‘Is traditional TV a magnet for growth— the honest answer is: no, not by itself’

Ajit Varghese, Partner & Group CEO, Madison on why growth lies beyond traditional TV, inside large screen systems and digital-first ecosystems

by e4m Staff
Published: Mar 10, 2026 5:00 PM | 2 min read

A quick glance through the PMAR 2026 and one understands how the AdEx has delivered some googlies for the marketers in the past year. Here’s a deep dive into the report and its findings by Ajit Varghese, Partner and Group CEO, Madison Media, OOH & HiveMinds, who tells Neeta Nair, Editor, IMPACT, which mediums surprised him, those that showed resilience and others that hit a boundary.

Q] Most of the growth in 2025 came from Digital. Within Digital, where is the most aggressive growth expected from in the coming years?
If you look inside Digital, the centre of gravity has already shifted from ‘generic online advertising’ to performance ecosystems and commerce.

Between 2024 and 2025, core Digital grew 18%, but Q Comm grew 202% (Rs 1,325 to Rs 4,000 Crores) and MSME Digital grew 21% (Rs 29,644 to Rs 35,814 Crores). In 2026, we expect Q-comm to grow by another 50% to about Rs 6,000 Crores, and MSME Digital to grow by 20% to about Rs 42,976 Crores, adding over Rs 9,000 Crores of incremental Digital AdEx just from these two engines.

Within core Digital, E commerce and Video together contributed 59% of incremental Digital growth in 2025. E commerce advertising reached Rs 10,257 Crores (27% growth) and Video Rs 14,785 Crores (21% growth). Performance oriented formats—Search, Social, E commerce—now account for 59% of Digital; including performance video takes that to about 70%.

So, the most aggressive growth will not come from ‘Digital’ as a monolith; it will come from Retail Media (Ecommerce + Quick Commerce), MSME and performance ecosystems that compress the path from im