 820 million active internet users. With such a large internet user base, it has opened up a completely new marketing channel for brands. Just to add, as per Mantra Labs, data charges are the cheapest in India.

The data availability of these consumers has enabled brands to calibrate on who sees their ads and where. This not only is the backbone of advertising strategy but it also ties back to consumer research. Brands use the consumers’ response to their ads as proxy metrics to understand their receptivity and engagement. Thus digital marketing not only enables the brands to avoid media budget leakage but also gives valuable insights on how their brand assets such as their ads, films are performing.

Digital infrastructure development has also played an important role in the growth of digital marketing. With the current digital infrastructure, new brands can now set up an online store front, setup delivery and supply chain within days to start selling. This setup in a traditional context required a great amount of capital, experienced resources and distribution networks to be in place before a brand could make their first sale. This evolution has given rise to hundreds of digital first brands who rely completely on digital advertising for their revenue.

Rise in disposable income has led to the rise of consumerism. Consumers are now willing to try out new products and services which has created room for new brands to enter even the most commoditized markets. Brands have innovated with incrementality on products that have been around for decades, thus driving better results for consumers. The simple yet big example is with products such as face wash or sunscreen. They have been around for decades. Yet, brands have managed to drive incremental innovation on such products creating new consumer adoption. 

Time spent on consuming digital media is currently at an all time high. This creates a huge amount of digital inventory and advertising opportunity for brands. Consumers are engaged and involved with digital media many hours a day. This not only opens up advertising slots but also opens up other digital content slots for content creators. 

In essence, the boom in digital marketing in India has a mix of tail winds enabling this. Consumer behavior, data accessibility, digital infrastructure have all added to the exponential growth of this new age media.

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and Adgully.com does not necessarily subscribe to it.