6 min Read
With digital officially becoming the mainstream medium, will the future digital comm apps replace a part of experiential marketing in the new point-of-purchase? And how will this affect the future share of the digital advertising pie?
Digital media officially became India’s mainstream media in 2025 – having convincingly surpassed traditional television & print to become the primary source of news and entertainment. Naturally, the advertising budgets have shifted to chase the consumer eyeballs. So where are we heading?
For the past decade, it’s been raining tech like never before. (Don’t stop if you’ve heard this line before!)
But seriously, generative AI, mobile-first consumption, & real-time reporting have empowered & encouraged average consumers to become creators. This has directly challenged the traditional media, which was the erstwhile authority & expert of this vertical for over a century.
This is living proof of the sheer dominance of digital in our lives. With the rise of social networking platforms, CTV, blogs, apps as primary sources, there’s been a corresponding decline in the reliance on traditional media as the primary source for news & entertainment. With countless individual content creators building independent, sustainable micro-businesses, is a new ecosystem of media micro-moguls being created?
Of course, there are challenges like content verification, mixing of news & promotions, embedded commercial hooks, no ethics standards … but these should be addressed as we progress.
Digital has been gaining ground steadily for the past 25 years, from at most a few % share to over 60% in 2025. (This is projected to cross 80% by 2028.) But Google & Meta continue to hog the lion’s share for the past 25 years.
Will there be any major change in share of the digital ad pie in the coming years?
Going forward, as more digital commerce apps are launched, each capturing more eyeballs (duplication notwithstanding), each successful app could eventually gain a “platform” status. That will naturally attract more advertising bucks.
How much more, what will be the main differentiator & at whose cost? Here’s one scenario.
Digital comm apps could become a new tool for full-funnel marketing with a clear, bottom-funnel bias – to target consumers with immediate intent to purchase something. They’re the walk-in customers at the new “point of purchase”.
In the parallel brick & mortar store, “point of purchase” referred to in-store promotional material as well as activities that were designed to lure consumers:
As more & more digital comm apps focus on quick delivery service (aka Quick Commerce), their apps will carry more relevant, sharply targeted ads by brands for last-minute swinging of sales from the competition. (Already, digital comm apps have started hosting brand ads.)
Going forward, brands could also use these apps as platforms for their ‘influencers’.
Finally, when the number of such digital comm apps and their adoption increase to reach a critical mass, they could significantly cannibalise ad budgets from other digital options like Google/Meta.
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