AI, connected TV, programmatic buying reshape India’s digital ad market

India’s rapidly evolving digital advertising ecosystem is entering a new phase where artificial intelligence, programmatic buying, connected television and retail media are converging to reshape how brands reach consumers, according to executives at adtech firm MiQ.

The company, which recently launched its AI-powered advertising intelligence platform Sigma in India, believes the country is now one of the world’s biggest opportunities for programmatic and AI-led advertising as marketers shift budgets away from traditional television and siloed media planning.

“India is our fastest-growing revenue market among the 20 countries where we operate,” said Gurman Hundal, global chief executive and co-founder of MiQ during a recent interaction.


The launch comes at a time when India’s advertising market is undergoing structural changes driven by the explosive growth of digital video consumption, connected TV adoption and automated media buying.

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According to MiQ executives, India’s advertising expenditure is approaching Rs 2 lakh crore, with digital accounting for nearly 70% of total spending. The rise of connected TV is accelerating that transition. Connected TV households in India have grown from around 22 million three years ago to nearly 78 million currently, and are expected to touch 100 million by the end of 2027.

That rapid expansion is also changing how advertisers think about television.

“We currently differentiate between linear TV and connected TV, but within a year we will no longer bifurcate them. It will simply be TV users,” said Varun Mohan, chief commercial officer for India at MiQ.

The shift is creating fresh momentum for programmatic advertising, which automates media buying and campaign optimisation using data and machine learning. Industry executives said programmatic advertising has now become the default route for digital campaigns in India, spanning mobile, connected TV, digital out-of-home and audio platforms.

“It is not a question for clients or agencies whether they are running a programmatic campaign; it is the default,” Mohan said.

The growing adoption of demand-side platforms such as DV360, The Trade Desk and Amazon DSP is further expanding the market for automated advertising in India.

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MiQ’s Sigma platform aims to position itself as an intelligence layer that connects fragmented consumer signals across devices, platforms and media environments. The platform aggregates data around what consumers watch, browse and buy, allowing advertisers to identify audiences and activate campaigns across multiple advertising platforms simultaneously.

Hundal said Sigma analyses nearly 700 trillion data signals globally across television viewing, browsing behaviour, commerce activity and media consumption patterns.

The company believes this integrated approach will become increasingly critical as India’s media ecosystem fragments across streaming platforms, social media apps, video services and retail media networks.

“What we have seen in other markets is that content is no longer available through just one source,” Hundal said, pointing to how global entertainment content is now distributed across multiple apps and streaming services. “The same thing will happen in India: continued mass fragmentation.”

That fragmentation is creating a challenge for advertisers trying to manage reach, frequency and duplication across platforms. AI-led systems such as Sigma are designed to address this by identifying whether a consumer has already been exposed to an advertisement on one platform before serving the same campaign elsewhere.

For example, an advertiser running a television campaign can avoid showing the same ad again to viewers on YouTube or Instagram, improving incremental reach and reducing waste.

The emergence of generative AI is also beginning to transform campaign planning itself.

Historically, advertisers analysed viewing data, purchase behaviour and audience segments separately across multiple dashboards and spreadsheets. AI systems can now unify those datasets and generate planning insights through natural language prompts.

MiQ plans to launch an AI-powered planning agent in June that allows marketers to query audience behaviour conversationally.

“You can simply give a prompt: tell me what light Pepsi buyers watch on TV compared to heavy Pepsi buyers,” Hundal said. “The AI analyses all the data regardless of silos and brings that intelligence to life.”

Despite the growing role of automation, executives argued that human oversight will remain essential in media planning and campaign execution.

“We believe in humans in the loop,” Hundal said. “The final decision on what to activate must be made by a human because AI can make mistakes.”

The increasing use of AI is also coinciding with tightening data privacy regulations globally and in India. Executives said the implementation of India’s Digital Personal Data Protection framework could significantly alter how advertising platforms collect and use consumer data.

However, MiQ argued that the changes could ultimately strengthen the ecosystem by reducing misuse of personal information and encouraging more privacy-compliant advertising practices.

“Globally, we are GDPR compliant. We do not hold any personally identifiable information,” Mohan said.

Beyond AI and automation, the company expects the next major disruption in India’s advertising market to emerge from changes in search and discovery behaviour driven by generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.

Hundal said traditional search engine optimisation and keyword-led advertising models could weaken as consumers increasingly rely on AI assistants for information and recommendations.

“The unknown part of the ecosystem is the monetisation strategy for AI search,” he said, adding that future advertising models may move closer to commerce-led experiences rather than traditional sponsored search links.