India’s festive season fuels a digital ad boom, now amplified by GenAI content. Brands must fight fraud, capture attention, and stay contextually relevant to turn clicks into conversions.
Marc Grabowski, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Integral Ad Science
As digital experiences become saturated with ads at every swipe, click, scroll, and stream, one question looms larger than ever: how much of it is actually being seen—and how much is being wasted?
“It's not just ad volume—it’s a massive increase in overall media volume,” Marc Grabowski, Chief Operating Officer (COO), Integral Ad Science, told BrandWagon Online. According to a Europol report, by the end of 2026, nearly 90% of all online content will be GenAI-created. "That’s changing the game completely."
Welcome to India’s AI-fuelled ad boom—where creativity is infinite, but attention is scarce, and the line between authentic and artificial blurs by the frame.
Grabowski breaks down the scale with precision that sounds almost sci-fi:
“Two years ago, we were ingesting the equivalent of two years’ worth of video per day. A year ago, it was ten. Now it’s fifty years’ worth of video every single day,” he says.
That exponential growth forced IAS to build what it calls the MUM model — a system that integrates audio, video, images, and text into one feed and then analyses every frame for brand safety and suitability.
“The reason we had to build an entirely new model is simple — the media landscape exploded. GenAI isn’t just making content faster; it’s multiplying it. And advertisers need to know where their brands are showing up.”
Two segments, he adds, are driving India’s digital ad surge:
Quick Commerce, where brands are riding impulse buying with hyper-personalised, shoppable content; and
Connected TV (CTV), with platforms like Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema turning streaming into the new mass medium.
According to eMarketer, India’s digital advertising market stood at Rs 96,800 crore in 2024, and is expected to grow 15% in 2025.
Bain & Co projects that growth to sustain at roughly 15% a year, touching $19 billion (Rs 1.58 lakh crore) by 2029.
IPSOS estimates digital ad spending at Rs 40,800 crore in FY24, rising to Rs 48,900 crore in FY25 — an almost 20% jump year-on-year.
Clearly, the money is following the eyeballs — and the algorithms.
But there’s a dark underbelly to this growth story — one that Grabowski doesn’t sugar-coat.
“If you’re running unprotected, up to 19% of your ad inventory is fraudulent,” he says. “That means Rs 19 out of every Rs 100 spent is basically going into the trash.”
With protection tools like IAS’s verification tech, that waste drops to under 3%.
The new headache? AI “slop” sites — low-quality, machine-generated pages made purely to capture ad impressions. “About 15% of current ad spend globally already goes toward these made-for-advertising (MFA) sites,” Grabowski notes. “And that number’s only going to grow.”
Also Read: ‘AI is rewriting the rules of adtech, demanding outcome ownership’ InMobi’s Abhay Singhal
IAS categorises wasted ad spend under three core pillars:
Viewability – If the ad isn’t seen, it’s wasted.
Brand Safety/Suitability – Ads placed in inappropriate contexts damage brand perception; 70% of consumers say as much.
Fraud – Bots, fake inventory, and non-human traffic.
Globally, wasted ad spend jumped 34% year-on-year — from $20 billion in 2023 to $26.8 billion in 2025.
However, advertisers that actively avoid MFA sites and focus on clean inventory see conversion rates improve by 278%, IAS data shows. In short: cleaner ads convert better.
With Diwali ad wars in full swing, optimisation is everything.
“This is the busiest time of the year,” says Grabowski. “If you don’t optimise within a day or two, you’ve blown your whole campaign.”
IAS is pushing two tools this festive season:
Total Visibility – a supply path optimisation solution that brings radical transparency to programmatic media buys, showing advertisers which supply paths, publishers, and SSPs deliver the best performance.
EPIC Attention Framework, which evaluates:
Exposure (right people, right context)
Prevalence (size and placement)
Impact (interaction, engagement)
Clutter (number of competing ads on a page)
“Attention is epic,” Grabowski laughs. “Literally — that’s the acronym.”
Recent research using neurotechnology has reinforced what marketers long suspected: contextually relevant ads simply work better.
Memory Retention: Context-aligned ads deliver a 23% boost in detail memory and 27% in global memory.
Emotional Connection: “Endemic” ads — those that solve a problem presented by the content — show a 43% lift in emotional intensity.
Consumer Preference: 74% of people prefer ads that match the content they’re viewing, and 72% say that context shapes their perception of those ads.
Or as Grabowski puts it, “Context isn’t a buzzword.”
Across APAC, Grabowski says, verification maturity varies widely.
“Australia is close to the U.S. in terms of verification. India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines are catching up fast,” he says.
What’s new is that local brands — not just global ones — are now investing in verification. “In India, for example, Merck is leading the way,” he adds.
IAS has expanded its on-ground presence across India (Mumbai and Delhi), Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and soon the Philippines.
“We don’t believe in sitting in Singapore and calling it regional coverage,” Grabowski says. “We’ve built local teams that understand media behaviour market by market.”
That local focus, he adds, has helped IAS secure around 60% market share in some of APAC’s largest markets.
India’s adtech story in 2025 is both exhilarating and cautionary.
As AI blurs the line between content and clutter, advertisers are being forced to play smarter — not just louder.
Verification, context, and attention aren’t side issues anymore; they’re survival tools in a landscape where every frame counts.
Or, as Grabowski sums it up:
“In the age of infinite content, quality — not quantity — is what protects a brand.”
Empower your business. Get practical tips, market insights, and growth strategies delivered to your inbox
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy & Terms & Conditions
