India to emerge as a leading hub of AI-driven advertising tech: Redseer report

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the global advertising industry, creating significant opportunities for India to emerge as a leading hub for advertising technology, says a new report by Redseer Strategy Consultants.

The report titled 'Artificial Intelligence: The Next Growth Catalyst in Advertising' highlights that AI is reshaping every major layer of the advertising ecosystem, from media buying and audience targeting to creative production, measurement, commerce, and attribution.

The study comes as global advertising expenditure surpassed the $1 trillion mark in 2025, with digital formats accounting for 75-80% of total spending worldwide.

Redseer estimates that 80-85% of digital advertising transactions are already conducted programmatically. Programmatic ad buying is the automated, algorithm-driven process of buying and selling digital ad space.

However, AI is now moving beyond efficiency gains to fundamentally rebuild the advertising stack. Technologies such as machine learning-led bidding systems, identity graphs, transformer-based recommendation engines, and agentic advertising infrastructure are increasingly becoming central to the industry’s evolution.

“AI is not simply adding another layer to advertising; it is rewriting every layer simultaneously,” said Mukesh Kumar. He noted that the engineering expertise required for this transformation aligns closely with India’s strong technology talent base, positioning the country to play a leading role in developing next-generation advertising platforms.

The report points out that India has a substantial foundation for AI-led innovation, supported by around 2.7 million annual engineering and technology enrollments, 20-24 million GitHub developers, and nearly 1,900 GCCs (global capability centres) generating $65 billion-75 billion in exports annually.

Redseer also notes that Indian-origin adtech companies are increasingly operating as global product firms rather than outsourced service providers, allowing them to capture higher-value software and platform margins. Growth opportunities are particularly significant in areas such as brand safety, fraud detection, and measurement infrastructure, where inefficiencies continue to create billions of dollars in losses globally.

India’s domestic digital advertising market is projected to expand from about $21 billion in 2025 to between $33 billion and $42 billion by 2030.

The report says that as AI-native platforms, conversational assistants, and agentic commerce gain momentum, India is well-positioned not only to support the global transition but also to produce the next generation of global adtech champions.