Amazon emerges as largest digital advertiser in Jan–Sep 2025, followed by Flipkart and HUL: TAM

India’s digital advertising ecosystem witnessed a sharp acceleration in 2025, with ad impressions surging more than two-fold between January and September, underscoring the growing centrality of digital platforms in brand media strategies. According to the latest TAM AdEx Advertising Report, digital ad impressions recorded a 149 percent growth in Jan–Sep 2025 compared to the same period last year, reflecting a rapid scale-up in digital spends, advertiser participation and category expansion.

The services sector continued to dominate India’s digital advertising landscape, retaining the top position with a commanding 44 percent share of total digital ad impressions during Jan–Sep 2025. Education emerged as the second-largest sector with a 7 percent share, followed by computers and personal accessories at 6 percent each. Retail also accounted for 6 percent of ad impressions, while banking, finance and investment contributed 5 percent. Personal care and personal hygiene, auto, food and beverages, and durables followed with smaller but notable shares, while the ‘others’ category accounted for 14 percent of impressions. Compared to Jan–Sep 2024, rankings improved for seven of the top ten sectors, highlighting a broad-based recovery and diversification in digital advertising activity. Personal care and personal hygiene, food and beverages, and durables were new entrants in the top ten sectors list during the period.

At the category level, five of the top ten digital advertising categories were drawn from the services sector, reinforcing its leadership. E-commerce online shopping emerged as the single largest category, capturing a 12 percent share of digital ad impressions during Jan–Sep 2025, moving up from second position last year. E-commerce other services followed with a 7 percent share, while e-commerce clothing, textiles and fashion accounted for 6 percent. E-commerce education, software, and e-commerce media, entertainment and social media each contributed 3 percent. Cars, retail outlets for clothing and textiles, readymade garments, and e-commerce food and grocery rounded out the top ten categories. Collectively, the top ten categories accounted for 42 percent of all digital ad impressions during the period, indicating a high degree of concentration among leading advertiser segments.

Amazon Online India emerged as the largest digital advertiser in Jan–Sep 2025, followed by Flipkart.com, Hindustan Unilever, Adobe Software India, Reliance Retail, Fabindia, Razorpay Software, Maruti Suzuki India, Myntra Designs, and Nexbase Marketing. The top ten advertisers together contributed 16 percent of the total digital ad impression share, pointing to sustained dominance by large, multi-category advertisers even as the broader advertiser base expands.

The report also highlighted the widening gap between digital and television advertising, with a significant rise in exclusive digital advertisers. Adobe Software India led the list of top exclusive digital advertisers not present on television during the period, followed by Grammarly Inc, Blink Commerce, Hostinger International, InterviewBit Software Services, Goenka Kachave LLP, Mad About Sports, GoDaddy Operating Company, Soundrise Hearing Solutions and Iraedu Tech. Overall, more than 149,000 advertisers were present exclusively on digital platforms during Jan–Sep 2025, reinforcing digital’s role as the primary entry point for emerging and digital-first brands.

Growth momentum was especially pronounced at the category level, with over 400 categories registering positive growth during the period. E-commerce online shopping topped the list of fastest-growing categories with a 96 percent increase in ad impressions compared to Jan–Sep 2024. E-commerce clothing, textiles and fashion recorded a five-fold increase, while e-commerce education and software each grew two-fold. Retail outlets for clothing and textiles witnessed a nine-fold jump, while AV auxiliaries recorded the highest growth among the top ten categories, expanding twelve times over the previous year. Readymade garments grew three-fold, e-commerce wallets expanded seven-fold, and categories such as cars and e-commerce other services also posted strong gains.

On the publisher front, Instagram consolidated its leadership as the top web publisher for digital advertising, accounting for 64 percent of total web-based ad impressions during Jan–Sep 2025. Facebook.com followed with a 14 percent share, while YouTube.com accounted for 8 percent. X.com contributed 5 percent, with publishers such as Amarujala.com, Cricbuzz.com, Indianexpress.com, Moneycontrol.com, ABP Live, News18.com and Lokmat.com each holding around 0.2 percent share. The top five web publishers together accounted for more than 90 percent of total digital ad impressions, underscoring the dominance of large social and content platforms in advertiser media plans.

In terms of format and buying mechanisms, display advertising overwhelmingly led the digital mix, commanding a 90 percent share of ad impressions during Jan–Sep 2025, while video accounted for the remaining 10 percent. Programmatic buying emerged as the dominant transaction method, accounting for 96 percent of all digital ad impressions, followed by ad networks at 2 percent and direct buying at 1 percent. Programmatic and ad network hybrids and other methods together contributed the remaining 1 percent.