Digital Marketing Trends in India for 2027

Indian marketing in 2027 will run on more digital money, fewer search clicks, more video, more commerce-led media and more rules. The dentsu-e4m Digital Advertising Report 2026 projects digital at 70% of total ad spend by 2027. Below are ten shifts behind that number, each with its evidence and one thing to do in the first quarter.

What are the ten shifts?

They are changes in money, attention and rules that are already visible in 2025 and 2026 data and will be hard to ignore by 2027, set out one by one below.

Why do these shifts matter now?

Because budgets for 2027 are set in the last quarter of 2026: a team that plans on last year's channel mix will spend its first quarter catching up.

Trend lists age quickly. The shifts that come with dates, like consent rules, are the ones that punish late movers.

Shift 1: Digital becomes 70% of the ad market

Digital is already the default and will take about seven of every ten advertising rupees by 2027. The dentsu-e4m report says India's ad industry closed 2025 at ₹1,21,339 crore and digital reached ₹71,621 crore, a 59% share, after growing 19%. It projects digital at ₹98,034 crore by 2027, growing at a 17% CAGR, while television's share falls from 21% to 15% and print's from 14% to 10%.

First step: Rebuild your 2027 media plan from audience time spent, not from last year's budget split.

Shift 2: Retail media becomes a core channel

Retail media is moving from a performance add-on to a main line in the plan. According to the same report, ad spend on e-retail platforms reached ₹17,601 crore in 2025, up 55.86% on 2024, and made up 24.58% of digital media spend. E-commerce was also the fastest-growing advertiser sector, with total ad spend up 40.8%.

First step: Put marketplace and retail media in the same planning meeting as Meta and Google, with one shared view of new-customer cost.

Shift 3: Quick commerce turns into an ad platform

Quick-commerce apps now sell advertising at scale. Zepto's updated draft IPO prospectus, as reported by Outlook Business (secondary), shows advertising revenue rising from ₹49 crore in FY24 to ₹651 crore in FY25 and ₹1,636 crore in FY26. The dentsu report credits "quick-commerce proliferation" for part of e-commerce's 56% jump in digital spend.

First step: If you sell high-frequency or impulse products, run one controlled quick-commerce ad test before setting a 2027 budget line. The next article in this series covers how.

Shift 4: Video overtakes social as the biggest digital format

Video is set to become the largest digital format by 2027. dentsu-e4m puts social media at 29% of digital spend (₹21,057 crore) and online video at 28% (₹20,004 crore) in 2025. It projects video to grow 22.3% and reach a 29% share by end-2026, and to overtake social's share by 2027. IAMAI's 2025 report, as covered by Tele.net (secondary), says 588 million Indians, 61% of internet users, watched short video.

First step: Make vertical short video the default first version of every campaign idea, with static and long formats cut from it.

Shift 5: AI answers cut clicks from search

AI summaries reduce how often people click through to websites. Pew Research Center tracked 900 US adults in March 2025: they clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when none did. They clicked a link inside the summary in 1% of visits. The study is American, but the feature is spreading in India: in October 2025 Google extended AI Mode to Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

First step: Track whether AI answers mention your brand for your 20 most important queries, monthly, alongside rankings.

Having led online reputation management across Google, Meta and review platforms, my view is that brands should not wait for Indian click data before acting. Checking whether AI answers name your brand correctly costs little, and the Pew figures are reason enough to start now.

Shift 6: Rural and Indic users are the majority

The typical Indian internet user is no longer urban. IAMAI and Kantar's Internet in India 2025, as reported by Tele.net (secondary), counts 958 million active internet users, with rural India at about 548 million, or 57%. The same coverage says around 230 million urban users, 56% of the urban online base, shopped online in the past year.

First step: Pick one non-metro market and one Indian language for a native campaign, built from scratch rather than translated.

Shift 7: AI is already part of how audiences search

Indian internet users are using AI features before many brands have planned for them. The IAMAI 2025 coverage reports that 44% of users had used AI-enabled features such as voice search, image search, chatbots and AI filters. Google told TechCrunch that India is its largest user base globally for both voice and visual search.

