A YEAR OF RECKONING & RECALIBRATION

After 2025 rewired the industry through consolidation, Al execution and regulation, 2026 emerges as the year of integration, where scale meets responsibility, data meets creativity, and growth demands coherence

- By Reema Bhaduri

As we enter 2026, India's marketing, advertising and media landscape stands at an inflection point, one marked not by disruption for disruption's sake, but by measured consolidation and strategic recalibration. The year ahead promises a deepening of trends that emerged in 2025: integrated data ecosystems, mature connected TV advertising models, tighter regulatory frameworks and hyper local strategies that have achieved meaningful scale. But in hindsight, we need to understand the tectonic shifts that defined the year gone by.

2025 became the year Indian advertising and media fundamentally restructured itself. It is defined by the quiet, systematic embedding of new capabilities into the industry's operational DNA - mergers that reshaped competitive hierarchies, artificial intelligence moving decisively from proof-of-concept to production-ready infrastructure, and marketing leaders evolving from brand custodians to full-fledged growth architects.

The Consolidation Play

If 2025 had a defining moment for Indian advertising, it was Omnicom's $13-billion acquisition of Interpublic Group (IPG). For India, this merger instantly reconfigured the landscape, creating the country's second-largest agency group behind WPP, with combined revenues exceeding $25 billion globally. The deal triggered structural rationalisation across creative, media, data and technology services, with legacy brands like DDB, FCB and MullenLowe either retired or absorbed into core networks.

Global workforce reductions exceeded 4,000, with India experiencing significant layoffs as the newly combined entity streamlined operations. IPG alone had shed approximately 3,200 roles in the first nine months of 2025, eliminating administrative, leadership and creative positions as part of cost-savings measures estimated at nearly half a billion dollars. The message was clear — scale now demanded efficiency and consolidation came with consequences.