Reset for Advertising: Why DPDP Act will transform media and marketing
From cookie-crunching consent regimes to child-targeting bans, the new Act will reshape how brands reach consumers. Some fear revenue drop by 90% due to restrictions on targeted advertising.
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Few industries will feel the ripple effects of the DPDP Act as sharply as advertising and media. The government is preparing to notify the rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act within the next 10 days, ahead of the September 28 deadline set by IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw.
While the rules are expected to bring clarity on the law’s implementation, at its core, the law rewrites how personal data can be collected, processed, and monetised- threatening entrenched adtech models even as it promises to rebuild trust with consumers.
For many, the most visible shift will be the end of opaque targeting.
“The Act is going to move the industry away from less transparent practices and towards consent-driven, open engagement,” said Aryan Anurag, Co-Founder, Binge Labs.
He believes this will force brands to focus more on community-building and authentic engagement, rather than chasing vanity metrics.
But the transition won’t be painless.
Meghna Bal, Esya Centre, warned that consent fatigue could cripple operations. “If every click requires consent, consumers will stop responding, making it harder for companies to operate.”
The consequences could be severe in sectors like children’s content. “One animation business we surveyed expects its revenue to drop 90% due to restrictions on targeted advertising to children,” she said.
Advertising technology intermediaries, who rely heavily on third-party cookies and cross-platform data, are also bracing for disruption.
Amit Jaju, Ankura Consulting, said firms are already reducing third-party tags, enforcing runtime consent, and defaulting to contextual targeting when provenance is weak.
“Expect early scrutiny on consent managers and logging granularity. Adtech players need interoperable systems to avoid lock-in,” he cautioned.
A recent study by the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) found that only 6% of Indian websites are ready to comply with the Act’s cookie processing requirements, showing how online marketing could be impacted by the framework.
So, while businesses are preliminarily assessing the suitability of their data practices with the requirements under the Act and the draft rules, another consideration has to be how to suitably obtain consent without experiencing friction and user drop.
The ripple effects may also extend to AI-led creativity.
Dipankar Mukherjee, Studio Blo, noted that restrictions on training AI with public datasets could slow the development of personalised content engines.
“At the moment, the Act feels like it has taken GDPR’s complexity and layered more on top. This could hold back Indian AI startups that power adtech innovation,” he said.
Still, some see a silver lining.
Nikhil Jhanji, IDfy, said the new law is an opportunity to rebuild credibility in advertising.
“By embedding consent and accountability into enterprise workflows, we’re helping brands show users that privacy is part of the value proposition,” he explained.
For now, the advertising ecosystem is in wait-and-watch mode.
Much depends on how the government clarifies standards for consent managers, cross-border adtech flows, and children’s data verification.
Until then, as Anurag put it, “The industry has to accept that the easy days of passive data collection are over. The future will be slower, harder- but also more trusted.”