First step: Check how your product pages read when spoken aloud and when matched to a photo: clear names, plain descriptions, images with alt text.

Shift 8: Creators become a commerce channel

Creators now influence buying at a scale that belongs in the media plan. BCG estimates that India's 2 to 2.5 million monetised creators influence more than $350 to 400 billion of consumer spending, and projects over $1 trillion of creator-influenced consumption by 2030. The dentsu report also expects regional, women-led and micro-community creators to shape more brand stories.

First step: Move creator work from one-off campaigns to an always-on roster with tracked codes or links, so you can compare it with paid media.

Shift 9: Consent becomes a marketing operations job

Consent stops being a legal footnote and becomes part of every form, list and automation. The DPDP Rules, notified in November 2025, give an "18-month phased compliance timeline", which by my count runs to around May 2027. Section 6 of the DPDP Act requires consent that is "free, specific, informed, unconditional and unambiguous", and withdrawal that is as easy as giving consent. WhatsApp is changing too: Meta's pricing documentation says eligible Indian businesses must move WhatsApp accounts to INR billing by 31 December 2026. This is marketing guidance, not legal advice.

First step: List every place you collect personal data (forms, WhatsApp, events, lead ads) and record what each one asks people to agree to.

Shift 10: Healthcare marketing resets under the NMC rules

Doctors and hospitals now market under much tighter rules. The National Medical Commission's guidelines of 6 October 2026 treat promotional posts on social media, WhatsApp and AI tools as advertising, ban promotional testimonials, paid reviews and guaranteed outcomes, and restrict before-and-after photos. Agencies and influencers cannot carry the responsibility on a doctor's behalf (clause 4.4).

First step: If you market healthcare, audit every live asset against the guidelines before planning new campaigns. Earlier articles in this series include a 12-point clinic audit.

Where will the shifts hit hardest?

D2C, FMCG and retail brands feel retail media, quick commerce and creator commerce first. Healthcare and wellness brands feel the NMC rules and consent duties most. Brands selling beyond the metros feel the rural and Indic shifts most, and every brand that relies on search traffic will feel AI answers.

Who should own each shift?

The marketing head should assign one owner per priority shift: the performance lead for retail media, quick commerce and search changes, the content or brand lead for video, Indic and creators, the CRM or data owner for consent, and legal or compliance alongside marketing for healthcare rules. A shift with no owner becomes next year's surprise.

The 2027 readiness scorecard

Score your team from 0 (not started) to 2 (in place) on each line. A total under 10 suggests the plan for 2027 still looks like 2024.

#	Shift	Question for your team	Score (0 to 2)
1	Digital at 70%	Is the 2027 plan built from audience time, not last year's split?
2	Retail media	Do marketplace ads sit in the same plan and metrics as Meta and Google?
3	Quick commerce	Have we run a controlled q-commerce test, if our category fits?
4	Video first	Does every campaign start as vertical short video?
5	AI answers	Do we track brand mentions in AI answers monthly?
6	Bharat and Indic	Do we run at least one native-language, non-metro campaign?
7	AI-assisted search	Are product pages clear for voice and image search?
8	Creators	Is creator spend always-on and measured like paid media?
9	Consent	Do we know what every data-collection point asks people to agree to?
10	Healthcare rules	If relevant, has every live asset been checked against the NMC guidelines?

My view

My view is that consent, Shift 9, is the one Indian marketers are most likely to underestimate for 2027. The other shifts move budgets gradually, and a team can catch up in a quarter. The DPDP Rules come with dates, and every form, WhatsApp list, lead ad and agency contract that collects personal data has to be ready by then. With a diploma in cyber law and years of running CRM, chatbot and performance-marketing data flows, I would start that inventory this quarter rather than next year.

The trade-off is focus. No team can act on ten shifts at once, and trying to will spread budget too thin to learn anything. Pick the three that matter most for your category and let the rest wait for evidence.

Plan for the shifts, not the trends

Trend lists age quickly, so treat this one as a planning checklist. Choose the three shifts that matter most for your category, give each an owner and a first-quarter test, and review them at the end of March. I will update this article as the 2027 versions of these reports come out.