India’s ad revenue to touch $18.5 billion in 2024: GroupM report

India is amongst the top 10 advertising markets worldwide, as per GroupM’s 2024 global midyear report. The country is estimated to witness 9.5% growth in 2024, with its total ad revenue projected to reach $18.5 billion. Political advertising contributes an estimated 0.9 percent to this revenue. Growth in 2025 is expected to be around 8.7%.

The report also found that the global advertising revenue is estimated to grow 7.8% in 2024 to $989.8 billion, with the ad industry likely to surpass $1 trillion in revenue in 2025. USA and China are the largest drivers of growth accounting for 57.1% of global ad revenue. Together, they are also home to 22 of the top 25 global media sellers and account for more than 40% of global GDP.

The two countries added $44.5 billion to their totals in 2024 (excluding political spending in the US). This is nearly 1.5 times the cumulative $27.4 billion in incremental revenue for all other markets combined.

GroupM expects search advertising revenue to grow 5.3% in 2024 and increase to 6.3% in 2025. Search will account for 20.9% of total ad revenue and the company believes that this number will remain stable for the next five years.

Retail media remains the fastest growing segment of digital. It is likely to reach 17.5% in 2024 and 13.5% in 2025 as retailers seek to capitalise on their customer data sets and advertisers are lured by the promise of closed-loop attribution and the ability to more closely tie media to sales, the report mentioned.

“The marketing ecosystem over the next few years will face potential impacts from governments and regulatory bodies across the world— impacts that have the potential to upend forecasts and alter even the most sound projections. On top of that, such projections can be skewed by two major players, China and the U.S. Their governments and their major companies have the power to shape vast aspects of the global economy,” the report said.

Digital pure-play advertising, excluding the digital extensions of TV, audio, print, and OOH, is expected to grow 10% in 2024 and will make up 70.6% of total revenue for the year, equaling $699 billion. In 2024, OOH advertising is expected to reach $49.7 billion, 41% ($20.4 billion) of which will be digital OOH. “This represents an 11.5% increase over 2023 for total OOH. China alone will represent more than half of global DOOH revenue (54.6 percent) in 2024,” GroupM stated in its report.

Audio advertising is set to hit $27.0 billion in global revenue for 2024, up 0.8% over 2023. Growth will remain muted at around 1% over the next three years, driven by increases in digital audio. This will add nearly three billion dollars from an expected $7.9 billion in 2024 to $10.6 billion in 2029.

The report also reveals that total TV, including both linear or traditional TV and CTV is expected to grow 2.7% to $163.2 billion in 2024, following a decline of 0.4% in 2023. Cinema ad revenue is expected to reduce significantly from the 13.3% growth of 2023 to 7.1% in 2024, reaching a total of $2.3 billion globally. “Growth is forecast to continue decelerating through 2029 when the channel will still not have surpassed the levels of a decade earlier,” the report stated.

In 2024, total newspaper ad revenue will decline 2.2% globally to $31.2 billion with a further 1% decline in 2025. Magazines will account for $17.5 billion of global ad revenue in 2024, a 1.8% share and their revenue has dipped down 4.4% from 2023. It is excepted to further decline 4.7% in 2025.

It also added that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape the industry, as do regulations put in place to guide or control its growth. “Those regulations, of course, depend on politicians, which in turn are determined by upcoming election cycles,” the report noted.